The City with no Zoning...not so fast, they actually do have a section of town that has zoning, so there. Richmond Coward, Brian Crimmins, Ryan Albright and their Director Marlene met with us to discuss this City's planning process. According to Marlene, Houston is a Developer Driven City and is testing grounds for their developments primarily because it is faster for developers to deal with the regulations, the zoning process is not applicable and platting is cheap. Many pilot projects are down in Houston...many good, some not so good. The market flushes them out or makes them successful.
The City's mission is to be Vibrant and sustainable - have a sense of flexibility, sustainability and community growth and not promotes sprawl.
There dept. revolves around what they call the Big 3:
1. Chapter 42 - Development which is 2 dimensional not 3 dimensional
2. Chapter 26 - Parking
3. Chapter 33 Landscape and Historic preservation
Richmond Coward then took us on the light rail to the Green Building Resource Center, where we met Mr. Steve Stelzer, Program Director. The resource center is located in the Code enforcement building and if you take notice of the photos, the building has 40 Solar panels on the roof that were donated by BP (before the oil spill) and they reclaim the rain water to water the plants in the front.
Inside the resource center there are numerous green product displays for everyone to check out. Steven has many visitors through the building on a daily basis. If you want to check it out, go to www.codegreenhouston.org 
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