Myth #3: Houston's problem is that too much of it is paved over with impermeable cover (buildings, asphalt, concrete) and there isn't enough green space.

Fact: More "green space" required by development regulations would actually lead to more, not less, paved surface at a metro-area level. The reason is cars. We have impermeable surfaces in cities for basically two reasons: buildings we spend time in, and parking lots and roads to accommodate our cars. In most places, the latter category exceeds the former. For example, take a look at the aerial photo on the right of a Houston-based Walmart. The parking lot is far larger than the store and this is the norm for big box stores across the nation.

Now, I'm all for permeable pavers, green roofs, and other technological innovations to alleviate runoff issues. However, the prescription I've seen in several articles about Harvey—to simple require that developers leave more green space on their properties—is entirely counterproductive. Given the same amount of population, more green space just means more spread-out development, longer commutes (and transit, biking, and walking become less viable means of transportation), requiring ever more asphalt to accommodate driving and parking all our cars.

Let me beat a dead horse here: Pretty much every place in America built after 1950 has too much impermeable surface because it's car-dependent and requires vast amounts of land for roads and parking. Houston is not an outlier here. I can tell you exactly what place in the U.S. has the least paved land area per capita: Manhattan.

Myth #4: Houston is "overdeveloped."

Fact: I don't know what this means. The Houston metro area has grown rapidly in population, yes. It hasn't done this because greedy developers are allowed to run rampant. It's done this because lots of people wanted to move to Houston, for an array of reasons. Building a home doesn't simply create the demand for that home; developers build because they know they have a product they'll be able to sell once it's done. There's a weird sort of magical thinking among the "just stop overdeveloping our city" school of growth-control advocacy, that if we stopped building houses, we could choose to stop growing.

The truth is, this would come with severe unintended consequences. If x people would like to move to your city, and you only allow enough housing to be built for y people, and x > y, you're going to end up with a population of y people. That means you have x – y people who don't get to live there. That group will include a disproportionate number of poor people who are priced out (including, almost certainly, current poor residents who will be involuntarily displaced). A Houston that tried to use regulation to choke off its own growth would quickly become a Houston whose home prices looked more like San Francisco's do now. Do we want this?

(Semi) Myth #5: Houston's problem is that it lets developers build in flood plains.

Fact: Ok, yeah, probably. I don't doubt there are specific sites that you could make a convincing argument are not suitable for development because their flood risk is too high. Houston lies in a flat coastal plain in one of the rainiest and most hurricane-prone parts of North America, and I would never argue against planning for resilience in the face of major storms.

But let's be clear: would tighter flood-zone building regulations have prevented catastrophic damage from this unprecedented storm? Not by a long shot. And if those regulations came at the cost of pushing development further outward, gobbling up more wilderness and farmland, they could well be counterproductive.

The most environmentally-sound cities are compact, walkable, transit-friendly cities. They take up less land, and they have a lower carbon footprint. But Houston's lack of density and walkability is not due to a lack of regulation. If you try to build a compact, mixed-use development in 95% of places in America, you will encounter many obstacles, and a sizable share of them will be regulations and incentives created by government. This is as true in Houston as anywhere.

(Top photo source: US Department of Defense)