Regulating the good you can't think of

In this paper Kwartler accepts the view of the city articulated by Lynch in The Image of the City that ‘Only partial control can be exercised over its growth and form’. He reviews the practices of New York City in terms of its relationship with ‘Regulating the Good You Can't Think Of’, from the zoning ordinance of 1916 to the present day. He uses SoHo as an example of a case where illegal individual action became legalized in a subsequent set of regulations and reviews the satisficing approach to control proposed by Babcock and Weaver in City Zoning. He concludes with an examination of the ‘thresholds, performance standards and feedback’ approach which began in New York and California in the 1960s, the development of which might be called ‘just-in-time planning’.