Before Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area in September of this year, its sprawl had already been a topic of hot debate. Houston is the largest city in the U.S. without zoning codes, and largest metro area without a growth boundary; starting in 2010, 7,000 units were built in Harris County's 100-year floodplain prompting criticism.
CityLab's Laura Bliss sat down with Wendell Cox and Tory Gattis, founding senior fellows at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, who recently released their white paper "A Layman’s Guide To Houston After Harvey: Don’t Throw The Opportunity Baby Out With The Stormwater".
What we’re trying to say is that Houston’s got a very robust development model that’s been very successful at creating opportunity. [Houston has the second-lowest housing cost-to-income ratio in the country.] That model should be looked at being tweaked to adjust for what we’ve learned from Harvey. It should not be thrown out.
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