Houston doesn't have zoning laws, but it does have private deed covenants enforced by the city which effectively work as zoning laws. https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Neighborhood/deed_restr.h...

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estearum 3 days ago | parent [-]

These allegedly cover only ~25% of residential lots in HTX (mostly the wealthy ones). So sure that's a similar tool and probably distorts things, but I would be very shocked to hear this is anywhere near as important as the infinite supply of ultra-cheap land on the outskirts of town plus public subsidized roads (which will eventually bankrupt the city).

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bobthepanda 3 days ago | parent [-]

Houston has these, parking requirements, etc. I would argue if anything that mandatory parking requirements have a larger impact than zoning. Parking lots themselves push things farther apart and make not driving unpleasant.

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estearum 3 days ago | parent [-]

I agree with you but I don't believe the marketplace does. If you get rid of parking requirements in Houston I doubt you'd see a significantly different development pattern because ultimately people there actually do need to park their cars.

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xsmasher 3 days ago | parent [-]

If you remove parking requirements then the marketplace can discover the right amount of parking. Parking minimums keep the amount of parking artificially high.

	▲	estearum 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's kind of eliding the whole point of parking minimums (which I also hate, by the way). Parking is a classic tragedy of the commons issue where each individual developer would prefer not to build any parking and externalize that cost onto nearby lots/public streets/following developers. In fact developers did do this, and "the market" responded by creating regulations that prevent it. Which are obviously causing their own set of serious problems.