Zoning, More Than Just a Tool: Explaining Houston's Regulatory Practice

Abstract

The intent of this article is to understand why Houstonians reject zoning while simultaneously adopting a collection of mechanisms that serve zoning-type functions. The answer is found in discursive-institutionalist approaches that emphasize the symbolic meaning (besides the instrumental value) that people give to regulatory tools. Zoning as a label is generally associated with an interference with individual liberty. Apparently, the other interventionist instruments do not carry the same negative value, which makes it possible to implement them without much opposition. Discourses shape institutions, like planning regulations, and we need to unravel and to understand these processes in order to increase the performance of planning.

Acknowledgements

This article has benefited greatly from comments made in discussions with Rachelle Alterman, Margo van den Brink, Cecilia Giusti, Patsy Healey, Peter Hendrixen, Dawn Jourdan, Arnoud Lagendijk, Barrie Needham and Michael Neuman.

Notes

This also counts for related strands of research like economic sociology (e.g. Granovetter, 1985) and old or original institutional economics (e.g. Hodgson, 2004).

Looking at the common division between rational choice, historical and sociological institutionalism (Hall & Taylor, 1996; Alexander, 2005), discursive institutionalism should be seen as the fourth institutionalism (Schmidt, 2005). In this article, I do not pay attention to historical institutionalism. A pragmatic reason is that an extensive review of institutional approaches is beyond the scope of this paper (see e.g. Buitelaar et al., 2007). A more substantive reason is that historical institutionalist approaches are better at explaining continuity than at explaining institutional change. Non-zoning can be seen as path dependent, but at the same time many other planning instruments emerged and changed that cannot be explained solely by the institutional path. Another reason is that although historical institutionalists have added the historical component, by emphasizing the role of path dependency, they follow a similar “calculus” or efficiency approach as rational choice theories do (Schmidt, 2005; Buitelaar et al., 2007).

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into more detail on the nature of discursive-institutionalist theories and methods. This article is not reporting on a detailed narrative empirical research, in which storylines are thoroughly reconstructed. The time scope of the zoning debate is too long for that.

Essentialism is the view that for any specific kind of entity it is possible to specify a finite list of characteristics. Here, it refers to the propensities of zoning. Determinism in this case refers to the view that space is the product of the tool zoning or it alternatives, and therefore ignores or neglects the actions of agents that make zoning, apply zoning or are being restricted by it.

In addition, private property is often perceived as an overarching ownership right and too little as a bundle of sticks that can be taken out (Blomley, 2004).

An example from planning law can be found at the federal level. Although the US do not have a planning act, it does not mean there is no legislation that relates to land use. There are various sectoral laws that deal with related topics like housing, transportation, environmental issues and economic development (Alterman, 2005).

Most of them are to be found in Chapter 28 of the Code of Ordinances.

Harris county (of which Houston is a part) does not keep track of what is recorded there. Many people I have interviewed were confident that this number would exceed almost any city in the US.

In relation to this it is interesting to note what Alterman (1997, p. 227) says about the success of the preservation of the English countryside: “It is due less to land use controls targeted at farmland than to the prevailing normative view in Britain of the desirable relationship between urban areas and their surrounding countryside”.