"Even in don't-tread-on-me Texas you aren't free to just do anything just anywhere." Texas has "normal" zoning laws everywhere but the city of Houston. You wil

"Even in don't-tread-on-me Texas you aren't free to just do anything just anywhere." Texas has "normal" zoning laws everywhere but the city of Houston. You will often see people say that Houston has de facto zoning because of deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants, and this is sort of true, but a lot of Houston does allow for more mixed use than other places and the city seems visibly different than L.A. (or Dallas). Lots of restaurants in industrial areas, etc. Houston is ugly to my eye but I don't think this is why. On the other hand, I don't want pig farms in residential neighborhoods. On the third hand, the in the U.S. the state government (depending on the state constitution) has the legal right to take those decisions away from municipalities and neighborhoods and probably should. It really is too easy to be in favor of building things that are genuinely necessary and beneficial (not pig farms) in the abstract as long as you can't see them.