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Nazareth, Pa., United States

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Anthropology Student Studies Bethlehem Zoning

Bethlehem Zoning Hearing Board Chair Gus Loupos was really touched by a note he received recently from William & Mary student Elena Carey. An anthropology student, she recently submitted a 70-page honors thesis with this catchy title: "Zoning: A Cartography of Culture, An Examination of Zoning and Metanarrative in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania." (You can read it here).

Despite an intimidating title and occasional lapses into academese, it's a good read. Naturally, there's the Steel, and Carey's main point is that zoning in Bethlehem evolved around the Bethlehem Steel. But according to Carey, Moravians had something very similar to zoning as far back as 1758.

Bethlehem formally adopted zoning in 1926, primarily to control the size of various steel companies and provide some separation from residences.

2 comments:

Jon Geeting said...

This is awesome, thanks for sharing it.

CT said...

Yeah, really interesting. I wonder what the deconstructive affect of having Musikfest straddle the "two downtowns" might be over time?