Harmonious Inequality? Zoning,Public Housing,and Orlando’s Separate City,1920-1945

By the end of World War II, many cities had implemented zoning codes and launched public housing programs to delineate the boundaries of the African American community and to concentrate the minority population within those boundaries. Scholars have assessed how planning segregated neighborhoods in larger cities such as Chicago, New York, and Cleveland and more recently in southern cities, such as Atlanta, Richmond, and Memphis. In Orlando, Florida, a relatively small, agricultural, and tourist-based southern community, local officials marshaled an array of planning strategies to define and maintain racial boundaries while projecting an image of African American support for this system. The intent was to allay fear among tourists and potential residents that Orlando suffered from racial tension. Building on the work of Silver and Moeser, this study shows that Orlando developed a separate black city through planning for the spatial arrangement of cities on the basis of segregationist goals.