>That is part of the unacknowledged cost of open space and just part of the high cost of liberalism.
The devotion to open-space around Stanford/Palo Alto actually comes out of the backlash to all the highway construction in the 50s and 60s. I find it odd to see opposition to big government programs described as "liberalism".
That's because it wasn't opposition to the big government component. It was opposition to the highways. For example, someone protesting a war isn't viewed as opposing big government.
The writer of this passage weakened an otherwise good message with this empty and needless use of "liberalism."
I see this was published in a Dallas based newspaper. Ok, I'd like to go build a 20 story cinderblock apartment building called "the proletarian towers" in the middle of a wealthy, republican-leaning Dallas suburb. Hey, I bought the land, I should get to do what I feel like with it, right?
It is still very much the case that Houston has no zoning laws. That does not, however, mean that there are no neighborhoods with their own zoning rules, i.e. home/property owners association regulations and other land use restrictions. However, because there are no overall zoning laws, the restrictions only apply to the immediate neighborhoods that have the H/POA.
Every political -ism gets watered down with time, but liberalism not more than anything else. Drawn from the latin word for freedom, it means a belief in free markets and private ownership (after Locke et al). As far as I know only the US has a political discourse so strong on conservatism that anything else sort of gets lumped together.
The devotion to open-space around Stanford/Palo Alto actually comes out of the backlash to all the highway construction in the 50s and 60s. I find it odd to see opposition to big government programs described as "liberalism".