The 'Z' Word

By William Fulton, AICP

I live in a townhome in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood one mile from downtown in a major American city. It's not cheap, and with good reason: It's within a 10-minute drive of virtually every major job center, sports stadium, entertainment venue, cultural institution, university, and restaurant cluster in the city, as well as a 10-minute walk to the newest Whole Foods in town, located in a recently built mixed-use apartment building.

My townhome is situated on the corner of a busy street. On the other three corners are a law office, a metal fabricating shop, and a nightclub. Coming from California — which has more land-use regulation than anywhere else in the country — this urban jumble was a bit of a shock to me.

Welcome to Houston, the largest city in the country with no zoning.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in America, with a population of 2.3 million people spread across more than 600 square miles. It contains some of the densest job centers and ritziest residential neighborhoods in the country. Yet three times in the last century — most recently in 1993 — Houstonians have voted down that most elemental of planning policies, zoning based on use. It's the first thing any planner — indeed, almost any person — asks about when they ask about Houston.

A city without zoning, however, isn't necessarily a city without planning. Or without a frustrating development code. Or, in a certain way, even without zoning.

The story of Houston's land-use policies is a lot more complicated than "no zoning." In reality, Houston is a big mixture of ordinances, policies, tactics by neighborhoods, and independent efforts by nonprofits, all of which play a role in determining how land is used. Whether or not the lack of zoning and the use of these other tools add up to a more equitable city or a city where the affluent are protected is open to debate.

The city is rife with plans, strategies, and other efforts to create more walkability, bring new investment into historically underserved communities, and protect the city against future flooding and other hazards. For many years, the region's metropolitan planning organization, the Houston-Galveston Area Council, has conducted Livable Centers studies to show the potential for walkable neighborhoods, while at the same time the city has engaged community leaders and planning commissioners in an effort to create more walkable places. Mayor Sylvester Turner's signature neighborhood effort is Complete Communities, focused on directing city resources to underserved neighborhoods. And most recently, Houston joined the 100 Resilient Cities network, thanks to a grant from Shell, and is crafting plans to improve the city's resilience.

At its core, however, Houston's land-use regime boils down to three separate types of efforts.

First are large-scale initiatives to shape the public realm, usually undertaken by philanthropists and civic groups. (Alongside these are some public-sector efforts to create plans around specific topics.) Second are a series of planning tools that act as zoning workarounds, ranging from deed covenants to historic districts. And third is a complicated development code that contains everything you'd expect except use zoning — and, in some cases, density and height restrictions as well — and drives applicants crazy just like the development code in many other cities.

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Planning for the public realm

In Houston, the large-scale public realm efforts get the most publicity locally and nationally, and its ambitious greenways planning is no exception. Indeed, the city's approach would not be unfamiliar to Daniel Burnham, whose 1909 Plan of Chicago involved mostly the public realm and was funded not by the city government but by a civic group.

Houston's extraordinary greenway planning along the bayou system appears to be unmatched in any other American city. The city is built around a series of bayous, or sluggish rivers, that flow through its flat lands. More than a century ago, Boston landscape architect Arthur Comey — a protege of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. — created a parks plan for the city, but implementation ceased during the freeway era. Renewed greenway planning efforts began almost 20 years ago with a plan to restore Buffalo bayou, the most prominent waterway in the city, efforts that recently won a Rudy Bruner Award. A decade ago, the Houston Parks Board — a nonprofit entity — undertook an ambitious plan to create a 150-mile greenway system along all of Houston's bayous by 2020. Now some 1.5 million Houstonians live within 1.5 miles of a bayou greenway.

The plan was financially supported mostly by philanthropists, who committed to raising $120 million of the $220 million required to implement it. Houston voters agreed to provide the remaining $100 million when they passed a bond issue in 2012. The Parks Board has taken the lead in building out the Bayou plan and has worked with philanthropists again to put together a "Beyond The Bayous" greenway plan that seeks to connect the east-west bayous to neighborhoods by using north-south utility easements and other rights-of-way.

The result has been a surprising reorientation of the city away from its famous set of freeway loops, setting the stage for a new round of private development that revolves around the bayous and the greenways. Already these efforts are paying off along Buffalo Bayou, where two large mixed-use developments are being constructed.

Buffalo Bayou Partnership also recently unveiled a plan for the bayou in the less affluent areas east of downtown, where the nonprofit has significant landholdings and plans to initiate efforts for affordable housing and links to historically underserved communities.

Other tools as workarounds

How all this new development evolves, of course, depends in large part on how Houston manages and regulates private land-use activity. And the land-use system, while unorthodox in many ways, does look surprisingly similar to other cities'.

The biggest difference, of course, is the lack of zoning — but what that really means in Houston is that there is no zoning for use. Under the city's development code, no parcel of land is restricted for any particular land use, and in many cases there are no density or height restrictions either. But what most Houstonians in the know understand is that the city is not entirely without zoning-type regulations.

For example, virtually every affluent residential neighborhood in Houston has strict private deed restrictions — and, remarkably many of those deed restrictions can be enforced by the city. That's why River Oaks, Houston's wealthiest neighborhood, doesn't have apartment buildings or office buildings in the middle of the neighborhood. (They do exist on the perimeter.)

Deed restrictions are not enforced unless complaints are reported, meaning that less affluent neighborhoods often see covenants violated if the residents are not vigilant. Developers are constantly on the lookout for the one parcel in a desirable location that isn't covered by the deed restrictions. This is the loophole that led a few years ago to the well-known "Ashby high-rise" fight, during which affluent residents went to court to fight a proposed high-rise apartment building on Ashby Street near Rice University. A judge ruled the project a public nuisance — meaning the adjacent neighbors had to be compensated but the project could go forward — but developers still have not constructed the building.

Then there are historic districts. Innumerable historic structures have been lost in Houston, whether to termites, floods and winds, or the wrecking ball, but the city has recognized the importance of preserving architecturally important buildings and areas, and landowners may petition for the creation of historic districts or buildings.

The trend began in the early 2000s (there are now 22 total) with the creation of three historic districts in Houston Heights, a bungalow neighborhood northwest of downtown Houston. When the Heights gentrified, it attracted the attention of apartment developers. In response, residents petitioned for the creation of historic districts, which require that the scale and character of the neighborhood remain the same. Some neighborhoods are in effect using historic districts as a zoning substitute.

Historic districts aren't the only workarounds. Several years ago, the city also created a process by which neighborhoods could petition for a minimum lot size or building line. In 2001, Houston adopted an ordinance that dramatically decreased minimum lot size inside the Interstate 610 loop, opening up huge chunks of the central city to townhome development. These processes help to eliminate the possibility of townhome development by gathering support from a majority of area property owners and the passage of an ordinance by city council.

Community organizers have heavily promoted the Special Minimum Lot Size technique to protect older neighborhoods with low incomes from the creep of gentrification and displacement. It's been widely used in such neighborhoods, including portions of the traditionally Hispanic East End and traditionally African American neighborhood of Sunnyside. Both have used this Special Minimum Lot Size technique to essentially zone out higher density development. It is also heavily used in more affluent areas, like Houston Heights and the neighborhoods around Rice University.

One could argue that this reduces investment in neighborhoods that need it. However, most of the development in such neighborhoods in Houston comes in the form of expensive townhomes whose cost is far beyond the reach of current residents.

Market-driven development

Land deals in Houston were once negotiated between politicians and landowners in the Rice Hotel. Open government laws have long since ended that practice, but the development community continues to influence city regulations.

As for the development code itself, Houston does have one, perhaps contrary to popular belief. It just doesn't have use restrictions and in some cases height and density restrictions. As a result, Joshua Sanders, a local development lobbyist, calls it "a bad form-based code."

The result is a more market-based approach to development, especially in gentrifying neighborhoods. On Montrose Boulevard, for example, two 30-story apartment towers have recently been built in a traditionally one- and two-story neighborhood, adjacent to duplexes and one-story retail and restaurant buildings. The same is true along Main Street in Midtown, alongside Houston METRO's Red Line, one of the busiest light-rail lines in the country.

It also means affordable housing developers have a tough time competing for land, because they are competing against high-rise residential developers and high-end retail and restaurant developers, and whoever else can bring the most money to bear on a parcel.

There are some promising approaches that could make more affordable land and units available, however. The Houston Land Bank was recently reorganized and is now working to reuse tax-delinquent properties it acquires for the public good, including affordable housing. In 2018, the nonprofit Houston Community Land Trust launched, with a mission to build long-term affordable home ownership.

Like the development code in most cities, Houston's code is big, complicated to administer, and in many ways inflexible. In almost all locations in the city, for example, development must provide a 25-foot setback from the street and ample parking requirements. On the other hand, there are no parking requirements in Downtown Houston or in certain parts of Midtown, an adjacent gentrifying neighborhood. Near transit lines, developers are eligible to use an optional transit-oriented development code, but the incentives contained in this ordinance are perceived by developers as modest — a 15-foot setback instead of a 25-foot setback, for example. Most developers in the urban core opt instead to shoot for variances. The city planning commission typically grants setback variances, but not parking variances, leading to gigantic parking garages even in the most urban neighborhoods. (The planning commission's Walkable Places Committee, mentioned above, is looking at ways to beef up the TOD ordinance.)

Despite the lack of traditional zoning and the jumble of other regulations, it's surprising how well Houston works. It's a big, dynamic city that doesn't look or feel that much different from, say, Los Angeles or Dallas. As most other cities are these days, it's a city of haves and have-nots — and the lack of zoning cuts both ways on that issue.

And, with the revival of large-scale public realm planning, especially dealing with greenways, Houston is beginning to gain a strong sense of itself that has always been lacking. Even without zoning, Houston is becoming a better and better urban place every day.

William Fulton, a longtime contributor to Planning, is director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston. He is the former planning director of San Diego and the former mayor of Ventura, California.