Houston Strategies: World Series Houspitality, HTX #1 for entrepreneurship higher ed, cities Americans are leaving, Austin's fantasy, and more

Sunday, November 17, 2019

World Series Houspitality, HTX #1 for entrepreneurship higher ed, cities Americans are leaving, Austin's fantasy, and more

A few items this week:

Pretty amazing to have both the #1 undergrad (UH) and grad (Rice MBA) entrepreneurship programs in the same city! (Chronicle story) Fingers crossed this has a long-term payoff for the city's entrepreneurial economy.
Houston Region May Account for Majority of Economic Gains in Texas over the next 25 years - roughly 30% of the state's growth, which is more than Dallas' 24%, but less than DFW combined. Our total economic growth is estimated at 75% with 1.7 million new jobs between now and 2045. Wow. More detail in the Perryman report here. Hat tip to George.
Austin's transportation planning for an unattainable fantasy. Key excerpts:

"Austin is one of the fastest-growing cities in America, and the city of Austin and Austin’s transit agency, Capital Metro, have a plan for dealing with all of the traffic that will be generated by that growth: assume that a third of the people who now drive alone to work will switch to transit, bicycling, walking, or telecommuting by 2039. That’s right up there with planning for dinner by assuming that food will magically appear on the table the same way it does in Hogwarts.
...
Planners have developed two main approaches to transportation. One is to estimate how people will travel and then provide and maintain the infrastructure to allow them to do so as efficiently and safely as possible. The other is to imagine how you wish people would travel and then provide the infrastructure assuming that to happen. The latter method is likely to lead to misallocation of capital resources, increased congestion, and increased costs to travelers.

Austin’s plan is firmly based on this second approach. The city’s targets of reducing driving alone by a third, maintaining carpooling at an already too-high number, and increasing transit by 394 percent are completely unrealistic. No American city has achieved similar results in the past two decades and none are likely to come close in the next two decades."

Animated graph of Where Americans are Leaving: Net Domestic Migration Out Of Metro Areas 2010-2018. Mostly the big 3 of NYC, LA, and Chicago, but Houston does appear at the bottom near the end. Harvey losses I assume. Excerpt:

"People vote with their feet. Sunbelt states overall offer stronger economies, more job opportunities, better weather, and lower taxes. These trends may have political implications, as “blue state” residents move to “red” states, perhaps making them more “purple.”"

Quora: Which cities do you find to be most like Houston? Hat tip to George.
McKinsey: The future of work in black America. Note Houston in the Exhibit 5 map. Significantly better than Atlanta.

Finally, while we're all disappointed in how the World Series turned out (how the heck did the home team lose *every* game?!), there is a small silver lining in the ad Nationals fans put in the Chronicle, which I think is an excellent example of Houspitality!