Your Zoning Laws Stop At This Border

Charlie Gardner has written a
fascinating post about Brownsville and Matamoros, two
cities separated by the Texas/Mexico border. The essay is mostly a
contrast between their different urban-planning styles: Lot sizes
are smaller in Matamoros, Mexico, for example, and “Single-use
zoning seems to be unknown or unenforced, as numerous small
commercial establishments can be seen cropping up, mid block, along
these [residential] streets.” Among the results:

although Brownsville is very cheap by
American standards, with a median home price of $130,000 for what
is typically a three bedroom home, a relatively large Matamoros
starter home (915
square feet over two stories on an 1130 square foot lot) can be
had for only $34,000. The tiniest of the starter homes, no bigger
than a studio or micro-apartment, are as little as $10-15,000. This
suggests that a new two-bedroom home in Matamoros can be purchased
for approximately what the down payment would be for a typical
three bedroom home in Brownsville, and helps explain Mexico’s

very high homeownership rate. Finally, it has implications for
mixing of uses, since the dense packing of houses allows for
businesses to thrive on foot traffic, reducing the political
pressure for parking minimums that would, even in the absence of
zoning, effectively ban businesses on tiny lots.

The towns are similar in many other ways: geography, demography,
even wealth. (Brownsville is poor by U.S. standards, and Matamoros
is relatively rich for Mexico: According to Gardner, the former has
a GDP of $14,000 while the latter is just below that at $10,000.)
Of course there are important differences as well, but it’s still
sort of a natural experiment in diverging urban ideas.
Read the whole thing.