Hurricane Harvey is drawing renewed scrutiny to Houston's 'Wild West' approach to planning and its unusual system for managing floodwater that, according to environmentalists, greatly diminishes land's natural ability to absorb water. 

While local officials have defended the city's take on development claiming that the record-shattering rainfall on Houston and its surrounding area this week would have wreaked havoc even if stricter building limits were implemented, it's hard to argue that the damage could have been significantly reduced with more stringent building codes. According to the Washington Post, in the past, proposals for large-scale flood-control projects envisioned in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008 stalled. City residents have voted three times not to enact a zoning code, most recently in 1993.

Instead of imposing restrictions on what property owners can do with their land, Houston has attempted to engineer a solution to drainage—a network of reservoirs, bayous and, as a last resort, roads that hold and drain water, which is not designed to handle the massive and increasingly common storms.