Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

To Destroy Or To Preserve: Urban Renewal And The Legal Foundation Of Historic District Zoning, Andrew Tarne

Theses and Dissertations

Historic preservation and urban renewal are often thought to be polar opposites. Where one seeks to preserve, the other generally seeks to destroy in order to rebuild. While the programs appear on the surface to be in opposition, this Thesis seeks to demonstrate that there is a fundamental connection between the underlying legal principles of historic zoning and urban renewal. To that end, the jurisprudence involving historic zoning and aesthetic regulations before and after the seminal urban renewal case of Berman v. Parker has been collected and analyzed. This analysis revealed that courts were hesitant to support aesthetic, and by …