Some argue that because Houston is associated with the free market at work, and Houston associated with sprawl, the free market leads to sprawl. The policy consequence of this chain of logic (at least for people who highly value limited government) is that government should not discourage sprawl, for what the free market has put together, government should not tear asunder.

This article rebuts this conclusion by critiquing one of its underlying assumptions - the assumption that Houston is a free-market role model. In fact, a wide variety of municipal regulatory and spending policies have made Houston more sprawling and automobile-dominated than would a more free-market-oriented set of policies. The article also proposes free-market, anti-sprawl alternatives to those government policies

Houston is America's only large city without a formal zoning code. Yet Houston is as automobile-dependent and sprawling as many cities with zoning.

It could be argued that Houston's sprawling urban form proves that laissez-faire land use policy creates endless suburban sprawl, and that municipal policymakers must therefore choose between more compact urban development and a unfettered real estate market. But this argument rests on a wobbly factual base--the assumption that just because Houston purports to lack zoning, Houstonians in fact live under a true free-market regime.

In fact, Houston regulates land use almost as intricately as cities with zoning by mandating suburban-style low densities, ordering businesses to hide their stores behind an asphalt ocean of parking, encouraging segregation of land uses, and forcing pedestrians to cross wide streets and to trudge through long, intersection-free blocks to go from one place to another. These policies have helped to make Houston as sprawling and automobile-dependent as other American cities (if not more so). By reversing such policies, Houston and other municipalities with similar policies can create an America that is both more deregulated and less sprawling.

Florida Coastal School of Law
Michael Lewyn

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01/12/2005

Michael Lewyn

research

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Land use

Urban sprawl, Zoning