Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "How does Houston plan without zoning?" video.

@shaungordon9737 The suburban sprawl in the US is really post-WWII. Most US cities are older than that. Age doesn't really explain that.
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"I was also starting to get sick of explaining to people..." Oof, sorry for asking about Houston. I didn't realize it was such a frequent question.
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It depends on the kind of business.
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@EvsEntps "the vast majority, when polled, aspire to suburban living in the long-term" But I think poll answers aren't what matters the most when we try to figure out what people want. Rather, what matters is how much those people are willing to pay for living in a low-density suburb vs. some kind of denser neighborhood. At least in high demand areas, people collectively are usually willing to pay more for higher density neighborhoods because you can fit more paying families into the same scarce land (unless people are willing to pay a lot more for a home in a lower-density suburb). In places like that, higher density is really in demand, poll answers notwithstanding. Any decision to zone such areas with single-family units only is a decision imposed from above. It might make sense to also have some low-density suburbs but probably not to the extent we see in the US today.
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A part of the reason might be that in Brazil it's not necessarily possible to choose to live as spread out as it is in the US. A lot of the big Brazilian cities, like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, are on the coast and have limited space to sprawl out due to the proximity of mountains.
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@qjtvaddict "they all suck" That "least" should still apply to some city (by some standard) unless there's a perfect tie, which seems unlikely.
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If it's a private agreement I'd assume that it could be changed if every property owner agrees to it. I'm not sure how that would work in Houston, though.
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