How are planning and urban policy implicated in shaping the spatial contours of commercialized sex and the

How are planning and urban policy implicated in shaping the spatial contours of commercialized sex and the
geographies of sex work? What role did landuse zoning play in defining and distinguishing the urban geographies of
morality versus immorality in Washington, DC?

landuse zoning is among the most prevalent tools used by American planners today. Since its emergence in the early
twentieth century, zoning has been used to segregate landuses deemed incompatible under the pretenses that such
actions are justifiable to maintain and uphold the health, morality, and safety of the general public. Yet rarely is zoning
taken up in scholarly discourses and debates concerning heteronormativity and sexuality. Nevertheless, zoning played 2
significant role in regulating the time, place, and manner of sexually oriented businesses [SOBs] and the adult
entertainment industry that proliferated in many large urban areas in the closing decades of the twentieth century partly
as a result of sexual liberation

Regulating SOBs is a contentious issue that raises several constitutional issues, namely questions related to the First
Amendment. As such, planning and zoning served as innovative mechanisms for opponents of SOBs that sought to
constrict and control these types of businesses. To this end, two major zoning tactics were devised; containment and
dispersal zones. The city of Boston pioneered the containment paradigm with the formation of its “Combat Zone.”
Meanwhile, other cities sought to isolate SOBs by dispersing them, with the hope that this would ultimately force them
out of business.

Fierce legal battles were fought over SOBs and their right to exist within a liberal democracy. Two landmark Supreme
Court cases include Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc. [1976] and City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc. [1986]

In Washington, D.C., a slew of zoning actions made during the 1970s and 1980s imposed stringent controls on SOBs.
Many of these zoning actions resulted from the pressure exerted by citizen groups and neighborhood associations on
the district government to address SOBs within their respective localities. They achieved through the practice of NIMBY-
ism, which paralleled the “communicative turn in planning.” Of course, those with greater power and affluence were
more successful in ousting or severely limiting SOBs within their neighborhoods. Despite very few SOBs existing in the
District of Columbia today, perhaps due to the effective zoning efforts undertaken half a century earlier or a combination
of such as well as cultural shifts in the way sex is consumed, the AIDS epidemic, and more, DC among countless US
municipalities continue to include specific, albeit varying definitions that define SOBs within their zoning codes.