Whitmire = Bob Lanier, Vision Zero doesn't work, people prefer sprawl over walkability, and more
Clearing more from the smaller items backlog this week:
- This Texas Observer piece on Houston's northside is so scattershot and random and socialist/left-wing biased it's hard to know where to start. Houston is bad because... it has gentrification, inequality, racial tensions, and suburbanization/sprawl like every other city in America?? Because it has the most affordable housing among the nation's major metros, but not affordable enough for the very poorest populations??
At the end, he calls for communities to control their own fate vs. developers, but isn't that what every other over-zoned and over-regulated city in the country has done resulting in a massive national housing affordability crisis?? The fact is that we called it right when we said Houston had the right formula for housing supply and affordability, and the rest of country is finally catching up to that. This incoherent, woke, down-with-capitalism/free-markets rant adds nothing helpful to the conversation.
Why so many Americans prefer sprawl to walkable neighborhoods in the Washington Post piece (no paywall archive link).
- While walkable neighborhoods like Clarendon offer convenience, they can be expensive and lack living space compared to suburban "sprawl."
- Despite the benefits of walkable neighborhoods, surveys show that many Americans prefer the spaciousness of suburban sprawl, especially older, less-educated, and Republican-leaning individuals.
Portland City Auditor: Vision Zero Doesn’t Work by Randal O'Toole (The Antiplanner).
'This seems to be the basic pattern of vision zero plans across the country: impose a bunch of auto-hostile policies, ignore the fact that they don’t work, and then blame others when fatalities rise. As Lewis & Clark law professor Jack Bogdanski says, “the bureaucrats are great at spending money to make life miserable for people who drive cars, but they don’t bother to see if any of their spending actually makes any difference in improving traffic safety.”'
I got quoted! 'In many ways Whitmire is, in the words of longtime Houston blogger Tory Gattis, “the second incarnation of Bob Lanier: focused on running a good city, not caught up in the urbanist dogma"...Apparently, Bayou City voters aren’t chomping at the bit to see their city become the next Portland.” From "These Mayors Understand How to Run a City" in the City Journal.
Labels: affordability, governance, home affordability, inequality, perspectives, sprawl, vision zero, walkability
posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:41 PM
6 Comments:
Being affordable to allow poor people to live in a metro area is no insult to the place.
“A guiding principle of the Vision Zero Action Plan is that it will be guided by data.“ Portland didn’t even use what data they had. Concluding that “Vision Zero doesn’t work” is just as car-privileged as its advocates are “car haters”. Both sides are full of “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.”
Portland has suffered terribly from woke governance. The once trendy city is now a mess. From today's Wall Street Journal
"A Fire Sale of Portland’s Largest Office Tower Shows How Far the City Has Fallen...The once-premier building is now over half empty, reflecting how the Oregon city’s downtown is struggling with crime and other quality-of-life issues"
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/a-fire-sale-of-portlands-largest-office-tower-shows-how-far-the-city-has-fallen-322e0f2d?mod=wknd_pos1
Wow! 😳 That is sad. Thanks for the link.
Zero Vision is just a continuation of the war on transportation and the access to economic opportunities it brings. In this day and age you can never be too healthy or too safe. The government need only promise you safety and health to push a program the delivers neither. The idea of Zero Vision is to have zero pedestrian deaths (assumes all are caused by "speeding cars"). That’s like saying airplanes shouldn’t fly higher than 10 feet off the ground in case they fall from the sky or that ladders shouldn’t be taller than 2 feet lest the user make a mistake and fall off. Some design ideas might create a perfectly safe system, but render the tool essentially nonfunctional.”
Exactly! I've often said if they want true Vision Zero it's easy, just make the universal speed limit 25mph! But of course that completely defeats the purpose of cars and transportation!
Post a Comment
<< Home