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relative few, and social exclusivity, gave way, if not factually then ideologically, to broad notions of equality not only in social relations but in legal relations.31 This was especially true as it concerned land ownership and use. The firmly fixed but invisible geographic boundaries and land use norms that had for generations divided rich from poor and immigrant strivers from old money aristocrats and wealthy merchants were quickly dissolving in the stew of modern urban life. These limits to traditional law, combined with the widespread socioeconomic transformation seen at the beginning of the twentieth century meant that a new mechanism was required to control land use. This new mechanism was zoning. New York is generally said to have had the first city-wide zoning code, adopted in 1916.32 A number of cities soon followed suit, and much of the zoning enabling legislation originally adopted prior to 1924 was based on the New York general city enabling act.33 C. The Rise of Zoning Codes Zoning codes were in many cases meant to counter the ills of the urban environment in the United States which arose from the Second Industrial Revolution, dating from roughly 1850 until the beginning of the nineteenth century.34 This period was heralded by unprecedented 31 This transition from status bound relations to greater personal legal autonomy for the individual is perhaps most famously summed up by English jurist Henry Sumner Maine who in 1861 described this process as the move from status to contract. John R. Sutton, Law/Society: Origins, Interactions, and Change 26-31 (2001). Sutton also reflects upon the work of Emile Durkheim, Auguste Comte, Ferdinand Tonnies, and other middle and late nineteenth century social and legal theorists who considered the effects of urbanization and modernization on social and legal relations. Id. at 31-34. 32 John Barry Cullingworth, The Political Culture of Planning: American Land Use Planning in Comparative Perspective 16 (1993). 33 Id at 27. 34 See e.g. Stephanie B. Kelly, Community Planning: How To Solve Urban Environmental Problems 68 (2004); see also Paul Wheeler, An Architectural Perspective on the Future of the 12