Lessons From Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Struggle Is America’s Tale

"The story of Harvey, Houston and the city’s difficult path forward is a quintessentially American tale. Time and again, America has bent the land to its will, imposing the doctrine of Manifest Destiny on nature’s most daunting obstacles." Roads, strip malls, and highways have created the sprawl that Houston is known for, and is related to the attitude toward regulation in Texas. Low taxes and little government is considered ideal, but it is just those ideals that made Hurricane Harvey such a disaster. And there's no doubt about it, Harvey is just the beginning. 

Houston has a long history of independence and wanting little intervention from the government. This, paired with the conservative disbelief in climate change, broods poorly for the future. One can imagine if even one of these two factors were different, Houston may have a better chance at avoiding the pitfalls of New Orleans post-Katrina. But with the patchwork jurisdictions and widespread responsibilities, it's looking like even the most innocuous of preparations are impossible. "A bill that would have allowed Harris County merely to issue the equivalent of parking tickets to developers violating floodplain regulations — the sort of regulations that control flooding — was vetoed by the governor. Two other bills to study flooding in the Houston region, introduced in the last legislative session, died in committee." In fact, "Houston’s unregulated sprawl...gives physical form to this politics of “decentralization and anti-statism.”

Unless the city performs a concerted overhaul of how it functions, it seems that there is not much that will be done by the time the next Harvey rolls around. Furthermore, the longer it is put off, the more expensive it will become to deal with the issues of flooding. Perhaps one day Houston will get it together.