City of the Year, top rankings, CA vs TX, $gas$ vs transit, city slogan?, and more
Before we get to this week's misc small items, just a quick note that I'm going to be traveling on business and may miss the next couple of weeks' posts, probably to return the 24th.- Fast Company has named Houston their 2011 City of the Year! Quite a large honor. After being a subscriber for many years, it's good to finally see us get our due. Houston Business Journal coverage here, and the cover image here.
- Woo-hoo! Rent.com has rated Houston the #1 city for bachelors. "Rent.com says the cities to make the list have a high single female-to-male ratio, a vibrant nightlife, a low divorce rate and a low cost of living."
- New Geography on how people respond to increased energy prices, but not by using more public transit - and how trying to shift people to increased density and transit usage is generally futile. I believe there can be an exception though in the case of convenient, well-run, express point-to-point commuter transit using HOT lanes, because the time loss can be minimal (or even a gain if traffic is bad enough) and it creates the opportunity for email productivity that driving does not.
- Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires at New Geography also just released their 2011 Best Cities for Jobs, and Houston is #3 on the large cities list behind Austin and, more surprisingly, New Orleans. Texas scores a very impressive four of the top five.
- Houston the #2 metro in the country last month for adding jobs (behind DFW). Hat tip to Nick.
- The Wall Street Journal has a popular op-ed on California jobs moving to Texas:
"You can't build in California, you can't manage in California and you have to pay a big tax," Mr. Puzder told the legislators. "In Texas, it's the opposite—which is why we're building 300 new stores there this year."
...
One speaker from California shook his head in wonder: "You can have the most liberated lifestyle on the planet, but if you can't afford to put gas in your car or a roof over your head it's somewhat limited."
- Texas with the second best tax environment for entrepreneurs, small businesses
- For second consecutive quarter, wage gains in Houston of 3.7% top the nation
Labels: economy, identity, rankings, transit
posted by Tory Gattis @ 6:32 PM
10 Comments:
It's really hard to take New Geography seriously when they make claims such as this:
"Fuel costs are only a small component of total motoring costs. Cars today are lasting longer, are more reliable, are cheaper to run, and are kept in use longer. When oil was cheaper total costs of motoring were higher. That’s one reason why we are driving more."
Really? Let's break that statement down.
1) "Cars today are lasting longer." This means that depreciation is spread over a longer period, resulting in lower costs.
2) "are more reliable, are cheaper to run". This means maintenance and repair costs are lower.
3) "are kept in use longer." Again, lower depreciation costs.
Gasoline, however, has increased over 200% in the last 10 years. Until the last few years, gas mileage had stagnated, and in some cases, even decreased, due to larger vehicles and engines.
If cost of ownership, maintenance, repairs and time of longevity costs have all decreased, it is mathematically impossible for fuel as a percentage of total costs to have decreased. And, indeed, it has not. Numerous studies have shown that fuel costs comprise between 23% and 35% of annual vehicle costs. And the study I cite is from 2006, when gas prices were $2.60 per gallon. They are 50% higher now.
As for the other ways people get around high gas prices, moving closer to work? Really? People will sell their house, pay 6% realtor commission, moving costs, and other expenses, because gas went up to $4? Sure. Move to another country? Yeah, in your crack induced haze, perhaps.
Like the saying goes, I am dumber for having read that article.
Oops. Here's the cite,
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/cost-car-ownership.asp
Why does everyone else keep saying that the US will never have Europe's transit ridership because it has lower gas prices?
I think gas prices are only a small part of it. The reality is that European cities pre-date the car, and are built for walking (including the necessary density). Then train technology came along, and they added transit. Most jobs stayed centered where the trains ran.
Now compare that to most American cities, substantially developed in the car age. Decentralized and low density, with jobs all over - and only minimal accommodations for walking. Like it or not, that's the technological age our cities developed in, and it's not conducive to transit ridership. And I don't expect American cities to radically restructure themselves around walking+transit any more than I'd expect European ones to radically restructure their cities with freeways, broad streets, and plenty of easy parking...
Dave,
I agree NewGeography is often pretty bad/disingenuous at economic reasoning,
What he should have said to make the point he was trying to make is...
Given the fall in car ownership costs over the past 40 years for the per mile costs of travel to be the same as in the 70's gas would have to be something like $10 a gallon.
Over the long run and in aggregate Urban economists do expect that the average miles traveled will fall with increasing per unit price of travel.
People won't move tomorrow because the price increases today, but the next time they do move distance to work will be a bigger factor in their residential location decision. Also, if people continue to move to the cities, we would expect newcomers to give higher weight to distance to work when per unit distance price of travel increases.
So many things wrong with that slogan:
1) Negative words. "Not for X" isn't inclusive - what kind of crappy marketing would that be?
2) Speaking of which, it's majorly heteronormative, seeing as we have a fairly large contingent of "sissies" here who do just fine.
3) More generally, it's got such a specific viewpoint (the rugged Texan individual), and Houston is a very diverse city.
4) Worst of all, it doesn't even address all the wonderful things about Houston that this blog points to: great for families, great for bachelors, great for companies.
Try harder.
In case you missed it, "the deal" magazine profiled Houston recently and had us on the cover. They cited the healthcare and port related diversification in the economy, but still said energy is the key driver.
http://www.thedeal.com/magazine/ID/039157/2011/april-25-2011/power-play.php
Another article in the same magazine - drilling down on energy and deal making in Houston:
http://www.thedeal.com/magazine/ID/039156/2011/april-25-2011/the-energy-nexus.php
Thanks for the links. I'll have to include those in a future post.
Hi - my slogan suggestion is not to be taken seriously - it is only a suggestion and reserved for those whiners who can do nothing but complain about heat/humidity/etc. Thanks! Mark
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