Joel Kotkin on Houston's unique 21st century development pattern
Double posting today because I wanted to cover both
congestion pricing and
Joel's op-ed in the Sunday Chronicle Outlook section today (
sorry if you got a double email on congestion pricing - hit a snag with Blogger and had to repost it). I highly recommend taking the time to read
the whole thing, but here are a few of my favorite excerpts:
21ST-CENTURY CITY
Trust market to shape the new Houston
Planners' nightmare is a dream come true in creating an exuberant, workable hodgepodge
When speaking on urban issues, one reliable way to draw derisive comments is to mention Houston. Perhaps no major city in America has a worse reputation among planners, urban aesthetes and smart growth advocates.
Yet, to a remarkable extent, Houston may well defy its critics — not only by continuing to expand, but by constructing a new and dynamic model of American urbanism that transcends all the worn cliches about ''sprawl'' and the burgeoning city's inability to attract educated workers.
...
This new form of urbanism, like those before it, has been shaped by factors unique to American historical development — the vast availability of land, the burgeoning population growth, the affluence that has allowed so many to purchase cars and homes.
...
The modern multipolar city re-creates this dispersed urbanity, but at distances defined not by walking but by the time it takes to travel by car. This, along with the rise of the Internet, increasingly allows individuals, families and businesses to locate where they wish.
In the future, this new model will allow for the evolution of an unprecedented development of diverse metropolitan environments. They will include everything from the ''gritty downtown'' to lower and moderate density inner-ring communities, as well as new suburban ''villages'' on the outer ring.
Perhaps no place has been more adept at fashioning this last form of development than Houston. Rather than impositions by government fiat, Houston's myriad master-planned communities are largely creations of the planners' nightmare — the marketplace. They reflect a typically pragmatic, market-oriented, Houston-style approach: building the kinds of housing that people demand and providing the infrastructure, such as a vital town center, that binds them to the area.
...
Houston's tradition as a market-based urban innovator also extends to its rapidly recovering inner ring. As the city's population grows, it will inevitably become denser both in its periphery and closer to the central core. New urbanists and planners need not legislate this change. Demand will be created by many factors: the overall rise in population and immigration; energy-related concerns; desire for shorter commutes; and rising land costs.
The evidence shows that Houston's more pragmatic approach — essentially allowing development to follow market demand — has worked better to drive inner ring development than the models beloved by many planners. Since 2000, only 2.5 percent of all population growth in greater Portland, Ore., occurred in the city; in Houston, the city accounted for more than 10 percent. Other cities often praised by ''smart growth advocates,'' — cities such as Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis — all lost population.
(see here for more data on Houston's ability to build more density than more controlled and planned cities like Portland and Dallas)
In other words, Houston's inner-city boom, while less controlled and heralded, is doing the job of increasing density — the summum bonum of ''smart growth'' — over wider areas than most traditional cities. Places like Chicago, San Francisco or Boston may be gentrifying closer to their core, but they are also losing people, particularly families with children, in many neighborhoods.
By contrast, Houston's urban evolution appears to be attracting — if not families — then significant numbers of educated workers. In fact, despite local critics' constant carping about the city's landscape, Houston has been experiencing a net gain of such workers over the past few years while ''creative'' meccas, such as Boston, San Francisco and New York, have been suffering a net out-migration.
Lack of rigid land-use controls and the sheer expanse of available land also have opened the Houston inner ring's urbanization not only for big national players, but lots of local smaller developers.
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Even at higher densities such districts will likely offend most urbanists and planners. For one thing, although transit may play a supporting role, the car — albeit a cleaner, more fuel efficient version — will remain king
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Yet there are those like architect Tim Cisneros who exult at Houston's prospects for urban innovation. As he drives down Bellaire, Cisneros even finds good things to say about Houston's ubiquitous strip malls. These low-cost areas, he argues, provide opportunity for ethnic restaurateurs and business people who could never afford the places favored by most urban planners. They also provide sometimes unique close-by services, and sometimes the land, for new townhouse developments, which he sees filling up mostly with skilled workers in their 20s and 30s.
...
But this evolution can only take place if Houstonians resist the temptation, in some vain attempt at refashioning Houston into ''Boston on the Bayou,'' to tamp down on the city's innovative development culture. The relative freedom given to future developers — whether in the inner city or the outer ring — should not be regarded as inimical to creating a successful 21st century urbanism, but as its essential haidmaiden.
Labels: density, growth, land-use regulation, perspectives, planning
Responding to critics on Opportunity Urbanism
There's been a lot of positive feedback on both the
Opportunity Urbanism report and
my op-ed last Sunday, but there has also been some criticism and a bit of confusion, which I'm hoping to clear up in this post.
The confusion aspect finally became clear to me yesterday. Joel, the team and I wrote Opportunity Urbanism as a way to say to other cities, "hey, you can learn something positive from what's going on in Houston." If Portland is the paragon for smart growth and new urbanism, we wanted Houston to be known as the same thing for opportunity urbanism. That doesn't mean there aren't sprawling suburbs and opportunity in Portland (there are), and it also doesn't mean that Houston doesn't or can't have rail transit and mixed-use urbanism (it can and will) - but each city has a different strength or brand that they're known for.
The problem is that our report was interpreted as a comprehensive strategy for Houston, which it was never intended to be. In fact, we actively avoided going down that path, realizing that would virtually eliminate readership outside of Houston. And there was also broad agreement before we started the project that Houston didn't really need another strategy report: the major problems were well known, and strategies and solutions were already in various stages of development. So we spent a relatively minor part of the project and the report on those issues: education, air pollution, health care, parks, open space, and the ever-amorphous "quality of life." Later, education and workforce challenges got "beefed up" in the report because they are so integral to upward social mobility, but other issues were generally considered outside the scope of what we were trying to understand and convey to the outside world. Of course, if we were doing a strategy report for Houston, those issues would absolutely have gotten far more attention.
So the problem comes when people read it thinking they're looking at a strategy report for Houston, and it basically ignores key issues, and implies "everything's rosy - no changes here - set engines to cruise control" (with the exception of workforce education). I can see how people might get upset. I apologize for giving that impression, and, knowing what I know now, if I could go back a few weeks and do it over again, we'd roll it out much differently - making it far more clear that "Houston does this thing really well, and we want to tell the world about it, but this in no way lets Houston off the hook for its many challenges."
I think that broadly covers the criticisms. There is one point I want to directly address from
Lisa Falkenberg's column:
Opportunity cities, by their very nature, Kotkin writes, may tend to attract and retain fewer educated and technically skilled workers, including immigrants and minorities.
I confirmed with Joel this was a wording mistake we should have caught. Clearly in the data and graphs, we show that opportunity cities are attracting
more educated migrants than superstar cities (who are actually losing them on a net basis). But they may end up being a
lower percentage of the overall population, because we also attract blue collar and immigrant workers. And that's a good thing. If Houston tomorrow shut down the ship channel, manufacturing and the construction industries, and evicted all those workers and their families from the city, we would clearly be far worse off for it. Our "percentage college educated" stat would look very nice, but it would obviously be a bad thing for Houston.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
Want to close with another link: the Houston Press has a nice
interview transcript with Joel Kotkin on Houston and opportunity urbanism.
Labels: opportunity urbanism
Opportunity Urbanism op-ed in the Chronicle
Most of you probably caught my
Opportunity Urbanism op-ed on the front of the Houston Chronicle Sunday Outlook section today, but even though it's too long for a typical blog entry, I'd like to put a copy here for comments and permanent archival (Chronicle links aren't usually permanent). In many ways, it sums up a lot of my thinking in this blog over the last two years. More on Opportunity Urbanism can be found
here.
BLOOMTOWN HOUSTON
Ours is an opportunity city with a style uniquely its own. Let's quit wishing we were something else and let Houston be Houston. By TORY GATTIS
Houston is at a turning point. With a boost from noted urbanist Joel Kotkin, our city has begun recasting its national reputation from "that ugly, sprawling, weird city without zoning" to the exemplar city for "Opportunity Urbanism," a compelling new paradigm for cities in the 21st century. This paradigm asserts that the fundamental (but recently forgotten) core mission of cities is to accelerate the upward social and economic mobility of its inhabitants.
This may sound obvious to the average person, but in the wonkish world of urban policy and planning, the themes of the past decade have been environmentalism (smart growth), pedestrian aesthetics (new urbanism), and meeting the desires of the educated elites (the "creative class"). Each of these movements raised important points— the need for urban core renewal and infill, a lack of quality pedestrian spaces and neighborhoods, and talent as the new basis of global competition, respectively. But they also went a step too far — denying suburban homeownership to those who desire it, demonizing the car and excessively focusing on attracting a narrow class of outside talent by being "hip and cool" instead of developing skills broadly in the existing population. Improving life for the typical resident got lost in the clamor.
What do we mean by "improving life" and "upward social and economic mobility?" Kotkin's research team, of which I was a part, identified four enablers: additional education for self or children; affordable homeownership; entrepreneurship; and getting a superior job, better matched to the jobholder's skills with improved productivity and pay. Urban policies and planning can have a direct effect on each of these drivers.
How can a city make more of these positive changes happen for more people? Our prescription — and Houston's great strength — revolves around the theme of maximizing residents' "opportunity zone."
What constitutes a rich environment for these four enablers to do their positive work? The more education, job, start-up, or affordable home options they have within their personal travel-time/cost tolerance, the more likely most people are to take advantage of them. That's their opportunity zone, and Houston has managed to maximize it in four key ways.
The first and most obvious way to expand the opportunity zone is transportation mobility, whether by car or transit. What parts of the city can people access in 10, 20, 30 or more minutes? That represents their education, job and homeownership opportunities, as well as their potential customer and employee base if they decide to start a business. The longer the travel time, the less likely they are to take advantage of any given option. Most critically, mobility determines access to affordable housing within a reasonable commute. Houston has invested aggressively in congestion reduction and transportation infrastructure, especially freeways.
In many cities, mobility investments have lost popularity in recent years, usually due to the lament that any new capacity "will just fill up eventually anyway." The benefits of increased capacity — like more access to more jobs and affordable housing for more people — are not obviously apparent, and therefore are often ignored, while the direct costs in money, neighborhood impacts and construction hassles are all too visible.
Local leaders need to do a much better job articulating the real value of these investments to residents and voters.
Another common belief is that freezing mobility infrastructure (or refocusing most resources on transit) will help curb suburban sprawl and return people to the core.
The reality is that employers will follow their employees to areas with good schools and affordable, high-quality housing if employees cannot reasonably commute to them from such places. The end result is a sprawling, vibrant suburban fringe with a stagnant core as jobs flee outward. And the biggest irony is that sprawl actually increases under such policies. Once employers have moved to the suburbs, employees then feel comfortable moving another half-hour beyond that into the exurban periphery. As long as employers stay in the core, sprawl has practical limits if employees want to maintain a reasonable commute.
The second key factor is maximizing the number of people and jobs inside the opportunity zone. People have been migrating to cities for hundreds of years for the simple reason that more people equals more opportunity. More people can support more education and employment options. Businesses have access to more potential customers and employees.
The implications for policy? Well, for one, growth is good, despite becoming more and more unfashionable in many cities. It creates more options and opportunities for more people — existing residents as well as newcomers. Studies have shown that larger cities generate more wealth and innovation per person. Another implication is that reasonable infill and density are also good. Growth, infill and density increase the number of people and jobs in a given opportunity zone.
More people and jobs in a given opportunity zone also mean more discretionary income in that zone, the economic fuel of opportunity, and the third driver of opportunity zone vitality. Discretionary income is defined by economists as income left over after the basic costs of living like housing, groceries, transportation, utilities, health care and taxes. This money can be spent directly on post-secondary education or training, endow the seed money to start a business, support a charity or provide the consumer purchasing power to support local businesses and start-ups that in turn provide jobs.
Maximizing the discretionary income in an opportunity zone involves maximizing incomes with high-paying jobs (traditional economic development, championed by the Greater Houston Partnership here), and minimizing the cost of living, which, in addition to low taxes, involves having the most competitive markets possible in goods and services providers as well as housing (with minimal supply constraints).
Discretionary income supports urban vibrancy and amenities such as restaurants, bars/nightclubs, museums, sports, arts, entertainment, shopping and other leisure activities — which in turn helps the city attract new high-paying jobs. The Zagat Survey notes that Houstonians dine out more frequently than residents of any other major U.S. city — 4.2 times per week on average, which is 30 percent above the national average and 24 percent above the average for New York City.
Our last major element for maximizing opportunity zones is minimal zoning, permitting and land-use regulations. These restrictions often increase commercial and residential costs, as well as preventing population density where there is housing demand.
Easy availability of affordable commercial space is critical to entrepreneurship. More commercial space also means more competition, lowering prices and increasing discretionary income. The same effect applies to residential space: The more there is, the more affordable it will be and, therefore, the more discretionary income that will be created.
Finally, minimizing these restrictions increases the vibrancy of the local construction industry, a good source of skilled and unskilled jobs that provide important rungs on a city's ladder of upward social mobility.
So if Houston is doing these things better than other cities, what have been the results?
One measurable result: Houston's population in hard-core poverty areas fell by 107,272 (47.8 percent) during the 1990s, one of the largest urban declines, according to the Brookings Institution. Another good indicator can be found in Stephen Klineberg's Houston Area Survey, which notes that 83 percent of residents said Houston is a "much better" or "slightly better" place to live than other U.S. metros (up from 78 percent in 2005). Eighty-five percent of Houstonians also believe that "if you work hard in this city, you will eventually succeed." That's some pretty impressive happiness and optimism in our city.
These policies also have kept our cost of living extremely low. The most recent Greater Houston Partnership economic report notes that the cost of living in Houston is 12 percent below the nationwide average for 293 urban areas, and 22 percent below the average for 23 metropolitan statistical areas with more than 2 million residents.
Houston owes this advantage largely to relatively inexpensive housing. Houston housing costs, as measured in early 2007, were 25 percent below the nationwide average and 43 percent below the major metro average. Houston also enjoys the lowest grocery prices among the major metros, 16 percent below the nationwide average.
But the most impressive result of our data analysis is that Houston may be able to legitimately claim the highest standard of living among major metropolitan areas in America, and possibly the world, in terms of the lifestyle that can be afforded on the median income.
According to the Census Bureau, the average payroll per employee in Harris County was $46,714 in 2005; 21 percent above the national average of $38,539. Combine that with a cost of living 22 percent below average for the 23 largest metros in America, and our cost-of-living adjusted incomes are among the highest in the country and the world. Other cities, like New York and San Francisco, have higher average incomes, but also a much higher cost of living. There are also many cities with a lower cost of living, but they also have much lower average incomes. Houston has managed to find the "sweet spot" of high productivity and high incomes combined with a competitive, affordable cost of living.
Despite this great success, Houston still faces one large challenge and another subtle risk. First, the great challenge is to provide quality education to large numbers of low-income and minority children — the first critical step on the opportunity ladder. The Houston Independent School District, among others, has made great strides addressing this need with better accountability and innovative partnerships with top charters like YES and KIPP. But more must be done, including addressing near-50 percent high school dropout rates, by providing more programs tailored to non-college-bound teens who need marketable job skills.
The risk we face now is failing to recognize our own uniqueness — what makes us special versus the highly controlling, bureaucratic approach of other cities around the world. We risk diluting our distinctiveness as we try to emulate others, especially when it comes to creeping government control.
The best way of summing up this difference between opportunity cities like Houston and others comes from a dust-jacket description of the book The Future and its Enemies by Virginia Postrel:
"[Postrel] shows how and why unplanned, open-ended trial and error— not conformity to one central vision — is the key to human betterment. Thus, the true enemies of humanity's future are those who insist on prescribing outcomes in advance, circumventing the process of competition and experiment in favor of their own preconceptions and prejudices. Some prefer a pre-industrial past, while others envision a bureaucratically engineered future, but all share a devotion to what she calls 'stasis,' a controlled, uniform society that changes only with permission from some central authority. On the other side is an emerging coalition in support of what Postrel calls 'dynamism': an open-ended society where creativity and enterprise, operating under predictable rules, generate progress in unpredictable ways. Dynamists are united not by a single political agenda but by an appreciation for such complex evolutionary processes as scientific inquiry, market competition, artistic development and technological invention. Entrepreneurs and artists, scientists and legal theorists, cultural analysts and computer programmers, dynamists are, says Postrel, 'the party of life.' "
Houston is the ultimate "dynamist" city, with a pioneering urban model to be proud of and promote to others. We're a city that's always self-renewing, with innovations like voluntary deed restrictions instead of zoning, which push controls down to the neighborhood level instead of a giant centralized bureaucracy.
In a global economy that has uniformly embraced free markets as the best way to fight poverty and provide opportunity, Houston is one of the few cities to bring that mind-set to urban development vs. the predominant centralized-control standard. We need to continue to refine and improve that model, including innovative market-oriented approaches.
Most importantly, we must deeply weave this "Open City of Opportunity" identity into our civic DNA at all levels so the city continues to strengthen what makes us distinctive. That "brand," which has been promoted by Mayor Bill White for many years, best sums up our friendliness, hospitality, entrepreneurial energy, minimal regulations (including no zoning), open-mindedness, diversity, affordability, social mobility, optimism, and charity (especially after Hurricane Katrina).
Let us declare the end of Houston's inferiority complex, and the beginning of an era of deep regional pride as a city that is home to the flag-bearers for Opportunity Urbanism.
Gattis coordinated the Opportunity Urbanism study team and writes the Houston Strategies weblog.
Labels: dining, economy, growth, identity, land-use regulation, opportunity urbanism, zoning
Houston as Engineering Headquarters, USA
Richard Florida's group recently did an
analysis of which cities dominate certain industries by having more than 10% of the nation's employment in that industry, and Houston gets special mention in his list of takeaways:
Houston has a stronghold on engineering. You can see this even more when the criterion is dropped to 8-9% of the national engineering workforce.
Chicago didn't make these first lists, which lead to some perceptive observations of Chicago's place in the economy by Richard
in the comments (mainly consolidation of the shrinking industrial Midwest, "the last best old industrial economy city," but not much new or leading edge), with the one glaring exception of implying businesses have left Dallas for Chicago, which is just nuts. Yes, Boeing chose Chicago over Dallas when they left Seattle, but Chicago was always going to be the choice because of its broader array of international flights (mainly due to superior geography for connections to Europe and Asia) - Boeing just used Denver and Dallas to get concessions out of Chicago. And that's a lot different than businesses established in Dallas chosing to move to Chicago, which I have never heard of.
In a later
analysis of talent clusters in major metros, Houston drops to #2 in engineering behind San Jose, CA (aka Silicon Valley's tech central), but ahead of #3 Detroit. Then again, Detroit came in #3 for advertising and marketing, as well as the arts, which didn't build my faith in the numbers.
In a
post quite a while back, I argued that part of Houston's branding identity should be as a major world hub of engineering talent. And it's a lot more than just oil & gas - see
the list. It's a great long-term brand, because the world will always need engineers, no matter what technology changes happen to energy, oil, and gas.
Labels: energy, identity
