It's not only zoning laws. Houston (where I spent a portion of my childhood) is a large city with no zoning laws, and yet is exceptionally sprawling.
Suburbanism in Houston ends up being propelled through a mixture of:
1. Land availability, transit, and culture. There is a ton of space, it's flat w/ no natural geographical constraints, people like to live in big houses in the suburbs, there are freeways, and there is barely any public transit to speak of. So people live in the suburbs.
2. Contract law. There are large, privately developed suburbs where the developers require purchasers to agree to contracts governing their future use of the property, as a condition of sale. Suburbanites don't want a metalworking factory next door, so if you're developing a suburb, you get better sale prices if you can assure purchasers that that won't happen. So you do so by adding contract conditions. In a typical Houston suburb, your deed will have conditions attached, in which you have signed an agreement that neither you, nor anyone you convey the property to, will: subdivide the property, redevelop it into anything higher than 2 stories, redevelop it into a house that takes up more than x% of the lot, operate a commercial or industrial establishment on it, or lease it to tenants. This de facto introduces something like zoning via private contract law. So if you really don't want zoning, you'd have to actively suppress private-sector zoning, not only repeal governmental zoning.
Suburbanism in Houston ends up being propelled through a mixture of:
1. Land availability, transit, and culture. There is a ton of space, it's flat w/ no natural geographical constraints, people like to live in big houses in the suburbs, there are freeways, and there is barely any public transit to speak of. So people live in the suburbs.
2. Contract law. There are large, privately developed suburbs where the developers require purchasers to agree to contracts governing their future use of the property, as a condition of sale. Suburbanites don't want a metalworking factory next door, so if you're developing a suburb, you get better sale prices if you can assure purchasers that that won't happen. So you do so by adding contract conditions. In a typical Houston suburb, your deed will have conditions attached, in which you have signed an agreement that neither you, nor anyone you convey the property to, will: subdivide the property, redevelop it into anything higher than 2 stories, redevelop it into a house that takes up more than x% of the lot, operate a commercial or industrial establishment on it, or lease it to tenants. This de facto introduces something like zoning via private contract law. So if you really don't want zoning, you'd have to actively suppress private-sector zoning, not only repeal governmental zoning.