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Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

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Urban[ism] Legend: Is Houston really unplanned?

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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.

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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 cost townhouses” and thus effectively meant that townhouses “cannot be built for the lower and lower middle income groups.” Houston’s townhouse regulations, unlike its regulations governing detached houses, were significantly more restrictive than those of other North American cities. For example, town houses may be as small as 647 square feet of land in Dallas, 560 square feet in Phoenix, and 390 square feet in Toronto, Canada.

Though this law was eventually changed to allow denser homes within Houston’s ring road (though not nearly as dense as some American cities allow), this change only affected a quarter of Houston’s homeowners, leaving the rest still as regulated as ever. Not to mention the fact that even for those within the ring road, the rules only matter to new construction, leaving the vast majority of the building stock in compliance with the old rules.

typical parking lot encouraged by minimum parking standardsNot to be outdone by minimum lot restrictions, the parking planners are also hard at work in Houston. As Donald Shoup explains in his magnum opus on parking regulations and the free market, minimum parking regulations are an oft-used and under-appreciated way for city planners to decrease density, push development farther from the city’s core, increase an area’s auto dependency, and decrease walkability and the viability of mass transit. Houston’s planning code mandates that developers, regardless of what they perceive as the actual demand, build 1.25 parking spaces per apartment bedroom, and 1.33 spaces per efficiency apartment. Retail stores are also saddled with these parking minimums, and even bars as Lewyn notes are required to build “10 parking spaces per 1000 feet of gross area,” flying in the face of common sense. To add insult to injury, the city requires that structures on major roads have a significant setback from the street, and the only rational thing to do with this unbuildable space is to put the mandated parking there, meaning that Houston actual codifies the hideous and inconvenient parking lot-out-front model of sprawl that is so typical across the US.

Another form of planning that Houston has, which is celebrated by the self-titled Antiplanner, is the institution of supposedly voluntary deed restrictions, or private land use covenants agreed upon by the owners of the property under restriction. I’m personally torn over the “libertarianness” of such schemes – are they truly voluntary? Can an individual owner of a property opt out of them once they’ve been signed? What’s the statute of limitations? One thing that makes me suspect that they perhaps aren’t as “free market” as they seem is that though the contracts are between individuals, Houston’s city code allows the city attorney to prosecute these lawsuits at no cost to the supposed victims – fellow property-owners. In this way, as Lewyn explains, Houston’s land uses are just as “Euclidean” as in other American cities:

But in Houston, restrictive covenants are so heavily facilitated by government involvement that they resemble zoning regulation almost as much as they resemble traditional contracts. Houston’s city code, unlike that of most American cities, allows the city attorney to sue to enforce restrictive covenants. The city may seek civil penalties of up to $1,000.00 per day for violation of a covenant. Thus, Houston forces its taxpayers to subsidize enforcement of restrictive covenants even when litigation is too costly for individuals to pursue. In its covenant litigation, the city focuses on enforcement of use restrictions (that is, covenant provisions requiring separation of uses), as opposed to enforcement of other restrictions such as aesthetic rules. By subsidizing enforcement of use restrictions, Houston’s city government subsidizes segregation of land uses–and in fact, land uses in Houston are only slightly less segregated than in most cities with zoning codes.

More recently, Houston’s supposedly laissez-faire attitudes towards planning have again been tested by the proposed 23-story tower at 1717 Bissonnet Street. The tower would have been in a low-rise residential neighborhood, within walking distance of Rice University. After years of wrangling, the project was finally denied by the city, on grounds that the developers failed to prove that the project would not adversely affect traffic flow (a pretty arbitrary and un-libertarian requirement considering Houston’s legendary congestion and the fact that developers have little say over where the city places its roads). And this, despite the fact that many of the tower’s prospective residents – Rice students and staff – could have either walked or biked to school/work.

Boosters of Houston’s land use policy – those who believe that Houston’s land use patterns are the free market, revealed – never mention the restrictive minimum lot size and minimum parking requirements. They mention deed restrictions as free market innovations but fail to see how the city’s prosecutors turn private concerns into public budget drains. And though the Antiplanner in his aforelinked comments on Houston recognizes the anti-density movement that reared its ugly head after the 1717 Bissonnet proposal, he evidently doesn’t see this as seriously detracting from Houston’s anything-goes land use policy.

This post was written by Stephen Smith, who writes for his own blog called Rationalitate.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featured on Market Urbanism called Urbanism Legends. The Urbanism Legends series is intended to expose many of the myths about development and Urban Economics. (it’s a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that)

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Comments

  1. hey I was a student at rice and I feel the need to maybe better inform the last example there. I’m surprised to here that the project is not going through. Despite the protests it seemed pretty unstoppable, but it was pretty badly planned both from an urban and political point. It would have spilled most of its traffic onto quiet single home / townhouse residential streets (though the true real complaint by most people was that it would have been the only high rise residential tower in the neighborhood, which is pretty NIMBY-ish I will give).

    I find it hard to believe that rice students and staff were the target market of the tower, considering most of them were at the forefront of the campaign against it (Rice doesn’t seem to want to be surrounded by towers on all sides, even if it is pretty much inevitable at its location). The tower was probably more targeted at doctors/staff for the med center nearby. Which really raises the question: why wasn’t the tower placed even nearer to the med center, where it would have found itself in similar company, at least in terms of height (but maybe not “noise” and “crime”, bigger but debatable issues). Actually the tower probably would have been accepted in any of the neighborhoods nearby but the one it was in, which is a bit strange.

    In truth, the rejection was probably pretty political. By the time I left rice pretty much the whole neighborhood was up in arms about the proposal, and seeing it go down in flames probably left a lot of people more grateful towards the current administration. It doesn’t seem too hard to say no to one brash developer looking to use a quiet neighborhood as a privacy buffer zone for their tower at the neighborhoods expense. If they had bought land in rice village less than a mile away in an area that seems to be sprouting dense apartment blocks like flowers right now, this probably never would have happened.

    Very interesting information though, having lived in houston before I am inclined to agree with the points about its forced sprawl. I knew about some of these restrictions but others are new to me.

  2. hey I was a student at rice and I feel the need to maybe better inform the last example there. I’m surprised to here that the project is not going through. Despite the protests it seemed pretty unstoppable, but it was pretty badly planned both from an urban and political point. It would have spilled most of its traffic onto quiet single home / townhouse residential streets (though the true real complaint by most people was that it would have been the only high rise residential tower in the neighborhood, which is pretty NIMBY-ish I will give).

    I find it hard to believe that rice students and staff were the target market of the tower, considering most of them were at the forefront of the campaign against it (Rice doesn’t seem to want to be surrounded by towers on all sides, even if it is pretty much inevitable at its location). The tower was probably more targeted at doctors/staff for the med center nearby. Which really raises the question: why wasn’t the tower placed even nearer to the med center, where it would have found itself in similar company, at least in terms of height (but maybe not “noise” and “crime”, bigger but debatable issues). Actually the tower probably would have been accepted in any of the neighborhoods nearby but the one it was in, which is a bit strange.

    In truth, the rejection was probably pretty political. By the time I left rice pretty much the whole neighborhood was up in arms about the proposal, and seeing it go down in flames probably left a lot of people more grateful towards the current administration. It doesn’t seem too hard to say no to one brash developer looking to use a quiet neighborhood as a privacy buffer zone for their tower at the neighborhoods expense. If they had bought land in rice village less than a mile away in an area that seems to be sprouting dense apartment blocks like flowers right now, this probably never would have happened.

    Very interesting information though, having lived in houston before I am inclined to agree with the points about its forced sprawl. I knew about some of these restrictions but others are new to me.

  3. Thanks for the local perspective…I’ve never even been to Texas, much less this neighborhood…I tried to figure out what I could from density maps of Houston and maps.google.com, which are helpful, but clearly no replacement for actually living there.

  4. Thanks for the local perspective…I’ve never even been to Texas, much less this neighborhood…I tried to figure out what I could from density maps of Houston and maps.google.com, which are helpful, but clearly no replacement for actually living there.

  5. You’ve missed the most important and most influential intervention, the city plan itself. It creates the market the developers work in.

  6. You’ve missed the most important and most influential intervention, the city plan itself. It creates the market the developers work in.

  9. It’s not just a restraint, it’s also an enabler. The design and configuration of streets is going to determine what people can and cannot develop profitably. If the street design makes walking difficult and unpleasant, and the block configuration creates a 1 mile distance between complements, then that’s a choice the city government has made about the shape of the marketplace. It didn’t have to make this choice. It could have made narrow streets and small blocks that would not give any advantage to developers over any average Joe builder.

    When did the interests of developers become the test of free markets anyway? The developer is a very modern institution created, ironically, by the municipal marketplace.

  10. It’s not just a restraint, it’s also an enabler. The design and configuration of streets is going to determine what people can and cannot develop profitably. If the street design makes walking difficult and unpleasant, and the block configuration creates a 1 mile distance between complements, then that’s a choice the city government has made about the shape of the marketplace. It didn’t have to make this choice. It could have made narrow streets and small blocks that would not give any advantage to developers over any average Joe builder.

    When did the interests of developers become the test of free markets anyway? The developer is a very modern institution created, ironically, by the municipal marketplace.

  11. I meant developer in the broadest possible way – as in, anyone who buys land, improves it, and either sells it on, lives/works in it, or rents it out.

    And yeah, I did neglect to mention Houston’s uncommonly large streets, which Lewyn also discusses in his paper. I guess I just felt that those were too much entrenched and difficult to change going forward, so I’d concentrate on the more malleable things. But reading about plans for redevelopment in Tysons Corner, where they want to make more city-like blocks, I guess I shouldn’t have been so hasty in ruling out re-gridding Houston’s streets as a way to encourage denser development.

    Though actually, that brings up an interesting possibility – what if developers were given the rights to chop up blocks that they own, and put in either public streets or use the space as a private driveway, cafe seating area, or whatever? I’d be interested to know what barriers there are already to making that happen, and if the barriers were taken away, would it actually happen, or could it never actually be profitable?

  12. I meant developer in the broadest possible way – as in, anyone who buys land, improves it, and either sells it on, lives/works in it, or rents it out.

    And yeah, I did neglect to mention Houston’s uncommonly large streets, which Lewyn also discusses in his paper. I guess I just felt that those were too much entrenched and difficult to change going forward, so I’d concentrate on the more malleable things. But reading about plans for redevelopment in Tysons Corner, where they want to make more city-like blocks, I guess I shouldn’t have been so hasty in ruling out re-gridding Houston’s streets as a way to encourage denser development.

    Though actually, that brings up an interesting possibility – what if developers were given the rights to chop up blocks that they own, and put in either public streets or use the space as a private driveway, cafe seating area, or whatever? I’d be interested to know what barriers there are already to making that happen, and if the barriers were taken away, would it actually happen, or could it never actually be profitable?

  15. The problem with the Bissonnet example is not that it was necessarily ok for a 23 story building to go there. I’m personally kind of agnostic on that point. It’s the fairness question of “well there’s no planning/zoning” until we feel like having some. If they really think a lack of planning and land use regulation works then they should stick with it. If not, then they should plan ahead for what they actually want and create a predictable environment for residents and builder/developers rather than mediating problem via political catfight. If you really want to go free market then if a hi rise building moves in beside you or traffic gets to bad, you have the option to move out (now there is a legitimate question of externalities; perhaps the developer should have to compensate you for loss of value in your property if caused by traffic or shadows etc; but the complexity of externalities is one reason we often choose to regulate rather than try to price everything). What this example does suggest is that average american citizens are all about the free market until it gets too close to home.

    Whichever is the better approach, they shouldn’t play both sides.

  16. The problem with the Bissonnet example is not that it was necessarily ok for a 23 story building to go there. I’m personally kind of agnostic on that point. It’s the fairness question of “well there’s no planning/zoning” until we feel like having some. If they really think a lack of planning and land use regulation works then they should stick with it. If not, then they should plan ahead for what they actually want and create a predictable environment for residents and builder/developers rather than mediating problem via political catfight. If you really want to go free market then if a hi rise building moves in beside you or traffic gets to bad, you have the option to move out (now there is a legitimate question of externalities; perhaps the developer should have to compensate you for loss of value in your property if caused by traffic or shadows etc; but the complexity of externalities is one reason we often choose to regulate rather than try to price everything). What this example does suggest is that average american citizens are all about the free market until it gets too close to home.

    Whichever is the better approach, they shouldn’t play both sides.

  17. You nicely hit on all of the issues regarding Houston's supposedly “unplanned” development, but there is a silver lining you miss.

    Prior to post-WWII housing boom, most of the deed restrictions expired after 25- to 35- years. What this means is that in Houston's oldest, gridded neighborhoods, virtually all land is unrestricted. What happens to an established neighborhood with no land-use controls? Fine-grained, Jane Jacobs-style urbanism. Areas like the Heights, the Montrose, and the Third Ward exemplify this; a single “long block” may have a variety of structures spanning 100 years, with multiple uses. Clubs and coffeehouses operate on “backstreets” amidst garden apartments, and townhomes nestle against bungalows and stately old southern mansions. (It should be noted that there was always a loophole which allowed tiny-lot townhomes inside Loop 610, in defiance of the larger lot size restrictions that controlled development in the greater Houston sprawl.)

    Also: One of the significant differences that *does* exist between Houston sprawl and other Texan or Midwestern cities is that Houston has a lot more land devoted to commercial/multifamily uses. In Dallas, Atlanta, or Kansas City, there are many high-traffic streets which are zoned purely residential, whereas in Houston, land deed-restricted to single family tends to nestle on the interior of the arterial superblocks, while most arterial frontage is retained as “unrestricted reserve,” to be developed into apartments or commercial pads. This pushes down rents, and also leads to other quirks, like an abundance of restaurants – Houstonians eat more meals out than the denizens of any other major American city.

  18. Another factor is that developers will often just copy plans/models
    developed elsewhere regardless of the existence of regulations allowing
    for a more denser type of development in specific locales. Economics of
    scale at work! No need to come up with specialized plans if the ones
    you’ve spent time and money developing work just fine and turn a profit.
    A jurisdiction may say “You can build what you want”, but a developer
    may just do a cut-and-paste job of developments designed for your
    typical Euclidian zoning jurisdiction for the aforementioned reasons.
    Lending institutions also like the tried and true, and the tried and
    true is low-density, segregated use, auto dependent development with
    plenty of parking.

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