Today’s Chronicle carries an op-ed by the Cato Institute’s Randall O’Toole on the merits of keeping Houston free from the onerous regulations of urban planning. Here’s an excerpt:
Though planners may have the best of intentions, such planning is likely to lead to higher living costs, more traffic congestion and dramatically reduced job growth.
We can see this by looking at other cities with zoning and planning.
In a sense, American cities have engaged in a controlled experiment with planning, with Houston and a few other cities doing very little, many other cities doing some planning and some cities doing highly restrictive planning.
Advocates of planning say that it will make cities more livable, but the results of many experiments across the country show just the opposite.
Cities with strong planning authority, such as Portland, Ore., and San Jose, Calif., almost invariably have the least affordable housing, the fastest growing traffic congestion and growing taxes and/or declining urban services. In the long run, these problems tend to suppress urban growth and job creation.
The national real estate firm Coldwell Banker reports that, in 2007, a Houston family could buy a four-bedroom, two-and-one-half bath, 2,200-square foot home for $170,000. The same house would cost more than twice that much in Portland and more than eight times as much in San Jose.
Such huge variations in the cost of housing from city to city did not exist 50 years ago. Today, they are mainly due to artificial housing shortages created by heavy regulations and land-use planning.
The entire article is here.
Last week Cory Crow had an interesting take on the issue of planning:
[…]its important to realize that the entire movement is being driven by affluent, predominantly, non-native Houstonians. You know, the folks that took advantage of lax zoning, low housing prices and a free regulatory environment to buy their homes. They are now trying to deny others the same opportunity afforded them. All in the name of “beautification” of course.
Or could it be that they just don’t want “those people” (you know: the “unsophisticated”) moving into their neighborhoods?
Just wait until Peter Brown is elected mayor!
