Protecting The Collectively Appreciated: Different Approaches To Aesthetics And Aesthetic Regulation In United States

摘要

The demands of American society to preserve certain environments, becausethey provide aesthetic appreciation, has been increasingly referred as supportiveevidence by the courts to sustain aesthetic regulations in the United States.However, in spite of the increasing collective demands of people for aestheticpreservation, and in spite of the increasing amount of such regulations, the courtsstill have problems to justify the validity of preservation oriented aestheticregulations, i.e., the courts are still troubled in providing a justification that theseregulations are valid and legitimate forms of governmental control over privateproperty for public purposes. Although the U. S. Supreme Court and themajority of the courts of States have recognized a broadened definition of publicpurpose which states that even the aesthetic purposes alone can be the basis ofpolice power use, the courts are still struggling with finding a sound definitionof aesthetics. In many court cases, even if the aesthetic purpose alone is acceptedas the sufficient basis for the enforcement of a regulation, the general languageused in justifications still include references to secondary non-aesthetic reasons,such as protecting the property values (in especially design review cases), maintainingthe tourists' interests (in especially historical preservation cases), orprotecting public safety (in especially billboard cases) (Linder 1990, Rowlett1981, Williams 1977).