Invisible walls: A century of exclusionary zoning has helped divide Manchester by income and race
“Why did these two parts of the city develop so differently? There are no easy answers to this question, nor are there easy solutions.
‘I think city planning, especially for people who want diverse cities, is extraordinarily challenging,’ said Elliott Berry, co-director of the Housing Justice Project at NH Legal Assistance.
‘Unfortunately, sincere efforts to create diverse spaces [have] sometimes spurred wealthier residents to flee to suburbia,” he said. “It’s not easy for planners to find the sweet spot.’
Historians and housing experts suggest that the causes of center city’s challenges, while multi-faceted, can be reduced to two issues: the inequalities created by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company’s discriminatory housing policies in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the barriers to undoing those inequalities that have been erected by local land-use zoning laws since the 1920s.”