Why Millennials Are Less Urban Than You Think

"Rather, the most educated one-third of young adults are increasingly likely to live in the densest urban neighborhoods. [...] urban neighborhoods have become more desirable for those who can afford them."

Having lived quite some years in Houston, I see it as just another example of the problem with NIMBYs and zoning stalling urban development, not an example of a liberalized, pro-development city, except (like in many places) in the exurbs. Houston claims to have no zoning, but that is not really true. Whether you call them "zoning" or invent a euphemism for them, there are... regulations on type of construction: minimum-setback requirements, minimum parking requirements, building-to-land ratios, traffic impact rules, etc. that make it difficult to build high-density housing in most of the city. There are the usual NIMBY problems as well. Attempting to get even just a light-rail line built has run into loads of whining and lawsuits from people who don't want it near them.

Another recent-ish factor is that Texas law and judges' insane attachment to property rights, to the extent of including various intangible property rights, has a perhaps counterintuitively anti-development impact. Neighbors can take new developments to court on the theory that the new development has damaged some of their own property's value, e.g. by producing increased traffic or blocking views (some of this originally came out of a very broad interpretation of "regulatory takings", but has extended to private litigation). For example, last year, a group of homeowners won $1.2 million from the developer of a new condo tower: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article...

It is, however, relatively easy to build new single-family homes in the exurbs ~20-30 miles from the city, which is what the vast majority of those 64,000 new-home permits are for. These technically count as "Houston", because Texas law is very annexation-friendly, so Houston has annexed most of its suburbs and exurbs out to a radius of ~30 miles. But that's sort-of like counting a new subdivision being built in Walnut Creek as an example of development progress in San Francisco.