Houston Strategies

Joel Kotkin Opportunity Urbanism event this week and Houston vs. San Francisco

For most of this year, Joel Kotkin, myself, and others - with the generous sponsorship of GHP and HRG - have been working on updating the Opportunity Urbanism work we did in 2007 (here and here), and the big unveiling will be held at a GHP luncheon event this Thursday:

"Over the past decade, a new paradigm of determining "what makes a great city" has emerged. This new way of thinking, known as "Opportunity Urbanism," is best exemplified in the greater Houston region. By embracing Opportunity Urbanism, both the city and the suburbs are flourishing. Across a broad spectrum – income growth, new jobs, housing, population growth and migration – no other major metropolitan region in the nation has performed as well as Houston over the past decade. 

Join us on Oct. 9 as Joel Kotkin, one of America's foremost urban theorists, share his latest research findings which suggests that opportunity cities like Houston offer far better prospects for the vast majority of their citizens."

If you'd like to attend - and we'd love to have you - registration details are here.

The full report will be released then, and I should have more on it in a post next week.  In the meantime here's a couple of teasers...

First, Joel Kotkin on our local NPR "Houston Matters" show "What Makes Houston the Most Ideal “Opportunity City?”  He very generously gives me a shout out right at the beginning near the 0:50 sec mark (it's only 7 minutes).

Second, Joel also just published a great new article in the Daily Beast (alternate link at New Geography):

Battle of the Upstarts: Houston vs. San Francisco Bay
The energy and tech capitals of the U.S., Houston and San Francisco have little in common, but in the coming decades they are likely to become America’s dominant cities.

It's hard to excerpt because so much of it so insightful (definitely read the whole thing), but I will share a few, including the concluding paragraph:

"Today we are seeing yet another shuffling of the deck among American regions. New York remains the country’s preeminent city, but its most powerful rivals are likely to be neither Chicago nor Los Angeles, but rather two regions rarely listed in the hierarchy of influential regions: the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston.
...
Far less appreciated, Houston, rather than being a southern city of duller wits, actually ranks second in engineers per capita. If the Bay Area is master of the digital economy, Houston ranks as the technological leader of the material one; it is the capital for the energy-driven revival of U.S. industry, not only in Texas but throughout the old industrial heartland. Revealingly, Houston actually has seen far more rapid growth in both college educated and millennial population since 2000 than the Bay Area, as well as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
...
Ironically, Houston’s growth has been more egalitarian than that of the notionally super-progressive San Francisco region. A recent Brookings report found that income inequality has increased most rapidly in what is probably the most left-leaning big city in America, where the wages of the poorest 20 percent of all households have actually declined amid the dot com billions.
...
Perhaps the biggest differences can be seen in families. Of the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas, the Bay Area has the lowest percentage, 11.5 percent, of people ages 5 to 14. In Houston, 23 percent of the population fits this age category. In particular San Francisco is notoriously inhospitable to families, with the lowest percentage of kids of any major city. 

The two regions also reflect very different urban forms. The Bay Area’s leadership has opted to favor dense “in fill” growth and sought to restrict suburban development. Houston has taken a different tack. As its population has expanded, so too has the metropolitan area. This includes the development of many planned communities that appeal to middle class families and many immigrants. In 2013, Houston alone had more housing starts than the entire state of California. 

But it would be wrong to dismiss Houston’s model as merely “sprawl.” Instead it is better seen as simply expansive. In fact, arguably no inner ring in the country has seen more rapid growth, with high-rise, mid-rise and townhouse development in many long neglected districts. The increase in high-density housing tracts (more than 5,000 per square mile) since 2000 has been almost ten times higher than the Bay Area.
...
The Valley’s hostility to fossil fuel energy, and its jihad to destroy an entire industry, is only barely recognized in Houston. I also have never heard anyone there suggest that Silicon Valley should be closed down as a danger to the planet (or at least a threat to the attention span of younger Americans). Houstonians, particularly in the energy industry, generally lack media savvy, which is one reason why energy is widely rated as the country’s least popular industry. Also missing, thankfully, is the sense of entitlement and self-congratulation one finds in the Bay Area. But once the intention to devastate the oil and gas industry is better understood, expect the energy capital to square off against the tech center, generating what may be the regional battle royal of our era."

There's a great discussion of the article going on over at HAIF, and of course I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments here.

Labels: opportunity urbanism, perspectives

posted by Tory Gattis @ 6:47 PM