That's a nice sound-byte, but it's silly. Houston sometimes has ozone problems with the people and traffic that it already has. If we stuck the rest of the world around it, those problems would make Houston a death trap of unhealty conditions. Much of Texas has water availability problems with the amount of people already there. If you even doubled it, those problems would be worse. Of course, during a big rain, water is too plentiful, and overdevelopment means drainage problems so that flooding kills more people and destroys more property.
The 50 x 150 foot lot model is a rough description of western Houston. I lived there for two and a half years, and it was a hell on earth for me. The crowding was horrible. I first began developing claustrophobia during that time, and the claustrophobia is still with me. If I had the choice of living under those conditions or dying, I'd rather die.
They can pack chickens into little cages where they have food and water, defecate onto conveyors that move their waste away, and lay eggs that roll into collectors for sale to the public. The chickens can stay alive that way, but it would be a miserable way for a person to live. Most of the people who cite that 50' x 150' lot statistic act as if it were a valid model for human existance. I don't see how anyone could embrace that idea. There's more to having enough room for people to live real lives than simply calculating square feet.
Bill