Crossley likes to dis our “one size fits all” approach, but I think it’s responsible for a lot of the city’s material prosperity and low cost of living. If we draft new street standards or eliminate old ones, they should apply *citywide*… no “this is the Heights street standards, this is the Montrose street standards, this is the Third Ward street standards…” No, this isn’t Portland, it’s not San Diego.

I don’t even think we should differentiate between “urban” and “suburban.” Why can’t we build townhomes on 1400sqft lots *outside* the loop? What are we afraid of? Some of the best-done new construction is on the urban fringe… go check out “City Park” at 288 and Orem/Beltway 8, where they creatively interpreted the city’s alley and street standards to have all the *front yards* facing narrow, bricked drives with the *garages* backing up to 28′ “alleys”.

If there’s to be narrower, pedestrian-focused streets, they should be contained in a single code that is applicable everywhere. Some of the most innovative land development design will happen on the urban fringe, where it’s not as constrained by existing settlement patterns.

The residential streets are just fine. 28′ back-to-back allows for the standard single-lane dual-parking residential street, or in a pinch one side of parking can be deleted for a 10′-10′-7′ through street. 50′ ROW is enough for sidewalks, whether they’re constructed at the beginning or added later.

Likewise with arterials. The standard 24′ two-lane section can work just as well in an 11′-5′-8′ configuration with 11′ thru lane, 5′ bike lane, and 8′ parking strip. All it takes is paint.

And if you *really* need through traffic capacity, you can replace the 24′ section with a 29-footer for 10′-11′-8′. This is quite easy to do within our existing 100′ arterial ROW standard.

A “typical” Houston suburban arterial is 15′-24′-22′-24′-15′. Widen on the inside (retain outside curbs) and get 15′-29′-12′-29′-15′. Widen on the outside (retain inside curbs) and get 10′-29′-22′-29′-10′. Either way you’ve got ample sidewalks (minimum 10 feet) *and* ample through-traffic capacity *and* parallel parking.

And this is all using our existing sections, with our existing regulations, as they are built by the private sector developers.

It *does* take some political willpower to drop the cash on widening for parallel parking, or to get out the paint stripers and reduce a four-lane road to a two-lane with parallel, but I don’t see how it’s too much more challenging than implementing a new code.

Certainly, the primary concern of the developers is going to be cost. This means you’ll get a built-in opposition to any kind of overly-legislated, decorative-pavers, minimum-street-tree-spacing, unique-district-specific-context-sensitive-complete-street-plan type proposal, because it costs more. But what if the only difference is the location of the paint stripes? Easy.

Simple is beautiful.

Absolutely! It’s past time for the city to start thinking of streets as human spaces and designing accordingly.

I disagree, however, with your assertion that “Houston already comes pretty damn close to this ideal [of having urbanism, suburbanism, and exurbanism].” Houston has a lot of suburbanism, a lot of exurbanism, and a dearth of urbanism. There are areas inside the loop (and in Uptown) in which the market is pushing hard toward urbanism, but outdated regulations and a lack of pedestrian infrastructure are making it difficult for that market-driven urbanization to happen naturally.

The first big step, in my mind, is to improve the infrastructure for pedestrians. Great automotive and pedestrian infrastructures are not mutually exclusive. Instead, the city has historically done a good job with automotive infrastructure and has neglected pedestrian infrastructure. That may have been what the market demanded 10-20+ years ago, but it isn’t now.

As far as what regulatory changes should be recommended–I’m not sure my opinion on that yet. But I do think that a good first step would be for the City to rethink its historical neglect of pedestrian infrastructure.

In order for the city to operate sans-code it would need to commit to acquiring sufficient right-of-way so that they could actually have sidewalks on their streets. Right now a significant amount of the sidewalk space in Houston exists on private property and is consistent from lot to lot only because of an ordinance.

The best solution is for the city to buy sufficient ROW and build intentionally urban streets, then we wouldn’t need a code.

However, as long as street construction lies almost entirely in the hands of the private sector and the city lacks the funding to acquire sufficient ROW and urbanize (have parallel parking and sidewalks at a minimum) all it’s streets, we would benefit from having an ordinance.

If we’re going to have an ordinance, it should be the lightest, simplest ordinance possible. It should only address infrastructure continuity and placement, and should be simple and straightforward enough that it doesn’t place an undue burden on anyone and results in the city ‘review’ of developments going away as it would be no longer needed.

Smart Code has the right essence to serve Houston in that way if it were trimmed down to its core elements, which are parking placement (really, driveway placement) and sidewalk configurations.

And, in the end, I don’t think it’s the architects who can’t live without ordinances, it’s the politicians. Trying to take away a power that bureaucrats have become accustom to wielding is difficult to say the least. In my opinion a vastly overhauled and simplified development code is a good idea as a transitional step to a future where most of the existing regulations in Houston could go away entirely.

Simply delete the minimum parking regulations, delete the setback regulations, make it a priority to have parallel parking on all new arterials (using Multiway Blvd principles where applicable) and presto! Instant urbanism, and suburbanism, and exurbanism, and just about everything you could possibly ever want.

Amazing.

With no zoning or height restrictions, Houston already comes pretty damn close to this ideal. WE JUST NEED TO GET RID OF THE PARKING REGS. That’s all. No new codes, no plans, no councils. Just one simple regulatory *deletion*. SO SIMPLE. And yet so difficult for the architects to accept.

You’re right that transect-based planning, or form-based planning, could be called zoning if you implement it with a fine-grained map… And maybe that’s what Houston should do.

Still, I hesitate to identify any concept as “zoning” because not only is the term culturally and politically loaded, it’s legally loaded (in Houston) because of previous referenda that have been passed which make it illegal for the city to enact any ‘zoning’ ordinance without a subsequent referendum to authorize it.

As I said in the post, though, Houston already has a very weak form-based code with three zones: CBD, urban, and suburban. So, if that’s “not zoning,” then no form-based implementation should be considered “zoning.”

It’s one of the quirks of discussing development policy in Houston

I think that you can, possibly, find ways to implement transect-based standards that are not based on “colors on a map,” and therefore truly not zoning. For instance, the transect classification of a property could be an elective choice (like the current deed restriction system) or based on another criteria, such as the classification of the adjacent rights-of-way. But whether or not an alternative approach like that would work well is hard to guess, since no other city has tried.

Thanks for the feedback!

To be clear, technically speaking, isn’t what you’re suggesting simply an implementation of Form-Based Zoning? People shy away from the using term “zoning” because the public commonly associates it with Use-Based Zoning, but isn’t your Transect-based suggestion simply an example of Form-Based Zoning?

By categorizing areas of the City on a Transect-based map, aren’t you essentially identifying different zones, for which different development parameters would be applied?

For the record, I’ve gone back and forth in my thoughts about what is best for the future of land use regulation in Houston. Ultimately, my current belief is that the best long-term solution for the City is the implementation of Form-Based Zoning. In the short-term, I think the Urban Corridors plan is a good start–and I think it is the only plan that might actually have enough momentum to become a reality.

Let me know if you disagree with my terminology. Frankly, I think there are a lot of misnomers that are commonly used in discussions about zoning and land use regulation–particularly in Houston, where “zoning” is a four-letter word.