Revising the city charter, low CoL = high SoL, peak sprawl, big exports, big data, and save the birds
Getting back to our backlog of smaller misc items this week:- Do you agree or disagree on Bradford and Robinson's suggestions for a Houston City Charter Review Commission? Bill King is also in favor. The Chronicle editorial board weighed in as well. I'm no expert on local governance, but my general thought is that Houston seems to be working pretty well as a city compared to our peers nationally, so we should be very careful changing it. I definitely disagree with the city manager idea - it hobbles the power of the mayor to get things done, which is why we elect them. My other thought would be to make sure we do pretty much the opposite of how Chicago is run, based on everything I've heard and read about their corruption and dysfunction. Comments welcome.
- Dug Begley at the Chronicle discusses peak sprawl and Houston.
- Houston #1 in total exports, and #2 in exports per capita, and #4 fastest growing exports over the last 7 years.
- New data confirms Houston is the lowest cost major metro, which is a big part of why I think we have the world's highest standard of living.
- The Economist magazine on cities attempting to use big data in clever ways, including whether it's better to be bottom-up or top-down. Houston should definitely be a fast follower and maybe even an innovator in this area as other cities around the world experiment.
Labels: affordability, corruption, economy, governance, government transparency, home affordability, port, rankings, sprawl, technology
posted by Tory Gattis @ 7:32 PM
3 Comments:
Of potential interest, here's a new article by a thinktank scholar who advocates the privatization of public transport assets:
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/361444/clifford-winston-privatization-and-deregulation-us-transportation-sector-reihan-salam
Can light rail be deployed privately yet feasibly though? Rail offers advantages in terms of savings and pollution:
http://www.facebook.com/hmrdev
but Metro sure does seem fond of making the endeavor expensive.
Hey Long time reader, just wanted to make sure you saw this.
http://one.arch.tamu.edu/media/cms_page_media/2013/10/8/ULI_report.pdf
Thanks for sharing the link, Jarrett. Very interesting. I might be involved in a project in that area of downtown...
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