For decades, various politicians, activists, and organizations have been pushing for Houston to develop and adopt a general plan. In September 2015, City Council did so.
When the city officially began the process in 2014, Mayor Annise Parker said that “planning does not mean zoning.” In the most literal sense, this is true. However, Parker and the advocates of planning were not and are not being honest about the purpose and intent of planning.
In this paper, we will examine the nature of planning and what it actually means in the context of a government plan. We will see that planning without land-use regulations (whether they call it zoning or something else) is an exercise in futility. We will see that the advocates of planning will ultimately have to call for more land-use regulations in Houston or abandon the entire concept of planning.
In analyzing any political issue or policy, two factors must be identified and considered if we are to make good decisions: our standard of value (as well as that of the policy) and the full context. The standard of value serves as the measure of whether a policy is good or bad, and the full context gives us the big picture view of what will result from the policy, as well as alternatives that might be more likely to achieve our goal or purpose.
While this paper looks at the planning process in Houston, the principles are universal. Government planning means government control, and that is true in every city, state, and nation that engages in centralized planning.
Click here to download the full policy paper.