Baumeister, an engineer teaching at Karlsruhe, published Stadt-Erweiterungen in technischer, baupolizeilicher und wirtschaftlicher Beziehung in 1876 - the first systematic treatment of city extension as a single technical, regulatory and economic problem. Observing that industry, trade and dwelling already sorted themselves in the growing city, he argued the state should reinforce the tendency by classifying extension land into districts with different building rules: broadly industry and wholesaling with workers' housing; trades needing direct public contact; and residential quarters. He tied districting to graduated building ordinances, street hierarchy, and the economics of buying and servicing land. Franz Adickes drew on his advice for Frankfurt's 1891 ordinance, generally counted the first comprehensive use-and-bulk zoning in a modern city.
This is zoning as an idea before zoning as law: the claim that separating uses and grading density by district is a legitimate and technically grounded state power over private land. It travelled through the German literature to Britain, Japan and the United States, arriving as the 1916 New York resolution and the American zoning boom.
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