How does Houston plan without zoning?

Huston is not that different, because it has a lot of other regulations that in effect do the same. (There's just less traditional land use "zoning".) [this video] Not just scarcity, but the lack of mixed use development, the lack of high efficiency city logistics (moving people, people's belongings, food/freight/cargo to shops/restaurants and bigger stores) prevent most US cities from being adequately flexible enough to adapt to changing economic patterns. (And to allow innovating new patterns, etc.) Not to mention that most metro areas are a zigzag patchwork of planning jurisdictions, and all of these municipalities are incentivized to push certain stuff away from them.

This is a common misconception. City Beautiful has covered it in detail here [1] A comment from the source research: • Although Houston does not have formal zoning, its land-use regulations combine to create a de facto zoning system that replicates elements of a traditional code. • Houston controls all the same land-use categories as other comparable cities with zoning, but it lacks a citywide overlay zoning map • Despite the popular perception that Houston’s “lack of zoning” allows for a uniquely untethered housing market, it performed similarly to the cities of Dallas and Los Angeles in new housing construction and housing costs. • Houston’s one-size-fits-all approach makes it more difficult to produce detailed plans for smaller areas—i.e. along commercial corridors or for different neighborhoods. • The use of nuisance lawsuits to challenge otherwise legal land use has been challenging to interpret in a city with an informal zoning code. Although the success of these lawsuits varies, this form of land-use challenge still manages to stall construction and increase legal costs for developers. • Houston’s less formal development system also means that challenging unwanted land uses requires that residents have the financial resources or know-how to take advantage of the existing tools to protect a neighborhood. This leads to disparities in which Houstonians are able to effectively organize and influence development within their neighborhoods. [1] [this video] [2] source research -