ABSTRACT
Constance Perin (1977, 4) points out that “land-use planning, zoning, and development practices are a shorthand of the unstated rules governing what are widely regarded as correct social categories and relationships.” Or as another commentator Richard Reeves (1974) put it, “Exclusionary laws are not completely explicit: there are no zoning maps divided into racially or economically restricted areas, so labeled. But there are thousands of zoning maps which say in effect: ‘Upper-Income Here’, ‘Middle Income Here’; ‘No Lower-Income Permitted Except as House-hold employees’, ‘No Blacks Permitted.’” We will argue that in an affluent community, such as Bedford, zoning not only reflects but also plays an active structuring role (instrumental, but over time increasingly naturalized) in grounding the practice of an aesmeticized way of life in a place. It attempts to maintain sufficient social homogeneity within a territorially bounded and (relatively) defensible space in order to achieve a collective sense of place and landscape. We believe we are justified in placing a strong emphasis on sense of place and landscape here. We became convinced from our lengthy discussions with residents that they are relatively unconcerned about the personal characteristics (other than class-based taste) of people who might move into town. In part, this is because one finds over-the-back-fence type socializing in only a few areas of town. They are sorely afraid of the negative visual impact of new housing, however. 1
Planning and land-use controls in Bedford as elsewhere in the United States are the responsibility of local government. 2 The legal right of municipalities to plan and control the use of land through zoning is derived from police powers over issues of health, safety, morals, and welfare granted by the states. Historically, police powers have been justified on the premise that one’s use of one’s own property must not injure others. The town law grants police powers specifically to lessen congestion, secure safety from fire and panic, promote health and general welfare, provide adequate light and air, prevent overcrowding, and facilitate provision of transportation, water, sewerage,
We want to show that we have a twenty-first century civilization in the midst of an eighteenth-century landscape. Bedford still has the potential of maintaining that landscape, but time is running out.
