Shaping Urban Form without Zoning: Investigating Three Neighbourhoods in Houston

Houston is the only major city in North America without zoning. The growth of Houston illustrates a traditional free market philosophy in which zoning is seen as a violation to private property rights. This paper examines how the lack of zoning has an impact on land use and urban form in Houston. It uses cluster analysis integrating socioeconomic factors to select three case study neighbourhoods, and then applies geographical information systems to analyse their urban form spatial characteristics. The study investigates the change of urban form in three neighbourhoods over two decades. The analysis is accompanied by a qualitative investigation of the neighbourhoods, which attempts to address why and how those quantified characteristics of urban form developed over the decades. The paper concludes by discussing the similarity and diversity of land-use patterns and the reasons, by outlining policy implications from the findings on urban form, and by contributing to the debate over urban form and government intervention in better land-use patterns.