Houston's mini-kaihatsu, sinking false alarm, annexation history, shrinking population, school choice, and more
Several smaller items this week:
- Report: Houston is one of the fastest sinking cities on Earth, could 'disappear'. Let's check the math folks. Houston elevation is 79' = 2408cm. Losing 2cm/year x 100 years = -200cm. Sea level rise of 1cm every 5 years for 100y = 20cm. New elevation in 2122 = 2188cm, almost 72ft! Doesn't sound anywhere close to 'disappearing'...
- Big NYT fail on road safety: the clear inflection point in the graph is the rise of distracting smartphones, yet they're NOT EVEN MENTIONED ONCE. Instead it's anti-car, anti-SUV, anti-speed, and anti-rideshare. All agenda instead of real problem-solving.
- Kinder: Houston, Dallas led metro area growth in 2021 even as their urban cores lost population (news story, hat tip to Oscar). Harris County declining a bit even while the metro grows. I think a lot of people used the pandemic to move out to the nicer newer suburbs (commutes less of a worry in a remote work world), and the backfill immigration into the city wasn’t there as it usually is, especially from international immigrants. Crime spike hasn't helped either. Harris County really has to turn it around before we end up in the same place as Dallas County with significant outflows. Once people and employers flee, it’s a negative reinforcing cycle :-(
- The Texas Pilgrim: It’s Time for Comprehensive School Choice in Texas. Hear, hear! Let's hope they can get some traction in the next legislative session.
- A pretty cool annexation history map of Houston
- Book Review: The Making of Urban Japan, by Salim Furth. The review notes similarities between Tokyo's mini-kaihatsu (a dozen townhomes fronting a small alley) and similar developments in Houston:
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| Mini-kaihatsu, Houston |
"The concept is the same, and it’s no coincidence that both arise in places with light regulation, strong demand, and little public streets funding. As I wrote about Houston:Houstonians achieve privacy by orienting many new townhouses onto a share courtyard-driveway, sometimes gated, which creates an intermediate space between the private home and the public street…
The courtyard-driveways also provide a shared play space, as evidenced by frequent basketball hoops. Despite what Jane Jacobs may have told you, city streets are not viable play spaces for 21st-century children. But cul-de-sacs can be. Houston’s courtyard-and-grid model may be the ideal blend, unlocking the connectivity of a city while delivering the secure sociability of a cul-de-sac to a large share of homes."
Labels: census, density, development, education, environment, growth, migration, mobility strategies, resilience
posted by Tory Gattis @ 6:54 PM
6 Comments:
I keep telling the Chron that its reporters need to use both their finger AND toe digits when reporting on topics with big numbers in them. After all, that's why they're called "digital" reporters. But they never listen.
Ha! ;-D
Y'all need to get Lina out before it's too late!
But Houston is not uniformily 24 meters elevated. Parts of Houston and the surrounding region border waterways and are closer to 0 elevation. Expensive and critical industry is situated near 0 elevation. Additionally, as elevation decreases in these costal areas, areas that can currently handle the normal high tides or flooding associated with weather events will become less able to withstand these fluctuations. Sure not everywhere in Houston will be literally underwater all the time, but to say that this is not a problem for the region is disingenuous. It's important to not overexagerate the situation but equally important not to undersell it. Mitigation efforts are long term expensive projects that will take lots of time to be successful. If we do not take it seriously now and begin the necessary infrastructure projects soon it will make our region less successful long term.
I will agree it's a real situation that needs real addressing, especially around the Ship Channel (although even La Porte and Baytown are at 20ft and 34ft), but Houston will absolutely not "disappear", as the vastly overhyped headline says.
Yes agreed, the headline is certainly overhyped. Again, although La Porte and Baytown have a listed elevation of 20 and 34 ft this does not mean those cities are uniformly that height. If you are standing in one of the many industries along the coast looking towards the water's edge, you are definitely not going to be standing 20 ft above the water.
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