I suppose I'm more amused than anything else by this article on how City Council has been taking action lately to impose some new rules on development in Houston. I don't find anything frightening about the concept, nor am I worried that we're going to suddenly transform into some Kotkinesque nightmare that no one will recognize. It's always reasonable to ask if what we've always done is still working for us, and it's reasonable to think that a city that has changed and grown so much in recent years, with even more change and growth forecast for the visible horizon, might need to see how conditions are different now than they've been before, and see what if anything ought to be done about it.
I mean, call me crazy, but I don't think the developers are about to lose a bunch of influence at City Hall. We'll see a few changes, some of which they'll grumble about, but nothing too radical. And that's fine by me for the most part, since I don't think we need to completely throw out our current approach. But we do need to ask the right questions, and we do need to give some serious thought to a sensible form-based approach for the city as a whole rather than trying to solve the same problem in a hundred discrete neighborhoods. I feel confident we're up to it, I just hope we have the will.
One thing to comment on from the story:
[Mayor] White, however, has shown no indication that he's interested in widespread changes. He made it clear that the Old Sixth Ward historic protections would apply only to that neighborhood, and he has instructed his staff to keep the high-density traffic impact ordinance narrowly focused.In a recent interview, the mayor indicated that he generally favors market-based rather than government-imposed solutions to development problems.
"I'm perhaps a stronger believer in markets and consumer choice on some issues involving development than some people who might vote in the Republican primary," said White, a Democrat.