Over time Houston's land use code has gotten more restrictive to prevent close proximity of nuisance uses[1]. As for churches, they are very often allowed in re

Over time Houston's land use code has gotten more restrictive to prevent close proximity of nuisance uses[1]. As for churches, they are very often allowed in residential areas regardless[2][3]. Houston's zoning regulations are still some of the most permissive in the country, but that's only relative to other American cities. Ever since the Euclid v. Ambler (1926), zoning in the US grew rapidly more restrictive, far more so than much of the rest of the world. The primary reason Houston doesn't look like Tokyo (with its more liberal zoning[4][5]) is that it still has a lot of the worst parts of zoning as the parent comment points out. [1]: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/ https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/ (see Ord. No. 2020-1092) [2]: https://online.encodeplus.com/regs/fairfaxcounty-va/doc-viewer.aspx#secid-241 https://online.encodeplus.com/regs/fairfaxcounty-va/doc-view... [3]: https://library.municode.com/tx/austin/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TIT25LADE_CH25-2ZO_SUBCHAPTER_CUSDERE_ART2PRUSDERE_DIV1RETA_S25-2-491PECOPRUS https://library.municode.com/tx/austin/codes/code_of_ordinan... [4]: https://www.mlit.go.jp/toshi/city_plan/toshi_city_plan_tk_000043.html https://www.mlit.go.jp/toshi/city_plan/toshi_city_plan_tk_00... (japanese, pptx downloads, my japanese isn't good enough to navigate and find better documents, but if anyone knows of them that would be helpful) [5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20071223082802/http://www.toshiseibi.metro.tokyo.jp/plan/pe-007.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20071223082802/http://www.toshis...