NYT: Smarter Traffic Lights, Calmer Commuters. Holy crap Houston needs this! I think Uptown and TMC would be really good test cases. The AI could learn optimal traffic light timings based on time-of-day as well as make dynamic adjustments for unexpected surges.
Cities Spending the Most on Eating Out in 2020. We found that Houston, Texas ranks #11 for spending their annual income at restaurants. Houston residents spend an average of $357 each month on eating out and 5.7% of their annual income at restaurants. Houstonians spend about the same amount eating out vs. in. We eat out a lot, but at low prices. We eat out a lot more than Dallas residents, which surprised me a bit until you think about how hyper-competitive Houston's restaurant scene is from the lack of zoning. That hyper-competition applies to grocery stores as well, which shows up in how much less we're able to spend on food than most of the cities in their graph. Houstonians spend $300 less per year on groceries than the average American, but $1,000/year more on eating out due to the high incomes and great affordable restaurants here.
City Journal: End of the Road for Parking Requirements - They serve as a tax on housing. Houston has been expanding its "market-driven parking" zone beyond downtown to Midtown and EaDo, and hopefully to additional areas in the future. Let developers decide how much parking they need, not arbitrary formulas. Hat tip to Jay.
This makes me nauseous. Planners actually like tight zoning regulations like high minimum parking requirements so they can extort more out of the developer to relax them!
My online event Tues, HTX #1 BBQ and #2 tech growth, R voters moving to TX, post-pandemic city shifts, ATX vs. HTX home prices, housing craziness humor, and more
Before we get to this week's items, just a reminder that my Mercatus online panel event on Land Use without Planning is 2pm CT on Tuesday. I'll be covering some of Houston's land use and zoning history as well as what other cities can learn from Houston. You can learn more and register here.
Moving on to a large backlog of items for this week:
NYT: There’s an Exodus From the ‘Star Cities,’ and I Have Good News and Bad News. Excellent summary of many different analyses forecasting post-pandemic urban geography. I’m not sure they’re right that pandemic migration will push R counties/states more D though. A lot of frustrated Rs are using the pandemic to escape D states and move to R states. For every D techie moving from SF to Austin, I'd bet 2 frustrated California Rs are moving to Texas. Actually, a recent survey found 57% of California migrants to Houston voted for Ted Cruz, which validates what I've been hearing. Here’s the most upvoted comment:
"Kotkin nails it 'Meanwhile, the working class struggles to pay rent, possesses no demonstrable path to a better life and, as a result, often migrates elsewhere.' I mean seriously is there anything worse than being poor in New York City, working a job in food service, barely able to pay your rent, knowing that you'll never own anything but an endless struggle against being evicted? Or you can move to Georgia, live cheaply in a far larger house / apt, and work towards gaining equity of something. No smart poor person would ever stay in NYC."
Excellent analysis video and paper showing that even where the land values are the same in Austin and Houston (i.e. same market demand), Austin houses are far more expensive due to over-regulation. Thanks Kevin!
"Houston ranks second among 14 major U.S. labor markets for the number of relocating software and IT workers between March 2020 and February 2021 compared with the same period a year earlier.
Miami grabs the No. 1 spot for the gain in software and IT workers (up 15.4 percent) between the two periods, with Houston in second place (10.4 percent) and Dallas-Fort Worth in third place (8.6 percent), according to the LinkedIn data."
"The big story among the nation’s major metros over the past decade has been the persistence of urban core out-migration and suburban in-migration...Houston had the 2nd-largest gain at 1.2 million, with a 20.8% increase, and remains the 5th largest metro."
"Certainly, Houstonians will be pleased with that result, but the notion that Austin might be Texas' third best city for barbecue will likely cause considerable agita in the state capital." ;-D
"It’s a melting pot, and that’s one of the things that stood out that I absolutely loved about the city. The fact that there’s a lot of positivity going on and people doing great things here, those are really some of the main reasons I stayed in the city.
Their turkey legs are decadent, sure. Like other rodeo-adjacent foods, they’re large, indulgent and full of flavor. They, in essence, are Houston."
A few weeks ago I interviewed Washington Post journalist David Byler on the drivers of Texas' growth, which resulted in an excellent piece he published last week with great analytics, map animations, graphs, and articulation of the drivers: Texas’s population and political power are growing. Here’s why. It concludes with this excerpt:
"Texas has found a simple formula for success — economic opportunity and a low cost of living — and stuck with it. People want simple things: good jobs, affordable housing and room for kids. And they’re willing to move to states that offer them."
For this post, I wanted to pass along the four growth drivers I shared:
Texas does not allow zoning/land use regulation in unincorporated counties on the edges of cities, so developers build large, affordable, amenity-rich master-planned communities that attract lots of people using Texas Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs), where a developer can float private bonds to build the infrastructure (streets, utilities) paid back by taxes in that community. It creates a thriving, competitive free market in housing development – much more than you’d see between incorporated cities. The Woodlands is one of the most famous of these, but there are hundreds (Bridgelands and Cinco Ranch as large examples). Here’s a giant one going up near DFW.
High standard of living, especially shared among immigrant networks: they know what kinds of houses their extended family members can afford all over the country, and they see the newest and biggest at the most affordable price in Texas (combined with job opportunities). They end up choosing Texas when they come to America. (and remember it’s more than just median house prices – it’s what you get for that price: that $635k in California gets a very old, small house – in Texas $278k gets you a larger, newer house)
Family-friendly: Declining fertility is a problem all over the developed world, most especially in places where housing has grown expensive. If families can’t afford more space, they shrink the family size to compensate. In Texas, it’s very affordable and common to get large 4, 5, even 6 bedroom homes in the suburbs with good school districts, which keeps the birth rate up here.
Texas and HTX growth secret, what kind of Texan are you? major climate change solution, TX miracle is more than oil, and more
My lead item this week is a comment I made on the Market Urbanism Report Facebook group:
Going beyond all the usual reasons given for Texas' high growth, here's the technical overlooked one that I think is a big key: Texas does not allow unincorporated counties to regulate land use (i.e. create zoning), which creates pretty much a totally free market in development just outside cities. Combine that with MUDs (municipal utility districts) that allow private developers to float bonds to pay for master-planned community infrastructure paid back by property taxes on that development, and there is complete flexibility in the suburban/exurban housing market. And those master-planned communities compete fiercely on price and amenities (far more than incorporated cities do). That, in turn, forces the core incorporated cities to "compete" for private development dollars by not over-regulating - otherwise they'll just jump outside the city limits. It's an overall balance of forces that keeps welcoming development and newcomers with a strong value proposition (high amenities with relatively low costs).
Moving on to some smaller items this week:
I took this Threads of Texas quiz and came out a Civic Pragmatist - not much surprise there, lol. Let me know your own results and thoughts in the comments.
"Civic Pragmatists are optimistic yet pragmatic when they think about a changing Texas. Their ideal Texas is one where the state is a leader in the knowledge-economy industries, as well as a Texas where everyone feels safe and like they belong."
National Review: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill Aims to End Single-Family Zoning (hat tip to Bill). Looks like they editorialize against federal intervention to force the elimination of local SFZ, which I would agree is problematic, but not necessarily against all zoning reform:
“The zoning issue is tough and complex. It balances principled libertarian objections to zoning and the interests of developers, on the one hand, against core principles of federalism and local control, on the other.”
I’d say Houston’s secret sauce is less about not having SFZ (deed restrictions are pretty much the same) than allowing pretty much anything else everywhere that’s not single-family: apartments, towers, retail, mixed-use, offices, you name it.
The Federalist: The Texas Miracle Isn’t All About Oil - Given that oil prices remain less than half of what they were at their peak, all those arguing that the Texas model will fail are just wrong.
"In India alone, the equivalent of a city the size of Chicago will have to be developed every year to meet demand for housing. ...
Michael Ramage of the University of Cambridge told the meeting of a 300-square-metre four-storey wooden building constructed in that city. Erecting this generated 126 tonnes of co2. Had it been made with concrete the tally would have risen to 310 tonnes. If steel had been used, emissions would have topped 498 tonnes. Indeed, from one point of view, this building might actually be viewed as “carbon negative”. When trees grow they lock carbon up in their wood—in this case the equivalent of 540 tonnes of co2. Preserved in Cambridge rather than recycled by beetles, fungi and bacteria, that carbon represents a long-term subtraction of co2 from the atmosphere.
If building with wood takes off, it does raise concern about there being enough trees to go round. But with sustainably managed forests that should not be a problem, says Dr. Ramage. A family-sized apartment requires about 30 cubic metres of timber, and he estimates Europe’s sustainable forests alone grow that amount every seven seconds. Nor is fire a risk, for engineered timber does not burn easily."
"So Vyas picked another metropolis that's increasingly become young people's next-best option — Houston.
Now 34, Vyas, a tech worker, has lived in Houston since 2013. "I knew I didn’t like New York, so this was the next best thing,” Vyas said. “There are a lot of things you want to try when you are younger -- you want to try new things. Houston gives you that, whether it’s food, people or dating. And it’s cheap to live in.”
An open dialogue on serious strategies for making Houston a better city, as well as a coalition-builder to make them happen. All comments, email, and support welcome.
