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How Houston Can Grow Gracefully: Snow White And The Nine Dwarves

A lot of people shudder when they see growth projections of the Houston metro area from the current 6.5 million to 9 or even 10 million people over the next couple of decades.  If traffic is this bad now, how can we possibly handle it?  Is there any way this can be handled gracefully, or at least less painfully? I think it can be if we look at it with the right perspective, and I call that perspective “Snow White and the Nine Dwarves” (yes, even the fairy tales are bigger in Texas – I considered “Asgard and the Nine Realms” of Norse mythology, but I think that’s too obscure a reference for most people). If you look at a lot of modest-sized cities, they can operate effectively on as little as two crossing interstates/freeways. As you can see in this map, Houston’s rapidly growing Grand Parkway outer loop is creating many more of these crossings along our radial spoke freeways. I think each of these crossings will essentially form the center of a new self-contained suburban village or edge city, with the nine “dwarves” being roughly (clockwise from north) The Woodlands Kingwood/Humble (already growing that way) Baytown Clear Lake/League City Pearland Sugar Land Katy Cypress Tomball If nine makes your head spin, I think most of the growth will likely center on the Big Two of The Woodlands (drawing from Tomball to Kingwood) and Katy (drawing from Sugar Land to Cypress).  Houston remains the center of the big amenities: professional sports, museums, performing arts, bars, live music/nightclubs, signature parks, the zoo, universities, festivals, high-end restaurants and shopping, etc. – thus “Snow White” (no snickering) I think each of these “villages” could comfortably grow to as much as a million people themselves, which, when added to 2-3 million in Houston, […]

Why Does Houston Have Such A Great Restaurant Scene?

  Browsing through peoples’ posts of their favorite things to do in Houston, there’s a recurring theme of eating out. USA Today called Houston “the dining-out capital of the nation”: on average, we eat out more often than any other city in the country, at the second-lowest average price (Zagat). The Chronicle claims Houstonians eat out a third more times per week at 20 percent lower cost than the national average, with 9,000 area restaurants to choose from (which also makes us one of the nation’s leaders in restaurants per capita). Finally, I’ve talked to tons of people who have moved away from Houston, and one of the first things they mention missing is the restaurants. So it’s definitely one of the great strengths of Houston, but also one that raises skepticism from anybody who hasn’t lived here: why would Houston have more or better restaurants than anywhere else? What’s so special about Houston? I think there are set of factors that have come together to create the “perfect storm” of great restaurants in Houston: Diversity. Start with Houston having a very diverse population from all over the globe, so there’s plenty of people available to start restaurants in their native ethnic cuisine. Not a whole lot of cities can say that. I think a lot of that is related to being the capital of the energy industry, which is an inherently global industry. That plus being a major port city and proximity to Latin America and Cajun Louisiana. Lack of zoning. Houston’s open development culture makes it easy for anybody to start a restaurant. Plenty of inexpensive space and not a lot of regulations/permitting. The freeway network. This may seem to be an odd factor, but think about it. We have a very well developed freeway network compared to […]

Market Urbanism MUsings March 18, 2016

1. This week at Market Urbanism: Nolan Gray‘s latest post, Liberate the Garage!: Autonomous Cars and the American Dream At present, zoning laws effectively prohibit entrepreneurs from using their garages for business. In many Americans cities, hiring employees, hosting visitors, putting up signs, and altering your garage for business purposes are all outright banned. As urban planner Sonia Hirt notes in her most recent book, these regulations reflect American zoning’s dogmatic insistence on separating work from home. These restrictions effectively mandate sprawl by forcing commercial uses and residential uses into segregated districts. More troublingly, these regulations fall hardest on low-income entrepreneurs by significantly raising the cost of starting a business. The article was cited at streetsblog, and Nolan discussed the article on KCBS radio San Francisco Michael Lewyn wrote his first Market Urbanism article, Rent Control: A No-Win It therefore seems to me that pro-rent control municipalities are caught in a no-win situation: if they adopt strict rent controls, they limit housing supply by making housing a less attractive investment. But if they adopt temperate rent controls, they don’t really control rents. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer is leaving Oklahoma City tonight for Houston to see the rodeo. This week, he delved into foreign policy, writing in Forbes about The Case For Another Cuban Boatlift. Since 1980, Miami has been one of the fastest-growing metro areas by population, and has become one of the best for startup activity and upward mobility. Along with other Latin American immigrants, Cubans have bolstered this, making up over a third of the city’s population…Well into the 21st century, Cubans had among the highest median incomes and homeownership rates of U.S. Hispanic groups. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Michael Hamilton is happy to see good news for once:  Arizona Senate Votes to Ban Cities from Banning Airbnb, Couch-Surfing Nick […]

From the comments: Parking minimums in Houston

In a comment to yesterday’s post on land use in Texas, baklazkhan notes that in spite of the libertarian myth of Houston as a completely (or even relatively) laissez-faire city with regards to land use, it actually has pretty strict parking minimums: Additionally, it’s interesting to compare the actual ordinances. Here, for instance, are Houston’s and San Francisco’s (+more). What’s noteworthy is that SF’s minimums are way lower. SF requires 1 space per residential unit of any size, while Houston requires 1.25-2/unit. A 6-classroom elementary school in Houston requires 9 spaces – SF requires one. An 18-classroom high school – Houston 171, SF 9 (!). The other notable thing about SF’s requirements for commercial spaces is that, in almost every case, they don’t apply to small businesses. For instance, for restaurants, Houston requires 8 spaces/1000 square feet. SF requires 5. But in SF if your restaurant is under 5000 square feet, which all but the largest are, you’re excused from any parking requirements at all.

A far-too-long rebuttal of Randal O’Toole on parking

Donald Shoup and Randal O’Toole – they just can’t get enough of each other! Donald Shoup, you may recall, is the granddaddy of free market parking policy, and Randal O’Toole is the self-styled Antiplanner. Though they both claim to be libertarians, they seem to have some pretty fundamental disagreements, which we heterodox libertarians at Market Urbanism can relate to. Shoup has made a career out of pointing out the sprawl-enhancing effects of minimum parking regulations and under-priced on-street parking, whereas O’Toole’s made his on the idea that sprawl is the free market equilibrium and that smart growth, not anti-density NIMBYism, isthe greatest threat to free markets in land. They’ve sparred before in a roundabout way, with Randal O’Toole replying to Tyler Cowen’s very Shoupian NYT column and then Shoup posting a three–part rebuttal to that (which I wasn’t totally onboard with, surprisingly), but I think this Cato Unbound issue is the first time they’re being published head-on. It’ll also also include friend and former Market Urbanism contributer Sandy Ikeda, whose opinion I’m excited to read, along with Clifford Winston of Brookings. Shoup’s contribution was good, though probably familiar to Market Urbanism readers. But it’s O’Toole’s that I want to talk about. There’s a lot about what he wrote that I take issue with, but to keep this post to a manageable length (I could easily make my reply to O’Toole a three-part series), I’ll stick to this paragraph. O’Toole is arguing that in most of America, parking minimums don’t contribute to sprawl since developers would build that much parking anyway: To find out what cities would be like without minimum-parking requirements, we must turn to Texas, where counties aren’t even allowed to zone, much less impose minimum-parking requirements. This means developers are free to build for the market, not for urban planners. […]

Even Jane Jacobs thought Houston doesn’t have zoning

“Houston has no zoning” is a very popular urban planning meme. It has its roots in Houston’s lacks one very specific kind of zoning: Euclidean separation of residential, commercial, and industrial uses. Euclidean zoning happens to be the one kind of planning that people easily understand (the whole meatpacking-plant-in-my-backyard fear), and so the usual panoply of density-inhibiting regulations (parking minimums, minimum lot requirements, FAR restrictions, etc.) is downplayed or even outright ignored, despite Michael Lewyn’s claims that Houston is in many ways more restrictive than even its Sun Belt neighbors. But still, despite its pervasiveness, I was surprised to hear from commenter Alon Levy that in a 2001 interview with Reason Magazine, even Jane Jacobs was still laboring under the myth: Reason: When the change comes, if it is an incremental, slowly evolving, uncontrolled sort of natural change, it’s easy for society to accommodate that, isn’t it? Jacobs: Yes it is. But if all that zoning is kept, that can’t happen. Reason: This is why I’m one of the few people you’ve met who likes Houston, because it has no zoning. Jacobs: It has no zoning. But all the same, it looks like all the places that do have zoning. Because the same developers and bankers who deal with places that do have zoning carry their same ideas when they finance or build something in Houston. Reason: There are not enough Houstons to change the way things are built or developed? Jacobs: Right. Maybe I’m just a sadist, but my favorite part of the interview was the first few pages where the interviewer tries to get Jacobs to support the usual libertarian “war on cars” line and she deftly avoids it. Finally, he thinks he’s gotten her when she says something bad about New Urbanism, but then it turns out […]

Weekend link megalist

This is probably my favorite link list yet…enjoy! 1. The WSJ claims that delinquent homeowners can expect to stay in their homes after making their last mortgage payment – that is, they can live rent-free – for at least 16 months. The longer it takes for foreclosures to happen, the longer it will take for real estate markets to adjust to the new paradigm. 2. Fascinating article about food trucks in Houston. In it I found a second example of bad anti-terrorism policy trumping good urbanism: Chimed in Joyce: “We all know that Houston is not a walking city, as much as we wish it was. But there are two areas that are walkable – downtown and the Medical Center. The use of propane trucks is prohibited downtown, however. The regulation was originally put in place as a part of Homeland Security after 9/11, but the Houston Fire Department continues to enforce it. That’s an example of something we’re looking to work with, to allow food trucks to operate in these higher foot traffic areas.” The article also confirms my suspicion that food trucks may actually be safer than restaurants: “These are essentially open kitchens…you can look in there and see exactly what these guys are doing, where they’re grabbing the food from, how they’re cooking it.” 3. Hong Kong and Singapore are both instituting controls on their residential property markets to avoid bubbles, but they are also freeing government land for developers (in spite of Singapore’s free market reputation, most residents apparently live in public housing). Some speculate that Hong Kong’s controls might be a sign of increasing control from Beijing. Reuters says that “China, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia have also unveiled more stringent regulations in recent months” – the bubble that led to the 1997 financial crisis […]

Another Angle on Planning in Houston

Brian Phillips at Live Oaks contacted me regarding the recent post by Stephen Smith on planning in Houston. Brian is a long time opponent of land use restrictions and defender of property rights in Houston. Brian has a different point of view on the subject, and has written a post on his blog, which I hope will spark some lively conversation. Brian invited me to publish a copy of his post at Market Urbanism. Tomorrow, I hope my schedule gives me the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the topic, because I sympathize with both authors’ points of view. In the meantime, I want to share Brian’s post right away to get readers reactions to it: Urban Legends: Myths About Houston by Brian Phillips In a recent posting titled “Is Houston really Unplanned?” on Market Urbanism, Stephen Smith attempts to debunk alleged myths about Houston and planning. In the process, he actually engages in a much more widespread error–the failure to essentialize. (Here is a good explanation of essentializing.) Smith cites several examples of land use regulations in Houston, such as minimum lot size mandates and regulations dictating parking requirements for new development. He argues that these regulations, along with the city’s enforcement of deed restrictions, refute claims that Houston has developed primarily on the basis of free market principles. Smith’s position is common. Zoning advocates actually used similar arguments in the early 1990’s. Zoning advocates were wrong then, and Smith is now. Admittedly, Houston is not devoid of land use regulations. But the nature, number, and scope of those regulations is significantly different from other cities. There is an essential difference between the regulations in Houston and those in other cities. The permitting process in Houston is relatively fast compared to other cities, and the expenses incurred […]

Urban[ism] Legend: Is Houston really unplanned?

by Stephen Smith It seems to be an article of faith among many land use commentators – both coming from the pro- and anti-planning positions – that Houston is a fundamentally unplanned city, and that whatever is built there is the manifest destiny of the free market in action. But is this true? Did Houston really escape the planning spree that resulted from Progressive Era obsessions with local planning and the subsequent grander plans of the post-WWII age of the automobile? Michael Lewyn, in a paper published in 2005, argues that commentators often overlook Houston’s subtler land use strictures, and recent developments in the city’s urban core reaffirm this. It is definitely true that Houston lacks one of the oldest and most well-known planning tools: Euclidean single-use zoning. This means that residential, commercial, and industrial zones are not legally separated, though as I will explain later, Houston remains as segregated in its land uses as any other American city. But single-use zoning is not the only type of planning law that Houston’s government can use to hamper development. As Lewyn lays out in his paper, minimum lot sizes and minimum parking regulations abound in this supposedly unplanned City upon a Floodplain. He discusses a recently-amended law that all but precludes the building of row houses, a stalwart of dense urban areas (the paper is heavily cited and poorly formatted, so I’ve removed the citations): Until 1998, Houston’s city code provided that the minimum lot size for detached single-family dwellings was 5000 square feet. And until 1998, Houston’s government made it virtually impossible for developers to build large numbers of non-detached single-family homes such as townhouses, by requiring townhouses to sit on at least 2250 square feet of land. As Siegan admits, this law “tend[ed] to preclude the erection of lower […]

The Market, Zoning, and Freedom.

J. Brian Phillips wrote a great post at Houston Property Rights about liberal property rights in Houston, but what Brian had to say applies to every place. Here’s a snippet, but the entire post deserves a reading: when developers and builders see a need for greater density, they respond accordingly. And they can respond relatively quickly because they do not need to spend years seeking the approval of those who do not own the property. The market is a dynamic place. Each participant is motivated by his own self-interest, seeking to find the best use for his abilities and assets. When the market is unfettered, individuals can act as their judgment dictates, even when others think their ideas are folly. They need not convince the ignorant, the short-sighted, or bureaucrats. They need only convince those who choose to deal with them– their investors, their employees, and their customers. And each of these are motivated by their own self-interest. Those who seek to impede the market, which means impede the voluntary choices of individuals, are motivated by something entirely different. For all of their rhetoric about protecting the public or promoting the common good, their real goal is control. Their real goal is control over the men and women who build and produce. His writing concisely conveys many great points, and then he wraps it up with a rallying closing: no individual has a right to demand that others provide for his sustenance or happiness. He cannot compel others to provide for him, just as others cannot compel him to provide for them. He cannot force others to sacrifice for him, nor can others force him to sacrifice for them. That is not anarchy, that is the rule of objective law. That is freedom.

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