There is an interesting article over at PloS One about recent changes in open space around cities in the US. The major result of the paper was that per capita land consumption is declining almost everywhere (indicating higher density as cities grow), but it is declining faster in areas with "reform" minded zoning and where there is greater spending on conservation efforts. One of their zoning categories was "Wild Wild Texas" where they say there is little or no zoning. These areas included the Dallas, Houston and Austin regions. Austin itself is very reform minded with an lot of new urbanism, but of course as the saying goes "Austin is not Texas". Certainly within the city itself there is a lot of zoning efforts targeted at high density and green space preservation. Interestingly, the "Wild Wild Texas" areas had a rate of decline in per capita land consumption that was equal to the "reform" zoning areas (and was highest in the study among all zoning types). The sample size for Texas was small, so no conclusions were made owing to lack of statistical power. I speculate that rapid urban growth in central Texas combined with a very high initial per capita land consumption contributed to the rapid decline. Still it is interesting to consider whether zoning itself has much impact given this result. Correlation are after all just correlations.