Comments on: The Cost of Zoning

By: M1EK

M1EK — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 03:33:32 +0000

Oh and as for housing costs – Houston shows what can happen if you have no geographic barriers, no interest in land preservation, and an excessive investment in highway capacity: you get very very very cheap housing, but you end up spending so much money and time on transportation that you’re really not any better off: http://houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/2005/07/misleading-stpp-stats-on.html

(note the link is from a skeptic – but it’s fairly obviously a hand-wave; the STPP site itself is a PDF).

Those land-use policies (or lack thereof in one case) can more than make up for any zoning effect.

By: M1EK

M1EK — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 03:29:08 +0000

Houston is often cited as an example that new urbanists are wrong about sprawl being the unnatural result of market-interfering regulations (zoning), but there are enough other regulations in Houston that effectively mandate low-density car-dependent development that you essentially get all the sprawl of a typical metropolitan area, just without the strict separation of uses.

More here: http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000363.html

By: faultolerant

faultolerant — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 01:57:18 +0000

Bravo for Houston!

There are up- and down-sides to every equation, however. Travelling to Houston fairly frequently one thing that does stand out: the city is an absolute mess. You'll have a lovely home (Obviously Big$$) next door to a hovel, next door to a liquor store, next door to....you get the picture. Of course, if that's what turns you on, then it's a dream come true!

In Dallas we have lots and lots of little cookie-cutter communities. What's worse, even under the guise of "Private Deed Restrictions" there are builders/developers raping their buyers with stupid shit like "Private School Foundations" and other such nonsense.

Oh well....that's the market for you.

By: Jerry McClellan

Jerry McClellan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:59:25 +0000

Excellent point! A couple of years back I read a report on the effects of rent control laws on varying cities in the U.S. and how rent control helps to create black markets, encourage corruption and leads to inflated increases in rents. It blew my mind. I think the report was from the CATO institute. Governmental regulation at just about every turn destroys local economies. I am both a beneficiary and a victim of rent control in that I lived in a unit at rent control rates and it was nice getting more for less, until the place needs repairs from aging, etc. Then the owner doesn't want to put in the proper resources to fix it up until I move out. If I move out, I will no doubt pay more in rent no matter where I go due to the high cost of building new developments, thanks to rent control and zoning. I'm in L.A. too so you know its bad out here.

The people have to keep government out of the private sector at all costs. Great post.