This land isn't "abandoned". Nobody is sitting on vacant RE in Texas and getting fucked by sky high TX property taxes for the fun of it.
It's fundamentally a long bet that basically the same people (demographically if not often individually) who are complaining about this will turn around and pass legislation that makes development even more onerous and therefore makes their existing cheap 30-60yo building with a simple uninterrupted parking lot and un-engineered drainage ditches (the typical form vacant commercial RE seems to take) even more valuable.
It's fundamentally a long bet that basically the same people (demographically if not often individually) who are complaining about this will turn around and pass legislation that makes development even more onerous and therefore makes their existing cheap 30-60yo building with a simple uninterrupted parking lot and un-engineered drainage ditches (the typical form vacant commercial RE seems to take) even more valuable.