Bush and Houston, #1 take-home pay, Europe's rail fail, increasing access to jobs, zoning as crony capitalism, transit's decline, Houston beats Austin and Dallas for affordable housing, and more
Apologies for the long gap between posts due to travel. Catching up on many smaller items:- Market Urbanism Report reposted an older post of mine on reducing congestion in fast-growing cities. Hat tip to Neal for the catch.
- National Review: The Man-Made Affordable-Housing ‘Crisis. Hat tip to George. Includes this awesome ending with good digs on Austin and Dallas vs. Houston:
"So Dallas has decided to legalize the granny flat — subject to enough rules and regulations to ensure that this has approximately zero impact on the housing market. The political mind at work again: Dallas studied Austin’s granny-flat liberalization program, which over the course of several years saw 200 units come onto the market, some of them new construction but mostly the rental of properties that hadn’t been rented before. Austin has almost 1 million people. Dallas copied the Austin model — on purpose, knowing that it would produce negligible results.
Let’s summarize: The city, having prohibited a common form of affordable housing, decided to reverse that prohibition in the hopes of bringing back some of that affordable housing by following the example of another city whose efforts produced basically no affordable housing. Ingenious!
Down the road a bit in Houston, they’ve had some success with a radically different approach: building houses."
- Our own Christof Spieler got a great review for his new book on CityLab: A U.S. Transit Atlas That Ranks the Best (and Worst) Cities for Bus and Rail
- Smarter Cities Dive award: City Leader of the Year: Sylvester Turner, Houston
- Houston ranked best U.S. city for expats - City 2nd internationally for career opportunities
- COU's own Wendell Cox has an excellent piece at New Geography on prioritizing transportation and transit access to improve access to jobs. His conclusion:
"For decades transit planning agencies and public officials (including when I served on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission) have claimed that new transit rail systems can materially reduce traffic congestion. The development of access metrics should put an end to such misconceptions (Note 3).
Regional planning agencies, transportation agencies and public officials should use the access metrics to direct funding to strategies that improve 30 minute access throughout cities. That principally means attention to improving the highway system. It’s time to develop a metric for urban transportation investments to address the fundamental goal of improving access, specifically the cost per new percentage point of job access. Getting people more access is critical to strong economies and reducing poverty, and deserves an assessment based on facts, not wishful thinking or mythology."
- Cato: Charting Transit’s Decline. Pretty eye-opening stats.
- Forbes: Zoning: America's Local Version Of Crony Capitalism
- Houston is #1 for take-home pay among major metros. Hat tip to George.
- Tokyo may have found the solution to soaring housing costs (spoiler alert: it's allowing more to be built)
- Why Passenger Trains Don’t Work in Europe. Mainly because they don't get that much more market share than in America yet they have displaced heavy freight to trucks that would be much better shipped on trains. America focused rail on freight, and that was the right decision.
- WSJ: Big Cities’ Success Reflects Deepening Urban-Rural Divide:
"Five cities—New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco—accounted for a third of all Fortune 500 headquarters and half of Fortune 500 firms’ profits last year"
Finally, a moment of remembrance for a great Houstonian, George H.W. Bush, whose statue I was admiring at the airport just hours before his death hit the news. And a quote I love from the NYT piece talking about his relationship with Houston:
"Mr. Bush and Houston — both a little quirky, a little square, a little misunderstood — were a natural fit. "
Labels: affordability, companies, economy, headquarters, home affordability, identity, market urbanism, mobility strategies, politics, rail, rankings, transit, transportation plan, zoning
posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:55 PM
4 Comments:
https://www.internations.org/expat-insider/
Cost of living
Federally override Euclid.
You mis read the take home pay graphic.
The headline there is Houston is one of many metros in a state that does not have an income tax and thus less is deducted by your employer out of a hypothetical 100k salary.
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