Not in My Backyard: Zoning, Smut, Citizen Participation, and Social Control

Abstract

In the 1970s, cities began to regulate adult businesses through zoning and land-use regulation instead of obscenity-based regulations to great efficacy. These governmental efforts were supported by ordinary citizens using arguments about property value to keep adult businesses ‘out of their backyards.’ Today, former ‘smut districts’ in Detroit, Boston, and New York City are often the sight of high-value real estate and look very different from their seedy pasts. By using zoning and top-down planning tools like urban renewal to deal with adult businesses, cities succeeded in dispersing their porn districts. The regulations came at a cost, pushing out spaces that acted as sites for interaction across class and racial boundaries; areas with affordable shopping, dining, entertainment, and living options; and places where members of the LGBTQ community could be ‘out’ in public. When these areas are replaced with tourist traps and high-value real estate ventures, little thought is given to the social costs of losing these spaces. As planners making decisions about what land uses are valuable and which are ‘nuisances,’ it is important to understand that we may not know the true value of a controversial space until it is gone.