Known primarily for his sector theory of urban development, Homer Hoyt contributed to planning knowledge in other ways: advancing the concept of economic base, developing procedures for analyzing the location and size of suburban shopping malls, and documenting comparative trends in urbanization. A land economist and real estate consultant and appraiser throughout most of his professional life, Hoyt's career combined practice and scholarship, though of a non-academic variety. This article explores Hoyt's intellectual contributions, his melding of practice and theory, and his relationship to the field of planning.
See the American Planning Association web site: http://www.planning.org/pathways/default.htm (accessed September 7, 2005).
2.
M. Christine Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983, p. 249); Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), and Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969). To continue this point, neither Hoyt nor sector theory are mentioned in Anthony J. Catonese and James C. Snyder , eds., Urban Planning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979) or Barry Cullingworth, Planning in the United States (London: Routledge , 1997). Moving away from planning histories and overviews, F. Stuart Chapin Jr.'s classic text on land use planning mentions Hoyt's study of land values in Chicago (p. 13), sector theory (pp. 17-19), and even cites (p. 9) the textbook on real estate that Hoyt co-authored. See F. Stuart Chapin, Jr. , Urban Land Use Planning (Urbana, IL : University of Illinois Press, 1965).
3.
For insights into the relationship between theory and practice, knowledge and action, from an earlier time, see Joseph Heathcott, “`The Whole City Is Our Laboratory': Harland Bartholomew and the Production of Urban Knowledge,”Journal of Planning History4, 4 (2005): 322-355.
4.
The main source for Hoyt's life is Michael Hoyt and Jean Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, (No city: photocopy, 2005). This document is based on over 30 hours of cassette tape discussions that Michael Hoyt made with his father between 1970 and 1980 and on handwritten notes made by Homer Hoyt in preparation for writing his autobiography. Other sources include Contemporary Authors OnLine, Gale, 2004: http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC ; A.L. Damon , “Hoyt, Homer,” pp. 402-404 in K.T. Jackson, ed., The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998); “Homer Hoyt, Early Planner of Urban Shopping Centers,” The New York Times, December 1, 1984, p. 28; “ Homer Hoyt, Real Estate Economist, Dies,” The Washington Post, November 30, 1984, p. B16; and the Preface of a collection of Hoyt's writings published by him (no publisher, no date (likely around 1966), and no pagination) titled According to Hoyt: 50 Years of Homer Hoyt.
5.
Hoyt believed he was born in 1895, but no birth records exist to verify this. Contemporary Authors On-Line lists his birth date as 1896; the Autobiography of Homer Hoyt uses 1895.
6.
On the issue, see pp. 62-91 in James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
7.
Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, p. 23.
8.
The population data are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census.The data on buildings and assessments are from Homer Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1933 ), Table LXXXVII (p. 476) and Table XCVII (p. 487) respectively. For a capsule description of the period, see pp. 1-11 in Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004).
9.
His mother provided an early example. When he was a boy, she bought and sold foreclosed land in the Argentine district of Kansas City, usually paying $1.00 for the parcels. In this way, she purchased enough land for a small farm.
10.
Hoyt also drew on the files of the Chicago Tribune that reported daily on real estate sales, Chicago Title and Trust Company ante-fire abstracts, and block-level land values published in Olcott's Blue Books of Chicago.
11.
Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, p. 23.
12.
The Assessor's Office was dissatisfied with his spending his time gathering material for his book and demanded that he do clerical work in addition to ghostwriting speeches. He refused. See Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, p. 27.
13.
Mark I. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 82.
14.
On Weimer, see Paul Wassserman, ed., Who's Who in Consulting (Ithaca, NY: Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, Cornell University, 1968), p. 314. Weimer wrote most of the textbook with Hoyt mainly responsible for the chapters on city structure, real estate cycles, and economic base. The Homer Hoyt Institute honored Weimer by naming its School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics after him, while Hoyt's ties to Weimer also led to the Homer and Gertrude Hoyt Fellowship for real estate studies at Indiana University's School of Business.
15.
. Harold M. Mayer and Richard C. Wade , Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 366.
16.
The study he produced was titled “Economic Status of the New York Metropolitan Region in 1944.”
17.
He taught the course in 1944/45 and 1945/46 under Business and Economics. This information was provided by Jocelyn K. Wilk, Public Services Archivist, Columbia University Archives, October 4, 2006.
18.
Hoyt commented in the “Conclusion” of his autobiography that “. . . if you want to carve out your own career, you study opportunities. Of course, in my case I was lucky, but I never wanted to . . . be doing the same thing day after day, conferring with other people, not get credit for my work; being a cog in a big organization.” The quotation is from a draft of the Autobiography of Homer Hoyt provided to me by Michael Hoyt and can be found in the conclusion.
19.
In Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, pp. 7-8, Hoyt praises his wife for being an inspiration, providing creative ideas, and having practical, business sense.
20.
Hoyt moved his firm to Chicago in 1951 and soon thereafter relocated it to Washington, DC, where it remained. In Washington, “he was among the first planners to forecast the rapid postwar population and economic growth of the regions surrounding the nation's capital.” The quotation is from Damon, “Hoyt, Homer,” p. 403.
21.
Of the many sources on the early postwar period, see Robert A. Beauregard, When America Became Suburban (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 231-245.
22.
Hoyt, “ Preface,” According to Hoyt, no pagination. The Raleigh project was known as Cameron Village. It was a “complex development package” that included garden apartments and single-family homes meant to “generate cash flow to cover the shopping center's start-up costs.” See Thomas W. Hanchett, “U.S. Tax Policy and the Shopping-Center Boom of the 1950s and 1960s,” American Historical Review101, no. 4 (1996), p. 1091.
23.
Because surveys and appraisals are closely aligned, it is difficult to determine the actual number he did. Hoyt claims to have done over 300 surveys whereas Damon (“Hoyt, Homer”, p. 403) reports more than 200. A document titled “Experience of Homer Hoyt in Appraising Properties Requiring Original Appraising Techniques” notes over 500 market surveys and appraisal reports for shopping centers. The document is in the author's possession and the figure of 300 is from Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, p. 38. Another document, “Books, Monographs & Newsletters by Homer Hoyt” dated May 26, 2005 and provided to the author by Michael Hoyt lists 394 surveys and appraisals in the Hoyt microfiche inventory.
24.
In 1971, the Institute relocated to North Palm Beach in Florida and in 2005 consisted of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics established in 1982, Hoyt Advisory Services (a real estate consulting corporation), and the Hoyt REIT Model for advising investors in real estate investment trusts. See www.hoyt.org (accessed September 7, 2005).
25.
“Homer Hoyt: Honors and Awards,” a one-page list on the stationary of Homer Hoyt Associates and in the author's possession.
26.
See Ernest W. Burgess, “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project,” pp. 47-62 in R. Park, E. Burgess, and R. McKensie , The City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925). The original version of this chapter was published in 1923 in the Proceedings of the American Sociological Association. Of note, the APA considers Burgess's concentric zone chapter to be a landmark publication in the history of planning. For review of the Burgess model, see Janet Abu-Lughod, Changing Cities (New York: HarperCollins , 1991), pp. 191-196 and M. Gottdeiner, The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 30-34.
27.
Rolf Linder, The Reportage of Urban Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 201.
28.
Of note and in line with Hoyt's interests, Burgess argued that “[l]and values, since they reflect movement, afford one of the most sensitive indexes of mobility.” See Burgess, “ The Growth of the City,” p. 61.
29.
Hoyt reviews and criticizes the Burgess model in a number of his writings. See The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities (Washington, DC: Federal Housing Administration, 1939), pp. 17-23 and “ Recent Distortions of the Classical Models of Urban Structure,” Land Economics40, no. 2 (1964), pp. 282-295.
30.
Other similarities exist, as one would expect: a focus on expansion, a concern with concentration and decentralization, and the growth consequences of commercial investment and population change. Of note, Burgess in “the Growth of the City” claimed “the tendency of expansion radially from the business center of the city” (p. 62), although he and Hoyt do not seem to have been using “radial” in the same way.
31.
The quotations are from Hoyt, The Structure and Growth of Residential Areas in American Cities, pp. 114, 118, and 76 respectively. For a critique of sector theory, see H.W. Richardson , Regional Economics (New York : Praeger, 1969), pp. 150-153.
32.
Hoyt, The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities, p. 76.
33.
See Gelfand, A Nation of Cities, pp. 216-222 and Kenneth T. Jackson, “Race, Ethnicity, and Real Estate Appraisal: The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration,” Journal of Urban History6, no. 4 (1980): 419-452. John Cloud, in a draft paper from 2004 titled “The Case of the Missing Overlay: Pre-War German and American Cartographic Innovation and the Cold War Development of Geographical Information Systems,” notes that Hoyt's overlay mapping technique in his FHA work included using a red pencil to delineate neighborhoods inhabited by “undesirable” elements. The paper is in the author's possession.
34.
On the emergence of “investment advice” in the 1930s and the professionalization of real estate appraisal, see pp. 152-160 and pp. 128-136 respectively in Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
35.
The report is reproduced in Hoyt, According to Hoyt, no pagination.
36.
For a brief overview and critique of the economic base concept, see Richardson, Regional Economics , pp. 165-170. Economic base is still a staple of urban economics and economic development textbooks. See John P. Blair, Local Economic Development ( Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), pp. 127-139 and A. Bendavid-Val, Regional and Local Economic Analysis for Practitioners (New York: Praeger , 1991), pp. 77-85.
37.
The economic base perspective had already been established by the time that Hoyt began researching and writing on it. See Richard B. Andrews, “ Mechanics of the Urban Economic Base: Historical Development of the Base Concept ,” Land Economics29, no. 2 (1953): 161-167. Andrew Isserman sites Hoyt at the center of economic base analysis and its use within planning. He considers Hoyt to have developed the “essential outlines” of the idea and argues that Hoyt's methodology remains intact today. See “Economic Base Studies for Urban and Regional Planning,” pp. 174-93 in Lloyd Rodwin and Bishwapriya Sanyal, eds., The Profession of City Planning (New Brunswick, NJ: CUPR Press, 2000).
38.
Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, p. 30. See also Homer Hoyt, “ Importance of Manufacturing in Basic Employment,” Land Economics45, no. 3 (1969): 344-349 and Homer Hoyt, “The Utility of the Economic Base Method in Calculating Urban Growth,” Land Economics37, no. 1 (1961): 51-58.
39.
Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, p. 30.
40.
Homer Hoyt and Churchill-Fulmer Associates, Economic and Housing Survey of the Orlando Metropolitan Region ( Orlando: Orlando Chamber of Commerce and Orlando Board of Realtors, July 1946).
41.
Homer Hoyt, Dr. , An Economic Survey of NewJersey (Trenton: New JerseyDepartment of Conservation and Economic Development, April 1950).
42.
“Experience of Homer Hoyt in Appraising Properties Requiring Original Appraisal Techniques,” document on Homer Hoyt Associates letterhead and in the possession of the author.
43.
Hanchett, “ U.S. Tax Policy and the Shopping-Center Boom of the 1950s and 1960s,” Table 3, p. 1098. For background, see Liz Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), pp. 257-289 and Ann Satterwaite, Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 46-54. On the impact on central city retail centers, see Liz Cohen, “Is There an Urban History of Consumption? ” Journal of Urban History29, 2 (2003): 87-106; Homer Hoyt, “Classification and Significant Characteristics of Shopping Centers,” The Appraisal Journal46, 2 (1958): 214-222; and Isenberg, Downtown America , pp. 166-202.
44.
Homer Hoyt, A Re-examination of the Shopping Center Market, Technical Bulletin 33 (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute , September 1958). The quotation is on p. 663.
45.
The typology has several variations. Hoyt's A Re-examination of the Shopping Center Market (p. 659) lists large regional, community, and small centers while Hoyt, “Classification and Significant Characteristics of Shopping Centers,” lists the four that I have described.
46.
. In discussing Hoyt's methodology, Grant Ian Thrall has written that “the steps outlined remain part of the core of the business geographer's analysis of retail centers today.” See his Business Geography and the New Real Estate Market Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 174.
47.
Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago, p. 369. At the same time Hoyt was doing his research, John Randolph Riggleman was writing his dissertation on building cycles in the national economy using a comparison of selected cities. See Variations in Building Activity in United States Cities (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1934, unpublished PhD dissertation). Hoyt likely did not know of Riggleman's work since Riggleman is neither cited nor acknowledged.
48.
See also Homer Hoyt, “Changing Patterns of Land Values ,” Land Economics36, no. 2 (1960): 487-495.
49.
Homer Hoyt, “ Is City Growth Controlled by Mathematical or Physical Laws?” Land Economics27, no. 3 (1951): 195-198.
50.
See Homer Hoyt, “The Growth of Cities From 1800 to 1960 and Forecasts to Year 2000,” Land Economics39, no. 2 (1963): 167-173; Homer Hoyt, “The Function of the Ancient and the Modern City,” Land Economics38, no. 3 ( 1962): 241-247; and Homer Hoyt, “ The Structure and Growth of American Cities Contrasted with the Structure of European and Asiatic Cities,” Urban Land18, no. 8 (1959): 245-250.
51.
Hoyt, “ The Structure and Growth of American Cities Contrasted With the Structure of European and Asiatic Cities,” p. 249.
52.
The shift from amateur to professional knowledge in the postwar period, a shift that had a profound impact on how knowledge was produced about practice, is discussed in Thomas Bender, “Politics, Intellect, and the American University, 1945-1995,” pp. 17-54 in T. Bender and C.E. Schorske, eds., American Academic Culture in Transition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
53.
Hoyt and Hoyt, Autobiography of Homer Hoyt, A-9 to A-11, lists thirty-eight speeches between 1940 and 1974 .
54.
A search of the proceedings of the American Society of Planning Officials (ASPO) from 1930 to 1971 found no evidence of Hoyt having presented at one of the conferences. See the yearly publication Planning as well as Mary Vance, ASPO Index to Proceedings of National Conferences, 1909-1961 ( Chicago: American Society of Planning Officials, 1962). Hoyt did publish one article in a planning journal: “ The Importance of Economic Background in City Planning,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners11, 1 (1945): 16-19 in which he commented on the need to plan for job growth and provided a methodology for doing so.
55.
On Abrams, see Bernard Taper, “Charles Abrams: A Lover of Cities ,” pp. 366-395 in D.A. Krueckeberg, ed., The American Planner: Biographies and Recollections ( New York: Methuen, 1983) and Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2005, reproduced in Biography Research Center (Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005), http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC . On Catherine Bauer, see The National Encyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Company, 1969), Vol. Fifty-One, pp. 268-9. Abrams and Bauer are considered National Planning Pioneers by the APA.
56.
On James Rouse, see Nicholas Dagan Bloom, Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Business Utopia ( Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2004) and Howard Gillette, Jr., “Assessing James Rouse's Role in American City Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association65, 2 (1999): 151-167. Of note, Rouse's new town, Columbia, MD, is named by APA as a significant contribution to planning history.
