More Sprawl Planned In Northwest Houston

[kjb434]

Houston (and many other city across the state) annexed vast lengths of Interstate, US, Sate, and County Road right-of-ways to stretch the sphere of influence in the area. The extra-territorial jurisdiction (ETJ) is a 5 mile swath that extends in all direstion from Houston's city limits. Currently, several cities stand in the way from Houston having the entire county.

I used to have a link to the map that showed its ETJ. It is on the City of Houston Major Throroughfare and Freeway Plan. I have one in my office, but the City of Houston has revamped its website and I can't find it.

The important thing to remember about the ETJ is that is gives the City of Houston close to complete control over all private development projects in the County that is not in another municipality. This stretches into parts of Montgomery, Waller, Fort Bend, and Liberty Counties. Galveston and Brazoria County have munitipalities that have extended their own ETJ's to prevent Houston from moving into those counties. The ETJ concept was noble in that a city can have some control over the standards that new develpment adjacent to the city needs to abide by so that if the city wants to annex the land in the future, all the development meets current city codes. The city of Houston, along with many other cities large and small in the state of Texas have abuse this concept. Cities have annexed right-of-way for extend stretches of road so that they can extend there ETJ's, but not provide services for anyone along the road because only the right-of-way is in the city. The allows the city to influence development without having to provide services for the development.

The practice is now illegal in the state of Texas, but the effects of what has been done cannot be reversed. If you can find a good copy of the Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan for the City of Houston, you can see just how much the city of Houston has influence over. Most copies of this map should be in PDF format, but it is fairly large to post.

[ssullivan]

Good post kjb434. I was about to make some of the same points myself. I will add that the old ETJ law also allowed strip annexation along waterways in addition to highway rights of way. There was such a strip along the San Jacinto River north of Humble for many years before the 1996/97 annexation of Kingwood. This strip is really what allowed Houston to be able to annex Kingwood since Humble was in the way of a direct line of annexation along the Eastex Freeway. I used to always find it funny when I was a kid when we'd come to Houston because TxDOT for years had Houston city limit signs on either side of the Eastex Freeway bridges over the river. You'd enter Houston just before you approached the bridge from the north, and exit right as the bridge ended on the south bank of the river.

I do think the city's broad annexation powers have helped it, especially since most of the city's suburban areas have no incorporated themselves. Many major cities where the suburbs are independent cities and the major central city has been unable to expand its boundaries have seen a lot of decline. St. Louis is a prime example of this, and you can see it to a certain extent happening in Dallas. And while Kingwood and Clear Lake threw fits over being annexed at the time it happened, years later I can't really see that it's been all that bad for either of them.