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When Rappahannock County was created, in 1833, the first tenement was built in New York City. Tenements were needed there as economic development, trade, and the influx of immigrants following the War of 1812, saw New York City's population increase from about 120,000 people in 1812, to almost 700,000 by 1850.
Coincidentally, by 1850, Rappahannock County's population had reached 9,782 people, the highest population level it has ever had. That's 37 people per square mile. By comparison, we re down to 29 people per square mile now.
New York City, though, continued to grow, with disastrous results for the ordinary individual. Jacob A. Riis, in his 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives," notes, "old buildings were often carried up to a great height without regard to the strength of the foundation walls... It was rent the owner was after; nothing was said in the contract about either the safety or the comfort of the tenants...Greater percentage of profits could be realized by the conversion of houses and blocks into barracks, and dividing their space into smaller proportions capable of containing human life within four walls...The tenement-house population had swelled to half a million souls by that time [1855], and on the East Side, in what is still the most densely populated district in all the world, China not excluded, it was packed at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile, a state of affairs wholly unexampled."
Let’s take that figure of 290,000 people per square mile, and overlay it on Rappahannock County, ignoring health, safety, and general welfare considerations. At that population density, the county could house 77,430,000 people, one-third of the population of the United States.
Riis’s expose, and other studies, helped formulate in 1901, and more comprehensively in 1916, the first zoning laws for New York City.
There was a need to provide for the health, safety, and welfare of ordinary people.
Close to 100 years later, this is the gist of the Comprehensive Plan of Rappahannock County. The Code of Virginia (the laws of Virginia) provides for the physical development of the territory within the county's jurisdiction.
"The comprehensive plan shall be made with the purpose of guiding and accomplishing a coordinated, adjusted, and harmonious development of the territory which will, in accordance with present and future needs and resources, best promote the health, safety, morals, order, convenience, prosperity and general welfare of the inhabitants."
A county can chart its own future. Note the key words of "health, safety, morals, order, convenience, prosperity and general welfare of the inhabitants."
These are the linchpin words to zoning. Next time: suggesting what might be "too many" people for Rappahannock County.
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