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Every urban planning enthusiast online says without artificial zoning, there would be no sprawl and everything would be a walkable paradise with a healthy mix o

Every urban planning enthusiast online says without artificial zoning, there would be no sprawl and everything would be a walkable paradise with a healthy mix of shops and housing close by. But then Texas comes up and the narrative flips somehow.

bluGill 4y ago
The implementation is different, but Texas has zoning. Importantly they have minimum parking zoning which forces sprawl as much as if not more than most zoning laws. I think sprawl would happen anyway, cars are ultimately cheap and convenient (as % of budget large, but still affordable) and by the time traffic is a problem you have sprawl that transit cannot easily be retrofitted to.
- gfaster 4y ago
  Cars are not super cheap, and in fact are very expensive when you start to account for public costs and externalities. Especially in regards parking, building car infrastructure is expensive and space inefficient, and nowhere near the amount built today would be built without laws mandating it. Moreover, highways really aren't cheap either, and Houston is suffering under the financial weight of them. Obviously since sprawl exists now it's hard to get rid of it; a city would be hard-pressed to go to the suburbs and tell them that they won't receive services anymore. However, as Detroit has shown, sprawl is definitely a liability if the city ever has any sort of period of decline. That certainly hasn't stopped Houston (and many other American cities) from acting as if that could never happen, and I suspect that the next 50 years will reveal the weaknesses of the model. I hope to be proven wrong, but that would require climate change to magically disappear and resources of all kinds to stay abundant, which seems unlikely.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Cars are super cheap compared to jet airplanes or helicopters. Yes they are a large part of our economy (I once read 60%, but I have no idea how to look that up), and of the average person's budget, but they are still cheap. Walking barefoot is a lot cheaper than cars (and not as stupid as it sounds - your feet are made to walk barefoot), but it is so much slower nobody considers it reasonable anymore.
    - gfaster 4y ago
      I think you're thinking of automotive manufacturing, which was a super important part of the economy at one point. Cars (and by extension the policies that enable car dependence), have an extremely high externalities. They require vast amounts of public spending, lower land productivity, make areas more flood prone, damage the health of those living near car infrastructure, contribute to climate change, are traffic, drive suburban sprawl, and kill more Americans than guns do (crashes alone are just 0.3/100k fewer). The reason 'nobody considers it reasonable anymore' to walk are those policies that build for cars. In places with less car-oriented policies, people walk places. It has nothing to do with maximizing the speed of the vehicle you're using.
sangnoir 4y ago
> Every urban planning enthusiast online says without artificial zoning The argument I've heard is for thoughtful mixed-use zoning: not a free-for-all. Downtowns in several Texas cities bear this argument out.
jandrese 4y ago
This seems to ignore the reality that developers live in. Build it as cheap and fast as possible and try not to think any more about infrastructure than you are forced to by the local government.

bluGill 4y ago

The implementation is different, but Texas has zoning. Importantly they have minimum parking zoning which forces sprawl as much as if not more than most zoning laws. I think sprawl would happen anyway, cars are ultimately cheap and convenient (as % of budget large, but still affordable) and by the time traffic is a problem you have sprawl that transit cannot easily be retrofitted to.

gfaster 4y ago
Cars are not super cheap, and in fact are very expensive when you start to account for public costs and externalities. Especially in regards parking, building car infrastructure is expensive and space inefficient, and nowhere near the amount built today would be built without laws mandating it. Moreover, highways really aren't cheap either, and Houston is suffering under the financial weight of them. Obviously since sprawl exists now it's hard to get rid of it; a city would be hard-pressed to go to the suburbs and tell them that they won't receive services anymore. However, as Detroit has shown, sprawl is definitely a liability if the city ever has any sort of period of decline. That certainly hasn't stopped Houston (and many other American cities) from acting as if that could never happen, and I suspect that the next 50 years will reveal the weaknesses of the model. I hope to be proven wrong, but that would require climate change to magically disappear and resources of all kinds to stay abundant, which seems unlikely.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Cars are super cheap compared to jet airplanes or helicopters. Yes they are a large part of our economy (I once read 60%, but I have no idea how to look that up), and of the average person's budget, but they are still cheap. Walking barefoot is a lot cheaper than cars (and not as stupid as it sounds - your feet are made to walk barefoot), but it is so much slower nobody considers it reasonable anymore.
  - gfaster 4y ago
    I think you're thinking of automotive manufacturing, which was a super important part of the economy at one point. Cars (and by extension the policies that enable car dependence), have an extremely high externalities. They require vast amounts of public spending, lower land productivity, make areas more flood prone, damage the health of those living near car infrastructure, contribute to climate change, are traffic, drive suburban sprawl, and kill more Americans than guns do (crashes alone are just 0.3/100k fewer). The reason 'nobody considers it reasonable anymore' to walk are those policies that build for cars. In places with less car-oriented policies, people walk places. It has nothing to do with maximizing the speed of the vehicle you're using.

sangnoir 4y ago

> Every urban planning enthusiast online says without artificial zoning The argument I've heard is for thoughtful mixed-use zoning: not a free-for-all. Downtowns in several Texas cities bear this argument out.

jandrese 4y ago

This seems to ignore the reality that developers live in. Build it as cheap and fast as possible and try not to think any more about infrastructure than you are forced to by the local government.