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Comment by lurquer | Hacker News Reader

This is a myth.

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]

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No need to set up an experiment, look outside of the U.S. at Rio de Janero. High rises aplenty for the middle and upper class, and the working class living in favelas straight out of the middle ages but with high voltage power lines. That being said, living in a favela is probably much more comfortable than what we deem acceptable for our economic underclass: living in a tent on the street.

> living in a tent on the street

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.

To build onto this, the Ashby high-rise dispute has been going on since I was in graduate school over a decade ago:

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.

> 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.

Kowloon Walled City would probably be one possible outcome...

Kowloon is certainly an example of what can happen in ultra-high-density environments, but I think most of the developing world is a good example of what would happen in most of the US without building regulations. A GIS of "housing <developing country>" provides a reasonably good example of such housing. Think somewhere between wooden shed, to modestly constructed masonry and no electricity.

Incidentally, these sorts of things (deed restrictions/covenants) are also what preceded zoning as we know it today. They're just more difficult to enforce because you can't control what happens on the edge of your covenant-protected neighborhood.

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).

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

The issue isn't necessarily zoning per se. The issue is that zoning as practiced in most of the US is centered around cars first. This means segregating usage and type completely and placing everything far apart with lots of parking and space between things.

Indeed. This idea always comes to mind when I hear people wonder out loud what a true 'anarchist' society would look like... I privately answer, "Pretty much exactly like what we have now."

Reminds me of a famous essay in the anarchist literature: "Do we ever really get out of anarchy?" by Alfred Cuzán

https://uwf.edu/media/university-of-west-florida/colleges/ca...

If you want to see anarchy one only needs to visit Venice Beach.

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