Zoning Expertise: from Hygienist Debates to the 20th Century Urban Planning Tools

Abstract

The article discusses the tools of the 19th-century hygienists and the debates about their effectiveness in the fight against the spread of epidemics. Hygienists tried to prevent the spread of epidemics in the cities of Great Britain, based on 19th-century medical theories. Professional and social conflicts over the application of the port quarantine and Chadwick’s sanitary laws have shown that they are effective only for the management of the city as a zoning tool. Thus the hygiene movement splits into laboratory medicine, which prevents epidemics, and urban planning, which works with social conflicts. The article is carried out in the constructivist approach to the study of technologies (SCOT). In contrast to Eduardo Aibar and Wiebe Bijker’s studies on the history of urban planning, the paper shifts the focus from the city as a technical artifact of urban planning to the urban plan and zoning. The local plan is not an invention, but a technology of expertise with a set of recommendations for zoning the territory. Conflicts over port quarantine and sanitary laws arise in boundary zones by expanding the scope of existing knowledge or technologies. The discussions of experts are part of the formation of recommendations, but expertise technologies cannot be stabilized by the 'closure' of the debate. The article describes the stabilization of expertise technologies by using the techniques of neutralization of conflicts in boundary zones. Based on the concept of neutralization of Gresham Sykes and David Matza, the article highlights the zoning technology and constructs the city plan as a technical artifact.