CA Cities to Lose All Zoning Powers in 2 Days

Re:CA Cities to Lose All Zoning Powers in 2 Days by parkaboy on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @01:37PM (#34599608)

As yet anothor note in this thread about Houston (from a long-time Houstonian) and less in direct response to OP -- the lack of zoning bit is actually a bit more complicated than at first glance. While it's true there is no zoning, there are two other forces at work that exacerbate the sprawl issues here:

(1) Minimum parking lot size requirements (as others mentioned). Commercial properties are required to have X amount of parking spaces available.

(2) Political issues and how money gets invested: despite public "protests" (maybe more like "kvetching"), there's continued investment in freeway expansion / car-centric infrastructure due to lobbying/other political efforts instead of public transportation.

Our sprawl is more due to (1) and (2) rather than lack of zoning regulation.

But also to Houston's credit, things are slowly (SLOWLY) getting better.

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Re:CA Cities to Lose All Zoning Powers in 2 Days by culi on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @06:53PM (#34604148)

> Minimum parking lot size requirements

This one irks me the most. we have 8 parking spots for every car and giant shopping malls are surrounded by parking lots that take up twice their size and are 50% empty for 95% of the time (more if you count night time)

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