Is Euclidean zoning named for Euclid, the father of geometry, or for a Cleveland suburb? The answer is both.
Euclidean zoning refers to the practice of separating homes, businesses, and factories into their own dedicated districts. Since this method consists of slicing city maps into color-coded zones, you might assume the term honors Euclid, the ancient Greek “father of geometry” who established the rules for drawing lines and shapes on a flat plane. Yet consult an urban planner, and you’ll hear that Euclidean zoning truly derives from a town in Ohio.
In 1922, Euclid, Ohio, enacted a comprehensive zoning code designed to protect its small-town character from the encroaching industrial growth of nearby Cleveland. The ordinance drew the ire of the Ambler Realty Company, which objected to the town’s designation of land as residential-only despite its plans to use the site for industrial development.
The company swiftly sued, leading to the Supreme Court’s 1926 decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. While zoning might have appeared “arbitrary and oppressive” fifty years earlier, Justice George Sutherland, writing for the majority, argued that the complexities of modern urban life require local governments to decide, in advance, which land uses are permissible where. “A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place—like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard,” he noted.
By upholding Euclid’s restrictions, the Court granted municipalities across the country broad latitude to regulate land use as they saw fit. In the wake of that ruling, nearly every other community in the nation followed the Ohio village’s example by adopting a “Euclidean” zoning code.
The urban planners of the 1920s might have believed they could fine-tune the modern industrial city for everyone’s benefit. Instead, zoning codes have grown more “arbitrary and oppressive.”
Urban planners who still endorse Euclidean zoning are not only wrong about policy; they are also mistaken when they claim that Euclidean zoning is not named after the famous mathematician. Euclid, Ohio, was founded in 1796 by surveyors who chose to name the town in honor of the Greek sage, to whom they owed a tremendous intellectual debt.
In short, Euclid the man lent his name to Euclid the town, which in turn lent its name to the Supreme Court decision that blessed what came to be known as Euclidean zoning. Contrary to what some might think, Euclidean zoning is named for the author of Elements, Optics, Data, and Phaenomena.
That’s certainly a curious coincidence. The Supreme Court case that established the government’s power to divide maps into tiny shapes is named after a town that was itself named after the man who invented the very practice of dividing maps into small shapes. With coincidences like that, who could claim to plan anything, not even a city?
