Bartholomew’s Blueprint: The Quiet Roots of Urban Exclusion

Ideas advanced by Harland Bartholomew led to the destruction of large sections of American cities. The image above shows the demolition of several blocks of downtown St. Louis in the 1930s.

Zoning is often talked about like it’s just a practical tool—a way to keep factories away from homes or make sure neighborhoods stay “orderly.” But the deeper story behind zoning in America is a lot messier. Architect and urbanist Robert Orr shares his thoughts on one of the people at the center of that story — Harland Bartholomew.

Bartholomew wasn’t a mastermind. He wasn’t even trained as a planner. He was a young, behind-the-scenes engineer—basically a new hire—tossed into the city of Newark by the E.P. Goodrich firm. Why? Because city officials were nervous. The Federal Dillingham Commission had just released a 27,000-page report warning about the “dangers” of new immigrants. That report gave credibility to the junk science of eugenics and stoked fears that “low-quality” ethnicities were hurting property values.

Bartholomew didn’t go into city planning with an agenda. He wasn’t a Robert Moses-type figure, forcing big changes with a heavy hand. He was just… naive. But that might be exactly what made his influence so dangerous. He didn’t question the racial fears or class biases of the people he interviewed—mostly property owners worried about their neighborhoods changing. He just recorded them. And in doing so, he helped translate raw emotion and prejudice into policy.

Today, we’d call those homeowners “NIMBYs” (Not In My Backyard). Back then, their worries were often rooted in fears about immigrants and minorities “lowering” neighborhood standards. As historian Katherine Benton-Cohen explains in The Invention of the Immigration Problem, these fears weren’t just about race—they were about class, culture and a sense of social control slipping away.

Bartholomew’s early plans took those fears and baked them right into the structure of American cities. In St. Louis, for example, he created zoning maps that separated neighborhoods by race and income—without ever saying those words out loud. Instead, he used terms like “overcrowding” and “blight” to justify pushing out working-class and minority residents. Wide roads, single-family zoning and minimum lot sizes all served the same purpose: make it expensive and exclusive, without having to mention race.

But Bartholomew didn’t stop with zoning. He embraced highways—fully. With greater separation of people into zones of exclusion, cars became necessary for accessing one’s daily needs. His vision helped create cities where daily life—jobs, groceries, schools and even seeing friends—required driving. The result was not only the physical displacement of people, but also their social isolation. Public space, where mingling once happened by default, gave way to driveways and dead ends. Neighborhoods lost their mix, and with it, their chance at shared community.

Even after racial zoning was made illegal in 1917 (thanks to Buchanan v. Warley), Bartholomew’s methods allowed segregation to continue under a different name—economic exclusion.

It’s important to note that the Great Migration—when millions of Black Americans moved north to escape Jim Crow—came a little later. But the mindset was already in place. There’s a tendency to frame racism as the root of all exclusionary planning, but what if it’s broader than that? What if the real issue is a deep suspicion of anyone seen as “less than”—regardless of race, origin or background?

Even newer immigrant groups often end up buying into that mindset once they “blend in” and lose their accents. It’s a cycle of fear, status and distancing. And it sticks—like stink on a monkey.

This isn’t just history. These patterns are still all around us. Most American suburbs were shaped by these early planning ideas—car-dependent, low-density and expensive to access. And the people most impacted? Often those without the wealth, language or connections to push back.

But there’s hope.

On her On Point radio show, Meghna Chakrabarti recently explored the struggles of American boys—how many are feeling lost, left behind by social shifts and unsure how to find purpose. What she found was surprising: most boys don’t want power. They want to help. They want connection, not control.

That insight matters for urbanism. If we design cities that foster connection instead of hierarchy—places where people of different incomes, races and backgrounds can actually live near each other—we might find ourselves tapping into the very instincts that young people are craving: community, purpose and cooperation.

Movements like New Urbanism are already pushing in this direction. Walkable neighborhoods, mixed-use buildings, smaller and more affordable homes and better public transit all help undo some of the damage Bartholomew’s naïve zoning started. But even New Urbanism, for all its strengths, can get stuck focusing too much on transit—on getting people to destinations.

The epiphany software engineer Carlos Moreno had when he reimagined Paris provides some clarity on this point: Originally focused on routing people efficiently through the city, Moreno flipped the model: what if the city wasn’t a place to navigate, but a living system with essential “functions”—living, working, education, healthcare, recreation—all packed together, like a computer’s operating system? The 15-minute city wasn’t about mobility. It was about completeness—the restoration of daily proximity.

Bartholomew helped break the everyday familiarity that comes from seeing neighbors on sidewalks, running errands and sharing space. But if cities can glue people back together through that kind of daily proximity, we might just escape the so-called “immigration problem,” sidestep the worst of our polarization and start solving problems together.

As Bernard Rudofsky wrote in 1969, “Streets are for people.”

And as Rebecca Solnit reminds us in A History of Walking, “The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.”

Bartholomew’s legacy scattered us. But the blueprint for reconnection is already here. All we have to do is walk it.