It has worked pretty well for Houston. Houston is as close to free market as you can get. It helps that much of what people call Houston isn't actually in any city boundary.
Genuinely curious as to how much time you have lived or worked in Houston ?
I found many pieces of it - some of which were directly related to lack of zoning - to be aesthetic disasters.
There seems to be a conception that support of zoning, and things like it, need be grounded in some scientific public-good maximalism that probably doesn't exist.
I don't feel bound by that at all.
The reason I am against ad-hoc liquor stores being run from a walled in front porch of a single-family home converted (badly) to a duplex[1] is because I dislike them aesthetically.
It's easy to value things like aesthetics when you've got yours. Rents are taxing people out onto the streets and raising the cost of everything, but heaven forbid we offend any NIMBY's personal aesthetic tastes.
Except for the massive spread paved over most of the marshland and waterways in the area. Resulting in much of the city being under water (literally) for days in 2017 when a class 1 hurricane, which is pretty common, hit the area.
