Houston is one of the only cities in the US that I know of that does not have any zoning laws. All of these would be possible to build with zero-lot lines, no commercial or residential zones, and no height restrictions to speak of.
Enormous chunks of land surrounding the three airports have actual zoning.
The rest has de facto zoning. It just isn't called zoning. This is why Houston looks pretty much like any other city with zoning.
A lot of what can and can't be built is covered by deed restrictions, which are enforced by the city. (i.e., a developer may put a restriction in the deed stating that only residences can be built, and no commercial activities.)
In addition, there are gazillions of 'land-use' ordinances that control the height of buildings, lot size, parking, etc.
While it would be kinda neat -- as an experiment -- to see how a city would develop without zoning, Houston sure as heck isn't that example.
https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-h...
[edited to supply link]
You're drastically exaggerating of course. Unless you're primarily talking about a few cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. The US has a wildly successful Housing First program that has pushed its homelessness rate below that of France, Germany, Britain, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand. A rate comparable to that of Finland, Netherlands, Austria.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/articl...
There was a more recent dispute in the Heights where a the local residents secured an ordinance to force single family homes in an area under proposed development:
https://theleadernews.com/owner-nearby-residents-remain-at-o...
The point being to re-enforce the point, the lack of zoning in Houston is a myth. Deed restrictions, ordinances, and nuisance laws create a patchwork of regulations that essentially create an ineffective, confusing, and legally complicated zoning system.
Kowloon Walled City would probably be one possible outcome...
This paper has a really good summary of the history here: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/02-03.pdf
> While it would be kinda neat -- as an experiment -- to see how a city would develop without zoning, Houston sure as heck isn't that example.
If you're counting covenants as "zoning", I'm not really sure that such a thing is possible without a major change in property right law (except for the parking and height restrictions, which obviously have a big influence on structures everywhere and should go away IMO).
Take a look at the core neighborhoods of pretty much any major city on the east coast. They were built out pretty extensively before zoning existed.
I still struggle to see what was so bad about it. The few things that might have been bad would probably be better addressed with nuisance law instead of the endlessly prescriptive micromanagement that zoning brings.
It seems to me that Houston is a great example of that experiment: in the absence of a formal centralized zoning system, the vacuum of limiting who can build structure x in location y is filled by informal and labyrinthine arrangements.
https://uwf.edu/media/university-of-west-florida/colleges/ca...