"The draft recommendation characterizes conservation districts as “a more flexible way for property owners to protect their community’s character and address other concerns stemming from redevelopment.” Toward that end, these districts could regulate a variety of elements including minimum lot size; lot width and depth; front, side and rear setbacks; building height; and architectural style."
By charter, zoning is illegal in Houston without being authorized by the voters, but this is an end-run by the mayor and the council around that restriction.
Had this ordinance existed 30 years ago, Houston would not have experienced the wonderful townhome and apartment densification we've had, including the attendant affordability. Central Houston would have instead evolved like West U or Bellaire, with massive expensive McMansions on large lots displacing middle-income families. It would have been a disaster, and it will be now if it passes. It will give a powerful tool to NIMBYs all over the city to kill development and force stagnation on their neighborhoods, and more broadly kill the vibrancy, dynamism, and affordability of Houston itself.
Why Houston is better with TIRZs, our lack of zoning held up as a model for the country, 45N expansion gets support, professionals migrating to TX, and more
Before getting to some smaller items, I want to comment on the Chronicle's investigative report on TIRZs (tax-increment reinvestment zones). While I'll admit they can be a bit of a mess and even a bit wasteful, what the reporters miss is that if the TIRZs were dissolved and the money sent to the City instead, it would just get gobbled up by the public employee unions long before it can do any good in any lower-income neighborhoods outside the TIRZs. As the pieces note, every mayor comes into office thinking they will go after the TIRZs, then realize they can make them work for the city as a whole by delegating projects to them (like improvements to Buffalo Bayou and Memorial parks), and shift City budget money to those neighborhoods outside the TIRZs. Finally, I think Houston's core (and the City as a whole) would be in a much more precarious position if it wasn't for the TIRZs making strong investments in Uptown, Downtown, Midtown, the Med Center, and other key districts to keep them attractive to employers and high-income professionals.
Moving on to a backlog of smaller items, mostly from my Twitter feed:
You may find it hard to believe, but Houston has the shortest CBD commuting times of the major metros due to a high-capacity freeway and HOV lane network with great coverage (Chart 5, page 7).
Video: "Of all the Texas cities - most of which I'm very bullish on - the one that is probably going to have the biggest success story for the next 30 years is by far Houston." Hat tip to George.
The City Without Zoning: "For the most part, Houston’s positives are linked to its lack of zoning, and its negatives are essentially unrelated to zoning."
The Search for Intelligent Life Is About to Get a Lot More Interesting: "In 2018, Frank attended a meeting in Houston whose focus was technosignatures... seek out signs of technology on distant worlds, like atmospheric pollution... “That meeting in Houston was the dawn of the new era, at least as I saw it,” Frank recalls."
Public comment submitted on raising I10 at White Oak Bayou: this project seems unnecessarily disruptive and expensive to keep the freeway open a relatively tiny handful of days every few years, especially given that 610 provides a natural alternative when I10 is blocked by flooding. Additionally, when the city is flooding badly enough to put I10 underwater, most households and businesses are hunkered down anyway, reducing demand. There are better places to deploy TXDoT's limited resources.
"The planned rebuild of I45 in Houston drew the largest number of comments, 382 of the 1,685 TxDOT received through a month-long public comment period. Of those, TxDOT said 299 were supportive of the project while 66 were opposed." (source)
"Houston prioritizes the ease and cost of building housing above almost all else. As a result, residents with money have a higher standard of living and those without have more humane sheltering options. Cities with other priorities sacrifice on both of these." -John Arnold
The American Conservative: How Zoning Paralyzed American Cities: "America should learn from no-zoning Houston, says Gray...What proved crucial to rejecting zoning was Houston’s allowance of deed restrictions, whereby neighbors can voluntarily opt into zoning-like restrictions and design standards...And while neighbors get a say over their neighborhood, Houston as a whole is still allowed to grow. It builds housing at 14 times the rate of its peers and, in the process, has become one of the most affordable and diverse cities in the country.""
"Is Nolan Gray really calling for zoning abolition? Yes, he is. And before you dismiss him—perhaps Houston isn’t your cup of tea, or maybe you simply like your home and its zoning, thank you very much—consider that Houstonians agreed with Nolan’s view in 1948, 1962, and 1993, killing zoning each time it came up for a vote, largely thanks to working-class voters. What proved crucial to rejecting zoning was Houston’s allowance of deed restrictions, whereby neighbors can voluntarily opt into zoning-like restrictions and design standards to ensure whatever character of their community they desire for the next 25 to 30 years. And while neighbors get a say over their neighborhood, Houston as a whole is still allowed to grow. It builds housing at 14 times the rate of its peers and, in the process, has become one of the most affordable and diverse cities in the country."
This week we have excerpts from an excellent Fast Company article: A bold case against zoning - In a new book, M. Nolan Gray cites Houston as a model for rethinking zoning. These excerpts are great, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing, and even the book if you can!
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"When the zoned American lands in Houston, they are liable to be struck by parking lots reinventing themselves as apartment buildings, by postwar subdivisions transforming into dense new townhouse districts, by old strip malls being reimagined as new satellite business districts. In the zoned city, any one of these developments would be a major ordeal, the subject of endless permitting and raucous public hearings—in Houston, it just happens.
...
Thanks in part to a lack of zoning, Houston builds housing at nearly three times the per capita rate of cities like New York City and San Jose. It isn’t all just sprawl either: In 2019, Houston built roughly the same number of apartments as Los Angeles, despite the latter being nearly twice as large. This ongoing supernova of housing construction has helped to keep Houston one of the most affordable big cities in the U.S., offering new arrivals modest rents and accessible home prices even amid seemingly endless demand.
...
Zoning critics rightly dispensed with the comforting myths surrounding zoning—that its purpose was to merely rationalize land use—and zeroed in on its tendency to restrict new housing construction, limit access to opportunity, institutionalize segregation, and force growth outward. Far from being duped, Houston’s working-class residents exhibited a subtler understanding of the purposes of zoning than many contemporary planners and rejected it accordingly.
...
Is this system of publicly enforced deed restrictions “basically zoning,” as some might argue? On the one hand, deed restrictions—like zoning—demarcate specified areas subject to a distinct set of stricter land-use rules. Both zoning and deed restrictions in Houston are enforced by the government, principally with the aim of propping up home values and maintaining a certain quality of life. Many deed restrictions even have rules banning apartments and enforcing a strict two-and-a-half-story height limit.
Yet, the similarities end there, and Houston’s system of deed restrictions is a significant improvement over zoning. For starters, deed restrictions only cover an estimated quarter of the city, largely in areas with low-rise, detached, single-family housing. Industrial areas, commercial corridors, mixed-use and multifamily neighborhoods, urban vacant lots, and yet-to-be-developed greenfields are virtually never subject to their provisions. This means that roughly three-quarters of Houston—including its more dynamic sections—are largely free to grow without anything even resembling zoning holding them back."
Reason: "The city of Houston gets it more or less right" on densification vs. sprawl, with a variety of housing types. Free market with deed restrictions, but no zoning and no urban growth boundary.
A great video, although I wish they hadn't shown the beer can house (talk about poster-child for terrifying people about eliminating zoning!) and had used a map less than 50 years old, lol. It didn't even have a completed 610 Loop on it!
"Houston is known for its lack of Euclidean-style zoning, but the city still has various ordinances that control land use. In 1998, Houston reformed its subdivision rules to allow for parcels smaller than five thousand square feet citywide. In this paper, we discuss the unique land-use rules in place in Houston prior to reform and the circumstances that led to reform, including the “opt out” provisions, which mediated homeowner opposition to substantial increases in housing density. We then analyze the effects of reform. After relief from large lot requirements, post-reform development activity was heavily concentrated in middle-income, less dense, underbuilt neighborhoods."
Municipal utility districts seem to work in the Lone Star State. They have increased the housing supply, using lighter regulations, resulting in downward pressure on costs. Now, they may be catching on elsewhere.
"For a proven reform, look at Houston, arguably the most pro-housing city in the country. It doesn’t have use-zoning, which means that housing — including apartments and other multifamily housing — is permitted anywhere private covenants don’t restrict it. In 1998, Houston policy makers reduced the minimum-required lot size for a house from 5,000 square feet down to 1,400 square feet on all of the land within the city’s I-610 loop. This made it possible to replace a single-family house with three. In 2013, the 1,400-square-foot minimum lot size requirement was expanded to cover the entire city.
Thousands of townhouses have since been built that wouldn’t have been permitted before. Houston now boasts a median home price below the national median in spite of decades of rapid job growth and increasing population. A typical house in Houston costs less than $200,000, compared with nearly $300,000 in Atlanta or a staggering $680,000 in San Diego. In other booming cities, more jobs and new residents have led to skyrocketing prices but few new homes.
On paper, Houston’s decision to reduce minimum lot sizes seems similar to eliminating single-family zoning and allowing more than one unit per lot. The difference is that Houston’s other flexible land-use regulations allow homebuilders to deliver those new units in a cost-effective and desirable way. Houston’s rules ensure that three new units can be spacious, useful and an improvement on the detached houses they replace."
Mercatus: Liberalizing Land Use Regulations: The Case of Houston. The whole thing is definitely worth reading, with lots of good details on Houston's history of liberalizing land-use regulations. It ends with this conclusion:
"The experience of Houston reaffirms much of what researchers already know: minimum-lot-size regulations limit urban development, driving up lot sizes and thereby increasing housing prices. By liberalizing these rules, the 1998 subdivision reforms allowed developers to meet a large and growing demand among Houstonians for smaller houses closer to major job centers.
But the reforms also chart new territory: a key element of their success involved allowing homeowners with the most extreme lot-size preferences to opt out of reform, thereby mitigating opposition to the broader reform. Even accounting for this concession, postreform subdivision has been heavily concentrated in neighborhoods that were either middle class or sparsely populated, without imposing an undue burden on traditionally marginalized communities. As planners and policymakers across the country wrestle with the complicated politics of land use liberalization, the case of Houston thus offers an instructive example."
“The suburban demand, driven in part by New York City residents who are able to work remotely while offices are closed, raises unsettling questions about how fast the city will be able to recover from the pandemic. It is an exodus that analysts say is reminiscent of the one that fueled the suburbanization of America in the second half of the 20th century.”
Bloomberg: Thanks to the Pandemic, Luxury Hotels Become Home. This is pretty amazing to read. With the rise of remote work, luxury resort hotels are suddenly leased like long-term apartments. Sounds like waves of New Yorkers are heading to the islands for the entire winter!
"I’ve been fortunate to live in many different cities across the U.S. and Latin America, and I can honestly say that none of them were as friendly, as empathetic, or as inviting as Houston. It’s why I fell in love with this town. People genuinely believe in looking out for each other here."
Tax and regulatory burden rankings, lot size reform, increasing walkability, superstar cities vs. Covid and Spiderman, and much more
I apologize for the longer delays between what are usually weekly posts. My day job in alternative education and edutech has absolutely blown up with covid and remote learning, leaving little time for blogging. But I'm using a gap hour between meetings today to get this post cranked out, so here are some catch-up items:
Houston passed the new walkable places plan in targeted locations, including all of Midtown where I live. I have not had time to investigate it deeply, but on the surface it looks like it could be really good at encouraging more pedestrian-friendly development. I'll be curious to see before and after permitting numbers in Midtown to see if it's encouraging or discouraging new projects vs. previously strong growth in Midtown.
"Returning to Texas, the Austin Business Journal piece cited a survey that found that Austin was the top-ranked city for tech workers to relocate worldwide, just ahead of Seattle and Amsterdam. That ranking is largely based on past decisions that allowed the city’s housing market to keep up with demand. But unfortunately, Austin’s city council has shifted to the left over the past few years and has become increasingly hostile to both new development and road construction, with the city becoming more expensive and congested as a result. Were it not for the fact that most other tech havens are even further to the left politically, Austin would likely lose its No. 1 ranking."
"Next, we examine how this reform impacted Houston’s neighborhoods. Did developers flock to the most affluent neighborhoods? Or did this shift subdivision activity to lower-income neighborhoods with lower land values? Using both GIS data and regression analysis, we find that the new 1,400 square foot lots were overwhelmingly developed in two types of areas: First, in neighborhoods where there was substantial underutilized former commercial and industrial land, and second, in largely underbuilt middle-income residential neighborhoods.
The scale of this change in much of western Houston is hard to overstate. Many neighborhoods, such as Shady Acres and Rice Military, have been completely transformed. In many cases, this has involved the subdivision of conventional post-war 5,000 square foot lots into three townhomes, effectively tripling population densities. We hypothesize that the wealthiest areas avoided subdivision activity through existing deed restrictions, while middle-income neighborhoods absorbed much of the demand, minimizing redevelopment pressure in low-income neighborhoods.
We draw two lessons for planning practice from this case study. First, allowing the most extreme opponents to “opt out” of land-use reform may help clear a path for citywide liberalization. While planners and policymakers should be prudent, such compromises may make sense where local politics otherwise blocks reform. In Houston, the compromise was deemed acceptable, and the result has been over 25,000 new housing units close to major job centers.
Second, citywide land-use liberalization is likely to direct growth into middle-income and underbuilt neighborhoods, barring other institutional constraints. While this comes with separate risks—such as disinvestment from lower-income areas—it may help to ease concerns regarding displacement."
NYT: Coronavirus Threatens the Luster of Superstar Cities - Urban centers, with a dynamism that feeds innovation, have long been resilient. But the pandemic could drive a shift away from density. The article does a good job looking at all the different forces involved and potential outcomes, but seems to ignore the potential of safer car-based cities to still generate plenty of innovation and support amenities - places like Houston, Austin, and Silicon Valley. Excerpts:
“A survey by the market research firm Reach Advisors found that companies facing high real estate and labor costs were the most interested in pursuing remote work into the future. “The biggest shift away from density will likely be in markets such as the Bay Area and New York City,” said the company’s president, James Chung. By shifting to remote work, “they can dramatically widen their labor pool and evade the labor-wage trap that they are in.” …
"But for a city like New York, he said, Covid-19 offers an opportunity for redemption. “New York was running into a dead end, turning into a paradise for the rich,” he said. “Culturally dead.” Moving back to a cheaper, messier, more diverse equilibrium may carry a silver lining."
Debating deed restrictions and zoning, office vs. remote work, transit radio show, and more
I've actually been accumulating items faster than I've been posting them, and it's gotten out of control, so this will be a long post to do some catching up.
The featured item this week is I got in an active debate with the Market Urbanist Scott Beyer on the value of deed restrictions vs. zoning, which you can read in the comments at the bottom of his piece on deed restrictions here.
Moving on to the rest of this week's items:
Dispersion in US metros increases even before Covid-19: New Census estimates. Houston growth has slowed a bit since the oil boom days, but still ahead of most other big metros. We just crossed 7 million metro population, which is an impressive achievement only 4 other US metros have accomplished (NYC, LA, Chicago, DFW).
"New York City has withstood and emerged stronger from a number of catastrophes and setbacks — the 1918 Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, the 1970s financial crisis and the 2001 terrorist attacks. Each time, people proclaimed the city would forever change — after 9/11, who would want to work or live in Lower Manhattan? — but each time the prognostications fizzled.
But this moment feels substantially different, according to some corporate executives.
The economy is in a sustained nosedive, with unemployment reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression. Many companies are in financial trouble and may look to shrink their real estate as a way to cut expenses.
More fundamentally, if social distancing remains a key to public health, how can companies safely ask every worker to come back?
“If you got two and a half million people in Brooklyn, why is it rational or efficient for all those people to schlep into Manhattan and work every day?” said Jed Walentas, who runs the real estate company Two Trees Management. “That’s how we used to do it yesterday. It’s not rational now.”
“We have a lot of millennial buyers who are already used to working remotely. They don’t know how long this (pandemic) is going to last, and they’d rather be here (Tahoe),” Bednar told the Tribune, “The people I’m talking to are looking for a simpler life, a close community. They want the outdoors and don’t want to be stuck in places where there’s a health problem.” ...
“People are starting to ask themselves, ‘Why do I have to live in such an expensive area and drive an hour to work every day, or rent out an expensive office space when everyone can work remotely?' If you don’t need to live in the city, why would you?” Bednar said.
“The COVID-19 pandemic forcing those who could work from home to do so has led to a surprising result — improved productivity. U.S. workers were 47% more productive in March and April than in the same two months a year ago through cloud-based business tools, chat applications and email, according to an analysis of 100 million data points from 30,000 Americans by workplace-monitoring company Prodoscore.”
...
“Our salespeople meet five to eight customers a day now [via videoconferencing] versus the one it took them three days [to see in the past] because of travel,” he added.
This gets reinforced in the comments of a pro-office op-ed in the NYT, which are at least worth skimming. Even though the author makes a case for some of the benefits of the office, the overwhelming sentiment in the comments is “screw that, I love working from home and not commuting!” for all sorts of reasons, including less office drama/politics and fewer worthless meetings. It’s clear to me that both overwhelming sentiment, as well as simple economics/costs, work against offices. I think they will go into a significant decline. One other point the author misses is that you can separate the social aspect from the work aspect with the rise of coworking spaces, which are exploding everywhere: a shared space where there are others you can interact with, but everyone works for different companies. Still get the networking and socialization without the long commute to one central office with all of your company’s other employees.
"An important step is simply to permit more housing in more locations. We should put an end to zoning policies that restrict building to single-family homes and stop mandating that lots meet large minimum-size requirements, leading to sprawling, sparsely populated neighborhoods. Ending such restrictive zoning doesn’t have to lead to the construction of towering apartment buildings. Rather, we should encourage cities to permit more homes on existing single-family lots, allow apartments in retail districts and near transit, and dedicate excess or underused public property like surface parking lots in downtowns to new housing. All of this can be done without materially changing the look, feel and experience of a place.
The second important step is to reduce the cost and uncertainty of getting a housing project built. It often takes years to get permission to build. Local government processes often allow multiple “bites at the apple” of public comment and hearings for a plan. Sometimes, even when there is a vote to approve a project, a neighbor or special interest can sue to stop the approval, resulting in further significant delay. These delays add cost and risk, driving up the price of new homes and sometimes stopping projects in their tracks entirely.
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These types of actions, which can be taken now, will lay the groundwork for a broad and shared prosperity. When denser housing is allowed, workers can live closer to their jobs, help save the planet by driving less and pay less in rent or mortgage payments because a bigger housing supply will lead to lower costs. Research shows that children tend to be more successful in neighborhoods with access to high-quality schools. In restricting building, more-affluent Americans are shutting lower-income families off from economic opportunity.
Now is an especially good time to reduce restrictions and allow for denser housing. Construction is hit hard during recessions, and opening up more building opportunities would be a stimulus for the industry, and it doesn’t require any extra funding. This would get workers back to work, provide safe and affordable living for those hard hit by this pandemic and get property taxes and other revenue flowing back to local governments for the services communities need. It would be a win for everyone."
"Without a significant expansion in the supply of housing, adding vouchers would be like adding players to a game of musical chairs without increasing the number of chairs.
Market-rate construction can help: More housing would slow the upward march of housing prices. New York and San Francisco are the nation’s most tightly regulated markets for housing construction, and it is not a coincidence that they also are the most expensive. Tokyo, often cited as an international model for its permissive development policies, has expanded its supply of homes by roughly 2 percent a year in recent years, while New York’s housing supply has expanded by roughly 0.5 percent a year. Over the last two decades, housing prices in Tokyo held steady as New York prices soared."
Finally, I'd like to end with a radio show I did with Bill King along with Carrin Patman and Tom Lambert of METRO on what's happening with the past, Covid present, and potential future of transit. Apologies for my bad body language - I didn't even realize I was being videoed until over halfway through, lol. I was just focused on my notes and getting the audio right.
"This is the genius of Houston’s unique system: Let those with strong preferences for tight restrictions have them and the city as a whole can go on operating under a largely liberal land-use regime. There is a valuable lesson here for other cities: when attempting to liberalize land-use regulations, consider strengthening the private (subdivision deed restrictions) and public (stricter local rules subject to local consensus) mechanisms whereby the most powerful opponents of liberalization can simply opt out. Houston figured this out in 1965 and again deployed this strategy to great effect in the 1998 subdivision regulation overhaul. In relationships as in city planning, sometimes you have to give a little to get a little."
"In the meantime think about this. What could we have done instead with the $2.2 billion that was spent on light rail? The answer is lots. Like solving most of our flooding problem or resurfacing virtually every street in the street in the City or repairing our dilapidated wastewater system or putting more police officers on the streets or demolishing some of the thousands of dangerous buildings in the City or any one of dozens of other critical priorities facing the City.
The question is not whether light rail is a good thing or not. The question is whether it was the best use of $2.2 billion of taxpayer money. The answer to that question is pretty clearly, “No.”
"According to the American Public Transportation Association, the average speed of rapid rail (a.k.a. heavy rail) is just 20 mph, while the average speed of rapid bus is less than 11 mph.
According to the 2016 National Transit Database, the nation’s fastest heavy-rail line is BART, which averages 35 mph. Atlanta’s is 31 and Washington’s is 27, while New York City subways average just 18 mph. Considering that most transit riders also have to take time getting to and from transit stations, none of these can compete effectively with door-to-door driving, which in San Antonio averages 33 mph."
"For decades, cities have overseen transit monopolies that use heavy infrastructure, fixed routes and set schedules, under the premise that these will spur surrounding growth. And in many cities, they have. But thanks to the rise of the gig economy, workers often find themselves making multiple trips in a given day, and public transit has proven inflexible — unable to get them from point A to point B in a timely manner, or at all. As a result, even densifying cities have seen declining ridership.
Contrast that with private transit, which has grown in success by pursuing “microtransit.” This model stresses malleable routes, on-demand service, smaller vehicles and minimal brick-and-mortar infrastructure. Companies include the bus services Via and Chariot; the ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft; and the bike-share services Zagster and LimeBike. Their flexibility lets them locate where demand exists, rather than counting on populations to come to them.
... Indeed, these new microtransit companies could increase the flexibility of transit, creating systems that are complicated yet smart, not orderly but dumb."
Finally, building on last week's post, it turns out that not only does Houston employ more people inside its city limits than larger city Chicago, it even employs more than much larger Los Angeles! Reasons: I'd guess good annexation and multiple major job centers. Again hat tip and graphics credit to George. Click to enlarge.
Why Houston does NOT have "basically zoning" with deed restrictions+permitting, Austin's foolish transit plan vs. Houston's wisdom, and more
I want to kick off this week with an excellent piece by Nolan Gray at Market Urbanism explaining why Houston does not "basically have zoning" with our deed restrictions and permitting. He really gets the details right on how things work here and how flexible Houston is with our adaptive land use. It also has a stat I hadn't seen before estimating that less than 25% of the city has deed restrictions, allowing the other 75% to pretty freely adapt. There is too much great stuff in it to adequately summarize here, so definitely read the whole thing. But I will share the concluding paragraphs:
"Siegan concludes his discussion of this topic by perceptively noting that zoning implicitly tries to answer two very difficult questions:
What is the extent of protection to which property owners are entitled?
What powers should existing residents have to exclude other people and things from the municipality?
Zoning addresses these questions using an opaque political process in which certain privileged special interests—namely homeowners—may impose their particular preferences across all time. Houston’s deed restrictions, on the other hand, are constantly rediscovering the answers to these questions. It all comes back to consumer preferences: if consumers desire things like large lots and ample off-street parking and are willing to pay more for the extra land, developers will respond by bidding up the land and implementing tight deed restrictions. If they either don’t want these restrictions, or aren’t willing to pay more for them, developers might still build the houses but with deed restrictions that allow for smaller lots, higher lot coverage, or certain complimentary commercial uses.
In this way, the process of identifying the optimal mix of land-use regulation is a dynamic discovery process, subject to ongoing changes in local conditions. As the costs of zoning stasis in cities like San Francisco become clearer, the value of understanding Houston’s uniquely dynamic system of deed restrictions only rises."
"If Capital Metro were serious about relieving congestion, it wouldn’t propose light rail, which typically carries about a quarter as many people per day as an urban freeway lane yet costs five to ten times as much per mile to build."
...
While the jury is still out, some people believe that Houston has managed to avoid the huge ridership declines suffered in Austin, Charlotte, and other cities because it restructured its bus routes to a grid system rather than a hub-and-spoke system centered on downtown."
"But anecdotal evidence shows that global megacities that embrace rapid construction, such as Houston and Tokyo, can maintain affordability despite populations that are both fast-growing and wealthy. The academic literature shows that this isn’t an accident; regulations that restrict supply really do make areas more expensive, while a hands-off attitude creates more elastic markets and lower prices. It’s nice that America’s highest level of government has caught on."
"Housing advocates, urban planners and city leaders have called recently for a more comprehensive plan to address the affordability, preservation and economic issues surrounding housing in Houston."
"More cities should emulate the example of Houston. It has no zoning code, and voters have repeatedly refused to authorize one. There are regulations aplenty in Texas’s largest city, but there’s no zoning. By and large, it is market incentives that determine what gets built where — not buckets of rules imposed from above by omniscient city planners.
The results are impressive. Industry, housing, and business sort themselves out without Big Brother’s help. In the process, they have turned Houston into one of the nation’s fastest growing cities — popular, affordable, eclectic, and diverse. Treat private property rights with respect and deference, and what you get is a booming, blooming city. Maybe Boston ought to try it."
"Single family zoning is somewhat of a third rail in American local politics; it's exceptionally rare for residents of suburban-style neighborhoods to allow denser development. Urbanist commentators have noted that "missing middle" housing—forms like duplexes and small multifamily apartments—has been regulated away in most American cities. Houston represents an important dissent from the notion that single family neighborhoods are to be preserved at all costs.
The results of these reforms have been remarkable. Areas that were once made up entirely of ranch-style houses, McMansions, and underused lots are now covered in townhouses ... But the key insight here is that piecemeal densification is possible, and it works. Houston has found a way to add significant amounts of housing without sprawling."
"Houston was the only major city to hold a public vote on comprehensive zoning and it was the only major city to turn it down. For decades, folks scoffed at Houston for refusing to implement residential segregation, mixed-use prohibitions, and density restrictions. It turns out that Houston was right all along, and that’s worth talking about."
Houston's new mobility vision, how no-zoning works for us, NYT on TX, we need a police overhaul, and more
Before getting to this week's smaller items, I'd like to feature a great piece by Market Urbanist Scott Beyer in The Federalist: How No Zoning Laws Works For Houston. It makes a great case for how Houston has been able to stay affordable while booming through enabling easy growth of housing supply (i.e. not strangling it with regulation). I'm extensively quoted in it, and although usually I would pull out excerpts here, this one has way too many great points - you'll just have to read the whole thing (honestly, it's not that long). Enjoy.
NextCity on "What If Houston Fell in Love With Planning: Can a booming city known for laissez-faire zoning become a U.S. model for equitable urban growth?" A long, pretty balanced piece covering a wide range of Houston issues/topics. One nice excerpt, hat tip to Lydia:
“Houston has a wonderful opportunity because it doesn’t have an ossified, traditional Euclidean zoning structure that separates everything out by use,” says Festa. “If you want to develop mixed-use, smart growth, walkable urbanism, there are still some barriers, but you already have a head start over more traditionally zoned cities.”
But my favorite reaction is this tweet from the Urbanophile Aaron Renn:
"Better question: what if other cities fell out of love with it?"
Kinder and the Chronicle react to the NextCity piece, to which I ask why would we want to empower NIMBYs to stop development? That's what happens in every city, and it cuts off housing supply rapidly leading to unaffordability. Is that what we want too? The Wall Street Journal just recognized us for growth without unaffordability - why do we want to eliminate one of our great strengths? If you're afraid of development in your neighborhood, make sure you move to one with deed restrictions, otherwise buy your house with your eyes open to how the neighborhood may change over time.
Hat tip to Jay for this crime ranking of cities, which unfortunately we don't do so well on: "It's 'sortable' by investment in police, crime rank and community risk factors. What struck me is that Houston has among the highest investment in police, is only middle-high on risk factors, but is still second highest on crime. Clearly money spent is not money spent well."
Finally, I was able to attend the Mayor's State of Mobility address today. It was a long, detailed, balanced, well thought-out speech on a strategy for addressing Houston's mobility needs. I agreed with almost all of it, with one notable exception being the claim that the Katy Freeway expansion was a mistake because it's just as congested as it used to be. That may be, but it moves twice as many people as it used to, and if we hadn't done it, congestion would be far worse out there, and I'm sure many employers in that corridor would have abandoned Houston for Katy, The Woodlands, and Sugar Land. One interesting item of note from the Mayor: he will *not* force rail on neighborhoods that don't want it, which means the University Line is essentially dead west of Shepherd as long as he's in office (not that I think METRO has the funds available in any case).
At the same event, TAG had this graphic with the consensus $69B Regional Mobility Vision. Two things really jumped out at me. The first is that METRO is showing $24 *billion* of new rail lines as a "minimum need"!! Not sure where that funding is supposed to come from, or if it did magically appear, whether all these lines would be the best use of it. The other thing that jumped out at me? Well, if you look closely, evidently the downtown CBD is moving to the East End... lol.
ULI finally respects Houston, better federal transit funding, growth, rankings, New Zealand, and more
Lots of big news this week about TXDoT's proposed expansion and revamping of I45N, including eliminating the Pierce Elevated downtown, but I'm going to hold off posting about it until I get a chance to go to the Tuesday public meeting information session. Instead let's clear out some smaller misc items this week:
ULI writes a positive article about Houston! (who would have predicted?) I think planner attitudes are starting to turn our way as they see how vibrant and diverse our open approach is. Goes into detail about Houston’s approach to land-use regulation. Whenever you hear criticisms of the "Houston way" of development, send them this article. Hat tip to Josh.
“Proponents of “the Houston way” argue that its combination of patchwork regulation and local control provides valuable flexibility to respond quickly to market shifts and reduces costs for developers, while still protecting neighborhoods’ character and ensuring quality in the built environment.”
GHP released their new April Economy at a Glance report with a deep analysis of Houston's population growth over history and where we've ranked over time as well as job and airport growth updates.
Speaking of airport growth, the Wall Street Journal did a good article on the expansion of international flying from Houston. The newest example is that Air New Zealand is coming to Houston! A big international feather in the cap for Houston. It will allow easy routings between ANZ and the eastern and southern U.S. as well as parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. So with this Air New Zealand flight Houston is one of five cities in the world connected to all continents except Antarctica (treating ANZ as one continental region), and the only one in the U.S.! (if you're wondering how that's possible, it's because the other U.S. cities with flights to Australia or New Zealand - LA, SF, DFW - don't have flights to Africa, and we do)
"Some of the others in our top 10 are not as renowned as tech centers, but have experienced rapid growth over the past decade. The biggest surprise may be No. 4 Houston, which enjoyed a 42.3% expansion of jobs in tech industries and a big 37.8% boost in STEM jobs from 2004-14. Much of the growth was in the now sputtering energy industry, but also medical-related technology, which continues to grow rapidly. Houston is the home to the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest concentration of medical facilities. It also ranks second to San Jose in engineers per capita."
Better alternative to planning, Larry loves Houston, and more
If you caught the Sunday Chronicle op-ed this week on comprehensive planning, I would like you to direct you to my response when essentially the same op-ed was in the Chronicle in 2007. I fully support the city planning its infrastructure - roads, sewers, etc - as it already does. I don't support interfering with the free market with restrictive zoning or land use controls (the ultimate implementation of any comprehensive plan). Houston is one of the most vibrant cities in the nation and is attracting waves of both domestic and international migrants - and a big part of that has to do with our free market in development and land use. Top-down comprehensive planning is not the answer. You cannot plan your way to utopia (show me a city that has). The real world involves trade-offs between goals, and markets are the best at resolving those trade-offs. What I do support are bottom-up, continuous, incremental improvements to our existing codes:
What do people desire that is not being provided by the free market? Why?
What are we doing that is preventing the free market from providing those things?
How can we reduce regulation or enable free market tools (like voluntary deed restrictions) to allow more of those things people desire?
The Texans NFL season may have come to a disappointingly early end, but in the competition among cities, Houston is winning the super bowl year after year. Why restructure a winning team? Why mess with success?
The 2013 9th annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey is out, and, as usual, Houston does very, very well with a 3.0 median multiple of housing prices to income. Multiples can be more than double that on the coasts. They mention that Houston is among the fastest growing major metropolitan areas in the high-income developed world, yet still keeps its housing affordable by allowing supply to meet demand with market-oriented land use policies.
Houston was more or less my Paris, or such Paris as I had, and I still think of Rice University as my intellectual home. ...
If I were to anatomize the six major cities more or less in order of urban merit, I would now put Houston first by a large margin: it’s a great city. Next would come Austin and Fort Worth. The latter has those three world-class museums, plus that glorious livestock exchange building over by the Stockyards, and Austin has a music scene that has nurtured both my son, James, and my grandson, Curtis, not to mention the ebullient Kinky Friedman and many another gifted bard. Dallas I haven’t enjoyed since the sixties, when I could still scout books at the Harper’s big bookshop in Deep Ellum, where my son now often performs. Dallas is a second-rate city that wishes it were first-rate.
... I recognize that Austin has provided a welcoming environment for artists of many skill sets, but I still love Houston more: its flavors, its smells, its foods, its variety. It always had an abundance of blacks and Latinos, but in the eighties it added Asians and Middle Easterners, these last come here mainly to learn about the oil business.
First class bus, DART declining, big data, big port, debunking creative class, and more
It's been too long since the last smaller items post and the queue has been building rapidly...
Wow. I'm impressed with Megabus, and glad they finally came to Texas (undermining the case for HSR), but check out this luxury inter-city bus service in India (click thru the pics on the home page, or even watch the over-the-top cheesy video). It's like international business class air travel. Maybe Megabus should consider transforming one of the two decks on their buses to this kind of first class service? (minus the attendant or food service, I'm thinking). Hat tip to Mihir.
Forbes on "The Tyranny of Houston" and how we continue to get a larger and larger share of the nation's building permits. Just goes to the power of our more open, no-zoning approach vs. the constrictive building regimes in other cities. Includes a great opening line: "When Houston is the only place America can build things, all things will be built in Houston."
Speaking of zoning, as you might expect, I'm not a fan of this pro-zoning op-ed at CultureMap. If you want control, live in a deed-restricted community, or add voluntary deed restrictions to yours. The mechanisms are there - just use them. Rather than repeat them here, check out Joshua Sanders' comment at the bottom for a good summary of many of the anti-zoning arguments.
A cool global shipping map with ports from Fortune magazine. It puts Houston in context, and it's impressive. But a caveat: this is based on tonnage, which is why Houston (oil) and New Orleans (oil and agricultural commodities) look so impressive vs. LA and NYC. If it was shipping containers, those dot sizes would be reversed.
In his initial critique, Peck said The Rise of the Creative Class was filled with “self-indulgent forms of amateur microsociology and crass celebrations of hipster embourgeoisement.” That’s another way of saying that Florida was just describing the “hipsterization” of wealthy cities and concluding that this was what was causing those cities to be wealthy. As some critics have pointed out, that’s a little like saying that the high number of hot dog vendors in New York City is what’s causing the presence of so many investment bankers. So if you want banking, just sell hot dogs. “You can manipulate your arguments about correlation when things happen in the same place,” says Peck.
What was missing, however, was any actual proof that the presence of artists, gays and lesbians or immigrants was causing economic growth, rather than economic growth causing the presence of artists, gays and lesbians or immigrants. Some more recent work has tried to get to the bottom of these questions, and the findings don’t bode well for Florida’s theory. In a four-year, $6 million study of thirteen cities across Europe called “Accommodating Creative Knowledge,” that was published in 2011, researchers found one of Florida’s central ideas—the migration of creative workers to places that are tolerant, open and diverse—was simply not happening.
“They move to places where they can find jobs,” wrote author Sako Musterd, “and if they cannot find a job there, the only reason to move is for study or for personal social network reasons, such as the presence of friends, family, partners, or because they return to the place where they have been born or have grown up.” But even if they had been pouring into places because of “soft” factors like coffee shops and art galleries, according to Stefan Krätke, author of a 2010 German study, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, economically. Krätke broke Florida’s Creative Class (which includes accountants, realtors, bankers and politicians) into five separate groups and found that only the “scientifically and technologically creative” workers had an impact on regional GDP. Krätke wrote “that Florida’s conception does not match the state of findings of regional innovation research and that his way of relating talent and technology might be regarded as a remarkable exercise in simplification.”
Perhaps one of the most damning studies was in some ways the simplest. In 2009 Michele Hoyman and Chris Faricy published a study using Florida’s own data from 1990 to 2004, in which they tried to find a link between the presence of the creative class workers and any kind of economic growth. “The results were pretty striking,” said Faricy, who now teaches political science at Washington State University. “The measurement of the creative class that Florida uses in his book does not correlate with any known measure of economic growth and development. Basically, we were able to show that the emperor has no clothes.” Their study also questioned whether the migration of the creative class was happening. “Florida said that creative class presence—bohemians, gays, artists—will draw what we used to call yuppies in,” says Hoyman. “We did not find that.”
Finally, Eric recently interviewed me over lunch for his "Houston, we have a Solution" blog if you'd like to check it out. It's hard to compress the subtleties of an hour conversation into a few paragraphs (ask any journalist that's talked to me - I am not the master of the short sound bite or pithy answer), but Eric does an admirable job of getting to the rough essence of my answers.
"Whenever I talk about anti-density land use restrictions, someone inevitably brings up Houston, where people have heard there are no zoning rules. If overregulation causes low density, people ask, then how come Houston is so sprawling? There are a number of reasons this line of questioning is a mistake, but the most fundamental one is that people misunderstand what "no zoning" means in the Houston context. If land use in Houston were genuinely unregulated, then this Nancy Sarnoff article about possible revisions to Houston land use rules would make no sense. In fact, the city features extensive regulation of minimum lot size and maximum parking requirements just like every other major American city. The specific proposal here, meanwhile, is a mixed bag.
On the one hand, you'd be allowed to build townhomes and other "urban-style housing" outside of Loop 610. That's good. But on the flipside they're also talking about "requiring additional parking in higher density developments." Parking requirements are pernicious in almost all contexts, but especially so when you have a major effort under way to encourage more residential density. The point isn't that Houston developers should build parking. It's a very auto-oriented city, and if I were building homes I expected to sell to people I'd want to include parking. But there's no reason to require more parking than the market demands."
Well, unless you're reacting to the free-rider/tragedy-of-the-commons problem of street parking.
He's basically arguing that, while we don't have zoning, we do have regulation, which is certainly true. But that doesn't mean our lack of zoning is a myth. I think he was looking for a provocative headline. But what I most enjoyed were some of the comments, where quite a debate developed. Some favorite excerpts:
Houston still does not have Zoning in the concept that other cities have zoning. While there many development regulations, there is no land use regulations. There are not regulations that restrict what can be built on a piece of land and what that land can be used for.
There is a caveat though, liquor stores and strip clubs can't be built by schools and platted neighborhoods can have their own internal land use controls.
The internal land use controls are in the form of Deed Restrictions. Active neighborhoods keep these restrictions in place and maintain their land use. Neighborhoods that neglect their Deed Restrictions see massive change. It's a very effective way to develop a city and it's more real and natural. Central planning destroys cities by forcing them to develop unnaturally.
The inner loop of the Houston is growing in density at a faster pace without some urban planning zoning it to be denser.
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The most interesting thing about Houston is, outside deed restricted neighborhoods, there are few if any restrictions on the height of Residential or Commercial property.
As a result while we have a decently developed downtown, we have about half a dozen mini downtowns scattered across the city, not to mention the Texas Medical Center which is a small city in its own right.
This also allows condo developers and high rise apartment owners to offer buildings with great views.
It also allows neighborhoods with two story houses near downtown and other premium locations to be affordable and safe.
It is a huge headache for transit managers to deal with multiple job centers, but it is great for traffic because you have tons of rush hour traffic that is multi-directional meaning you do not see freeways as clogged as other cities.
Of course, these points are probably not exactly news to the readers of this blog, but I still thought they were good, concise articulations of how Houston works and the advantages this gives us. One not mentioned: how it helps us be such an amazing restaurant town - something repeated to me today by a friend visiting from out-of-town for the marathon.
Highlights from the American Dream Coalition conference
The American Dream Coalition just had their annual conference in Orlando. I was unable to attend, but their presentations have been put online here. Here are some key highlights I found:
This presentation has excellent stats on the immense value generated by vanpools vs. other commuting options: Moving the Most People for the Least Cost. Users pay nearly 100% of operating costs at a minuscule total cost of $0.20 per passenger mile (vs. $0.85 to $1.70 for buses and $1.15 to $5.39 for rail). They also note that a commuter can reduce their yearly commuting cost from $2,591 by car to $1,044 by vanpool (Tacoma to Seattle example). Houston has a robust vanpool program, but I think it would be even more popular if our HOV/HOT lane network included more job centers than just downtown (mainly by adding them to 610 and parts of Beltway 8). It would also be more popular if they considered roomier vehicles with better amenities on some routes like I talk about and show here.
Finally, there's also this presentation on Innovations in Bus Rapid Transit, any combination of which would represent a very cost-effective alternative for most of Metro's planned new light rail lines. Especially note the BRT vs. LRT cost and performance comparison chart on p.29. Please have an open mind and give it some consideration, Metro.
Congratulations to Annise Parker on her win last night, becoming, as she pointed out, the first Rice alum to become mayor of Houston ;-). Between her and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the Rice mafia now controls this town. Nerds rule, literally in this case. I'm hoping for my appointment call any day now... (hint, hint)
She faces a difficult financial situation at the city, and obviously her first priority will be getting that under control. In addition to those short-term pressures, there are the long-term financial issues of city employee pensions and Metro's solvency, with rail cost estimates spiraling upward and revenue shrinking. If she does nothing else in the next two years but fix those financial problems and get the city and Metro on a sustainable financial path (without raising taxes), she'll have one of the most accomplished mayoral terms in city history and will more than deserve two follow-on terms.
But that's no reason to limit our ambitions. I went through my highlight posts from the last five years to find some good strategies for the next few years, with an emphasis on low or no-cost ideas:
"The lesson of High Point is that you can reduce crime by making credible threats, without having to lock up so many people. To deter, a punishment must be swift, certain and severe....Mr Kleiman suggests several other promising, non-macho approaches to curbing crime. Raise alcohol taxes. Start school days later to prevent after-school crime. Force probationers to wear GPS tags, thus making probation a tough (and much cheaper) alternative to prison. Americans should experiment with such ideas, he says, and if they are serious about justice, the object should be to cut crime, not to make criminals suffer."
Finally, in the more experimental category, I think there is a real opportunity to truly open up government to enable more engagement by citizens (including innovation and finding much-needed efficiency improvements), in the same way the open source movement works with software on the internet. But that's a topic for a whole 'nother blog...
An open dialogue on serious strategies for making Houston a better city, as well as a coalition-builder to make them happen. All comments, email, and support welcome.
