The Twilight Zoning

How'd we get here? Here's one thought worth reading.

As I've mentioned before, I've spent the last decade or so working on promoting urban infill and mixed-use, transit-oriented developments in Dallas, as a way to create better bicycle and pedestrian zones. This isn't new, but a return to the way Dallas was developed prior to the post-war suburban expansion, as were most cities. Short trip distances is the constant in any place with high pedestrian/bicycle mode share. The longer the trip, the less attractive walking and cycling become to most people. Cities like Dallas have used urban zoning as a tool to separate residential neighborhoods from commercial and retail areas. That's why casual cycling is so good inside Loop 12, but increasingly difficult the further into the suburbs you travel, in part because the trip distances grow dramatically. The city inside of Loop 12 was largely developed prior to the new zoning approach, so the infrastructure is still largely intact (even if the land use has changed a bit).

I've long been intrigued by Houston's more liberal (some say helter-skelter) urban zoning. Viewed with derision in the 1960s (and still), and modified to be more restrictive in the 1980s-'90s, it has nonetheless created some interesting opportunities for short trips. Too often, however, these short trips in the omnipresent Houston climate have been made by automobile, and a "short" trip by car quickly becomes a long trip.

Houston has a just slightly better bicycle/pedestrian mode share than Dallas. I have usually attributed this to the presence of a number of universities inside the urban center (Rice, UH, and St. Thomas), but I also have to consider whether the historic lack of restrictive zoning has played a part as well.