More on METRO's Uptown BRT failure, wealth moving south, forensics reality, TX beating CA on homelessness, and more
A few smaller items this week:
More on Houston's BRT Failure with the Uptown Silver Line. Yet they're just going to pretend it didn't happen and plow ahead with the $1.5B Universities BRT line reducing Richmond to one lane each direction?!? đ
"A Houston bus rapid transit route over dedicated bus lanes is attracting less than 10 percent of the riders that were projected for it. The Silver Line opened in August 2020 with the expectation that it would carry 14,850 weekday riders, but in fact it is carrying less than 900 riders per weekday, about 6 percent of projections...
One reason why ridership is low is that the line is slow. Schedules say that it takes 27 minutes to go 4.7 miles, which is an average of 10.4 miles per hour. The cityâs regular local buses go much faster than that. Metro must have missed the memo that setting aside dedicated lanes to bus rapid transit is supposed to make the buses go faster, not slower.
This is just another example of why transit agencies shouldnât spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on fixed transit infrastructure. No one can accurately foresee future transportation patterns, so relying on forms of transit that can be kept flexible â meaning buses sharing lanes with other traffic â is the safest and most cost-effective way to go."
"In the last decade, the number of people who are homeless in California has soared, rising more than 40%. Meanwhile, in Texas, they're seeing the opposite trend, with homelessness dropping by nearly a third."
âThe numbers tell the story. For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South â Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee â are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, with its Washington-New York-Boston corridor, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting.â
"Jews and Israelis who may feel uncomfortable at the rise of anti-Semitic sentiments among those in New York and California might find solace in states like Texas. Despite rising attacks and hate crimes on both sides of the American coast, the Lone Star State has remained unabashedly pro-Israel and open to business for those looking to relocate or expand their companies.
âPeople just love Israel here,â explained Toba Hellerstein, Executive Director of the Texas-Israel Alliance. âThey just love Israelis, love Israel, and Israelis will come here and feel like they're rockstars⌠There is a real romanticism, whereas in other states you have some ideas around Israeli startups and also have political reasons that make them less interested in working with Israel, in Texas you donât have that.â
Houston #1 for std of living, housing the root of many problems, solving homelessness, debunking the 15-min city, and more
Our featured item this week is this detailed Stanford study that backs up what I've been saying for years: Houston offers the highest standard of living in the country (discretionary income after costs), especially among growing cities. After opening the pdf, search the word 'Houston' and look at the Consumption column to see how much higher it is than most other cities for households in different income ranges. Hat tip to George.
"The struggle to solve homelessness is getting harder nearly everywhere. Yet recent years have still seen many more victories than defeats. And the biggest victory is in greater Houston, which over the last decade has cut homelessness by more than half.
Houstonâs story holds lessons for Los Angeles. The chief one is that solving homelessness is less about economics than about strategic clarity and execution."
Alain Bertaud, formerly principal urban planner at the World Bank and now senior research scholar at New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management as well as the author of 'Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities', critiques the current urban planning fad, "the 15-minute city." Introduction and policy analysis paper.
'Even a prominent urban economist like professor Ed Glaeser has been sufficiently alarmed by the spread of the 15-minute mania that he felt obliged to comment on it. In a blog, he wrote that the 15-minutes city "should be recognized as a dead-end which would stop cities from fulfilling their true role as engines of opportunity."
NYT: Amid a Baby Boom, Texas Gains 1,000 Residents Every Day - A surge in births in Texas comes amid a declining birthrate nationwide. Fits my hypothesis: when housing is plentiful and affordable, fertility stays up. People want plenty of space to raise families. When housing is pricey and small, fertility drops - see Japan, Korea, China, Europe...
The housing theory of everything - Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates. A really long but comprehensive case. Conclusion:
"What matters is that housing shortages may be the biggest problem facing our era, and solving it needs to become everyoneâs highest priority....
If weâre right about this, it means that fixing this one problem could make everyoneâs lives much better than almost anyone realises â not just by making houses cheaper, but giving people better jobs, a better quality of life, more cohesive communities, bigger families and healthier lives. It could even give renewed reasons to be optimistic about the future of the West."
Finally, a fun item to conclude with: a cool map a friend of mine made with how to fly from Houston to every capital city in the world either nonstop (red) or connections (blue). Almost all can be reached with a single connection except for a few in the South Pacific (thru LAX+Fiji). We are a very well-connected city in the global economy. Click on it to see it larger.
Political guide for moving to Texas (America's Future), Houston no-zoning video, TX HSR re-route? population growth and building permits, airport wins
Continuing from last week on catch-up items...
From Twitter: My oversimplified political guide for moving to Texas: progressives to Austin, conservatives to DFW, and pragmatic centrists and independents to Houston.
"But if youâre really looking for a bellwether state that offers a glimpse into the countryâs economic future and engines of growth as well as its political fault lines in the long run, itâs not California. Itâs Texas."
"For every new white resident that Texas welcomed over the past decade, there have been three Black residents, three Asians, three people with multiracial backgrounds and 11 Hispanics. Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston also have large L.G.B.T.Q. populations."
City Beautiful covers the details of Houston's lack of zoning in this 10 min video. Mostly pretty good, but I think he misses some of the densification and affordability benefits. He talks about affordability, but only on a metro level, ignoring how we're able to increase access and affordability for the most desirable core neighborhoods through new townhomes, apartments, and residential towers.
Passing this great graph along from Scott Beyer at the Market Urbanism Report: "A decade after the recession, and peak permits are still down in almost every major metro except in one state. Any mystery why this state remains affordable even as millions of people move there?" I'm impressed to see we're holding steady vs. our crazy-high peak building during a previous oil boom.
"Data from the 2020 Census released August 12 shows Houston at No. 5 (20.3 percent) among the country's 50 largest metro areas in the biggest jump in population from 2010 to 2020.
Houston maintains its position at No. 5 (7,122,240 residents), the Census data notes. For some perspective, Houston was No. 8 (4,944,332) in the 2010 Census.
The Bayou City is also one of the three U.S. metro areas to gain at least 1.2 million residents over the decade. (Dallas-Fort Worth and New York are the others.)"
Texas Monthly: Welcome to Texas, Elon Musk. You Donât Have to Move to Austin - The founder of Tesla and SpaceX says heâs relocating to the Lone Star State. But which of our tech hubs is the best fit for the eccentric billionaire? Surprisingly balanced (even slightly negative) on Austin and very positive on Houston. Excerpt:
"In terms of tech hype, Houston isnât Austin, but it does check an awful lot of boxes for Musk. Also, if he spends much time on Twitterâand we know he doesâMusk might be aware that there is a robust argument among Texans on the platform about whether Austin has âjumped the sharkâ and been supplanted by Houston for the title of coolest city in Texas."
From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, cities suffered from high crime rates and numerous quality of life issues. New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and some other major cities have recreated the environment of that era, with non-scientific pandemic restrictions that devastated local businesses and a penchant for placing the mentally ill directly in family-oriented, residential neighborhoods. These cities have stopped prosecuting many property and quality of life crimes, inevitably leading to bad quality of life and apathetic enforcement of more serious crimes.
The coronavirus has reset consumer expectations back to suburban living with the mental health benefits of living in greenspace. There has been an exodus from major industry centers to their suburbs and to the alt-cities. The alt-cities of Miami, Austin, and Nashville all offer car-friendly, suburban living, relatively cheap housing, and continual housing construction. With the acceleration of sustainable building materials and clean and cheap energy, the urban planning rationale to pack people into urban cores with mass transportation was already beginning to fray, and the coronavirus has sealed its fate.
...
Low taxes and quality government
People are not moving solely for tax purposes. New York and Californiaâs tax rates are only a few points higher than they were twenty years ago. However, once people decide to move, of course tax rate is a factor in choosing a destination. Florida, Texas, and Tennessee seemingly offer everything that California and New York offer: highways, streets, schools, police departments, fire departments, and such. All the government services one would expect are there, and none of the capital gains taxes that entrepreneurs and venture capitalists typically pay.
As comedian and political commentator Bill Maher recently noted, California is reminiscent of a 1970s Italy, with high taxes and terrible government services. In return for high taxes, one would expect to go to Hunter's Point, East Palo Alto, or East San Jose and see excellent schools and services for disadvantaged people. A hyperloop instead of a failed high-speed train. Fire mitigation and stable power to complement long term climate change goals. A boom in middle-class housing rather than a $700K median house price. California and New York are becoming bad versions of Singapore, with a wealthy technocratic elite, an immigrant servant class, and a collapsed middle class."
"Buyers are paying more, too: The average sale price in Houston jumped by about 15 percent to a historic high of $341,765 in November. And luxury homesâor those going for more than $775,000âsaw a staggering 80-percent increase in demand, as well."
Unfortunate that Houston is not on this list of top ten cities gaining residents during the pandemic (Austin and Dallas are), but with the severe oil recession, it's not too surprising. I have still seen a ton of out-of-state plates around town, and do think we are getting some significant migration during the pandemic.
Southwest announced new service from Houston Intergalactic to Dallas Love, Chicago Midway, Denver, Nashville, and New Orleans starting April 12th. I expect Dallas Love to be especially popular for The Woodlands and north Houston suburbs since United only goes to less convenient DFW.
Reasonably fair assessment putting Houston and Miami in the next two slots of America's global cities behind NYC, LA, and SF (but why is energy independence bad for us? It's great!). We're still the most affordable global city in America. Dallas not even mentioned... ;-)
Cities Investing the Most in New Housing: Texas Triangle dominates. Houston #5 on a relative-to-population basis (Austin #1), but #1 in total volume, #2 in total value (behind DFW), and #2 most affordable housing (behind San Antonio).
Any state high in migrants is also going to have a higher renter percentage
A fixed $800 rent price point will naturally have units decline under it over time just due to natural inflation
Our cost ratios are just matching the US as a whole
But mainly I expect everything to (eventually) get more affordable under covid (see previous item). It will certainly free up a lot of workers from service industries for construction, which has been a major issue for builders. And people being free from commutes reduces price premium of close-in properties and opens up exurban ones.
Where United Airlines should establish a new hub...
This week's post has nothing to do with Houston other than United has its second-largest hub here, and what's healthy for United tends to be healthy for Houston (barring a monopoly ;-). I'm a bit of an amateur aviation nerd going back to my McKinsey days, and I had a random crazy thought this week: United has a ton of planes and crews sitting around doing nothing right now during the pandemic - they could literally create an instant hub somewhere if they wanted to (assuming they could get the gates). But where?
United actually has well-positioned hubs covering most major domestic and international regions. But they do lack good coverage in the southeastern US like Delta does from Atlanta (world's largest hub) and American does from Charlotte. Additionally, Houston serves as a great United hub to Latin America for the central and western US, but is not geographically well-positioned for serving the eastern US the way American is with its hub in Miami. Is there somewhere United could establish a hub that does some combination of what Charlotte and Miami do for American?
But where should they go if they want to take this first step to the next level and actually establish a new hub? A few options can be quickly eliminated:
Atlanta and Charlotte are already taken by Delta and American respectively
Raleigh-Durham is too close to IAD Washington DC Dulles (already a United hub)
Miami is already an AA hub facing increasing competition from Delta and Southwest
Fort Lauderdale and Orlando have incredible amounts of low-fare competition from Southwest, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, and others.
Fort Myers is too small to support a hub (679,000 MSA population) as is Jacksonville (1.5m)
A friend of mine threw together some potential United route maps from a Tampa hub (hat tip to Daniel!).
Potential Domestic
Potential International
Potential United Latin America coverage IAH+TPA
As you can see, it's much better geographically from the eastern US to the Caribbean and Latin America than Houston is. Would it cannibalize traffic from IAH? Based on American's service to the same region from DFW and Miami (the equivalent of United's IAH and Tampa), we don't think so. DFW has Latin service nearly as comprehensive as IAH despite American's Miami hub. The two hubs actually reinforce and support each other and give American a dominant position in Latin America. United could challenge that dominance with a combination of Houston, Tampa, and Newark/NYC.
Florida is the third-largest state in the country at 22 million and growing fast. United needs a strong presence there to match its strength in other top five states like California (38m), Texas (28m), New York (20m), and Illinois (13m). A hub (or at least a strong focus city) in Tampa is the best strategic option for them to tap that market. This pandemic will reshuffle the airline pecking order - why play defense when they can seize the initiative and fill a long-standing and growing gap in their route network while also putting more planes and crews to work?
McKinsey: Restoring public transit amid COVID-19: What European cities can learn from one another. I think the biggest impact locally will be the park-and-ride service, but Metro should be able to manage overall. But I truly don't see how NYC will be able to operate anywhere close to normal. DC, Chicago, Boston, Philly, SF, and others will also be significantly affected.
"Physical distancing will cut transit capacity to 15-25% of normal, but use of PPE could increase capacity to 40%."
NYT: The Agonizing Question: Is New York City Worth It Anymore?For many, the call of an easier, safer and more affordable life beckons. But die-hard New Yorkers find the city more appealing than ever. The new Escape from New York... 420,000 already gone in three months is a staggering number! Obviously many are temporary. But there are also probably tons of people still there that have decided to leave but are waiting out their leases.
âNew Yorkers have been fleeing for months. But the fear some residents have of the violent reactions to the protests here is adding a new challenge to those asking themselves whether they can hack the city. Many are deciding not to return.
Itâs a decision that must be made individually and privately, one that some 420,000 New Yorkers with the resources to do so had already made between March and May in reaction to the pandemic, according to cellphone data analyzed by the Times.â
"For some, itâs a chance to be closer to family, which feels more urgent in the midst of a global health scare. For a large swath of people in the countryâs most expensive cities, itâs a way to get more living space and be closer to nature, something increasingly made possible by the growing trend of remote work. And for many others itâs not really a decision at all, but a necessity in the face of growing job losses and still sky-high rents.
⌠And people in cities hit hard by the pandemic â New York, San Francisco and Seattle â are searching for remote work opportunities significantly more than the rest of the country, LinkedIn data shows. Some real estate data suggests many are already considering or making a move to a smaller town or suburb. Real estate company Redfin said page views of homes in small towns more than doubled during the last week of April compared with last year.
... She said sheâs hearing from mostly young families â professionals with small children â who want to trade the confines of a locked down New York City for houses with home offices and yards.
âItâs no longer temporary. People are saying, âIâm not going back. This could happen again and we donât know when itâs going to end,ââ said Bernstein.
âNew York doesnât feel worth it anymore,â he said."
The convention business is cratering, and cities are getting stuck with the bill. I'm not sure how our bonds are structured, but I'm guessing Houston and Harris County will be hit pretty hard by this. We've used hotel taxes to subsidize GRB, NRG, and stadium expansions, and now those hotels are bringing in very little revenue. I'm assuming taxpayers are on the hook to make the payments...
"Houston and NYC both issued around 61k permits in 2019. But metro New York City is nearly 3 times bigger than metro Houston, meaning its construction activity in 2019 (30.4 permits per 10k residents) was much less than Houstonâs (88.3 permits per 10k)."
Click to enlarge
Cities With the Most Self-Employed Workers. Houston is #15 by percentage, but #3 by total numbers with 330,415, behind NYC and LA. Miami is #1, I assume because drug smugglers are considered "self-employed" (just kidding! watched too much Miami Vice as a kid, lol ;-)
City Combined Taxpayer Burden Report 2020. Houston has a combined local government debt burden of $25,800 per taxpayer, which is the 4th lowest of the top ten cities, and far better than NYC at $83,600 and Chicago at a whopping $122,100! Looking at their math, they have ~681k taxpayer households for Houston, which sounds about right for a city of 2.3m. Hat tip to Charles.
Finally, I wanted to end with a short video from the KAS Strong Cities 2030 project that I've been involved with the last couple of years. They put together clips of how different cities are dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, including yours truly at the 1:49 point (albeit recorded a couple of months ago and a bit dated at this point).
Debating deed restrictions and zoning, office vs. remote work, transit radio show, and more
I've actually been accumulating items faster than I've been posting them, and it's gotten out of control, so this will be a long post to do some catching up.
The featured item this week is I got in an active debate with the Market Urbanist Scott Beyer on the value of deed restrictions vs. zoning, which you can read in the comments at the bottom of his piece on deed restrictions here.
Moving on to the rest of this week's items:
Dispersion in US metros increases even before Covid-19: New Census estimates. Houston growth has slowed a bit since the oil boom days, but still ahead of most other big metros. We just crossed 7 million metro population, which is an impressive achievement only 4 other US metros have accomplished (NYC, LA, Chicago, DFW).
"New York City has withstood and emerged stronger from a number of catastrophes and setbacks â the 1918 Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, the 1970s financial crisis and the 2001 terrorist attacks. Each time, people proclaimed the city would forever change â after 9/11, who would want to work or live in Lower Manhattan? â but each time the prognostications fizzled.
But this moment feels substantially different, according to some corporate executives.
The economy is in a sustained nosedive, with unemployment reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression. Many companies are in financial trouble and may look to shrink their real estate as a way to cut expenses.
More fundamentally, if social distancing remains a key to public health, how can companies safely ask every worker to come back?
âIf you got two and a half million people in Brooklyn, why is it rational or efficient for all those people to schlep into Manhattan and work every day?â said Jed Walentas, who runs the real estate company Two Trees Management. âThatâs how we used to do it yesterday. Itâs not rational now.â
âWe have a lot of millennial buyers who are already used to working remotely. They donât know how long this (pandemic) is going to last, and theyâd rather be here (Tahoe),â Bednar told the Tribune, âThe people Iâm talking to are looking for a simpler life, a close community. They want the outdoors and donât want to be stuck in places where thereâs a health problem.â ...
âPeople are starting to ask themselves, âWhy do I have to live in such an expensive area and drive an hour to work every day, or rent out an expensive office space when everyone can work remotely?' If you donât need to live in the city, why would you?â Bednar said.
âThe COVID-19 pandemic forcing those who could work from home to do so has led to a surprising result â improved productivity. U.S. workers were 47% more productive in March and April than in the same two months a year ago through cloud-based business tools, chat applications and email, according to an analysis of 100 million data points from 30,000 Americans by workplace-monitoring company Prodoscore.â
...
âOur salespeople meet five to eight customers a day now [via videoconferencing] versus the one it took them three days [to see in the past] because of travel,â he added.
This gets reinforced in the comments of a pro-office op-ed in the NYT, which are at least worth skimming. Even though the author makes a case for some of the benefits of the office, the overwhelming sentiment in the comments is âscrew that, I love working from home and not commuting!â for all sorts of reasons, including less office drama/politics and fewer worthless meetings. Itâs clear to me that both overwhelming sentiment, as well as simple economics/costs, work against offices. I think they will go into a significant decline. One other point the author misses is that you can separate the social aspect from the work aspect with the rise of coworking spaces, which are exploding everywhere: a shared space where there are others you can interact with, but everyone works for different companies. Still get the networking and socialization without the long commute to one central office with all of your companyâs other employees.
"An important step is simply to permit more housing in more locations. We should put an end to zoning policies that restrict building to single-family homes and stop mandating that lots meet large minimum-size requirements, leading to sprawling, sparsely populated neighborhoods. Ending such restrictive zoning doesnât have to lead to the construction of towering apartment buildings. Rather, we should encourage cities to permit more homes on existing single-family lots, allow apartments in retail districts and near transit, and dedicate excess or underused public property like surface parking lots in downtowns to new housing. All of this can be done without materially changing the look, feel and experience of a place.
The second important step is to reduce the cost and uncertainty of getting a housing project built. It often takes years to get permission to build. Local government processes often allow multiple âbites at the appleâ of public comment and hearings for a plan. Sometimes, even when there is a vote to approve a project, a neighbor or special interest can sue to stop the approval, resulting in further significant delay. These delays add cost and risk, driving up the price of new homes and sometimes stopping projects in their tracks entirely.
...
These types of actions, which can be taken now, will lay the groundwork for a broad and shared prosperity. When denser housing is allowed, workers can live closer to their jobs, help save the planet by driving less and pay less in rent or mortgage payments because a bigger housing supply will lead to lower costs. Research shows that children tend to be more successful in neighborhoods with access to high-quality schools. In restricting building, more-affluent Americans are shutting lower-income families off from economic opportunity.
Now is an especially good time to reduce restrictions and allow for denser housing. Construction is hit hard during recessions, and opening up more building opportunities would be a stimulus for the industry, and it doesnât require any extra funding. This would get workers back to work, provide safe and affordable living for those hard hit by this pandemic and get property taxes and other revenue flowing back to local governments for the services communities need. It would be a win for everyone."
"Without a significant expansion in the supply of housing, adding vouchers would be like adding players to a game of musical chairs without increasing the number of chairs.
Market-rate construction can help: More housing would slow the upward march of housing prices. New York and San Francisco are the nationâs most tightly regulated markets for housing construction, and it is not a coincidence that they also are the most expensive. Tokyo, often cited as an international model for its permissive development policies, has expanded its supply of homes by roughly 2 percent a year in recent years, while New Yorkâs housing supply has expanded by roughly 0.5 percent a year. Over the last two decades, housing prices in Tokyo held steady as New York prices soared."
Finally, I'd like to end with a radio show I did with Bill King along with Carrin Patman and Tom Lambert of METRO on what's happening with the past, Covid present, and potential future of transit. Apologies for my bad body language - I didn't even realize I was being videoed until over halfway through, lol. I was just focused on my notes and getting the audio right.
Discouraging panhandling, airport wag brigade, 6-figure incomes, Grand Parkway size, TAMU TMC growth, and more
Big Idea of the Week before getting to our smaller items: I think the City needs to hang signs over major panhandler intersections saying:
"Please give to charity, not panhandling."
I think this could make a major positive improvement in the city over time, both at the intersections and among the panhandling population which would have to go to charities with real comprehensive services rather than just unsafely collecting dollars in the middle of busy roadways from intimidated motorists and doing who-knows-what with it.
One key: making sure to hang them high up near the traffic lights. If they're down low, the panhandlers will either tear them down or deface them.
Moving on to this week's items:
Houston has the 9th-most six-figure jobs in the country, 8th if you combine San Francisco and San Jose. We're the 5th-largest metro, so we're punching a little below our weight, with Boston, Seattle, SF+SJ, and DC pushing us down. On the plus side, we still edge out DFW even though they're a bigger metro than us.
This is pretty freaking cool: See how big the Grand Parkway is compared to other land formations. "Grand" is an appropriate label. Almost all of London, Paris, Chicago, DFW, Mexico City, Rhode Island, DC-Baltimore, or the SF Bay Area - among others - would fit inside! Towards the end, they compare Texas to other landmasses. Spoiler alert: it's big.
Finally, can we *please* get a wag brigade at Houston airports?! Get a small army of these cuties wandering the terminals and it will give Houston a PR buzz that money can't buy. It would also encourage more people to connect on flights through Houston as well, which would stimulate United and Southwest to add more service.
Three perfect days in HTX, growth forecasts, increasing our density, reducing homelessness, protesting property taxes, and more
Happy New Year/Decade everyone! Hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I did (OC/LA w/ family). Lots of backlogged smaller items, but before we get to them, a short word about our sponsor: if one of your new year's resolutions is to save big money on electricity this year, My Best Plan is incredible at absolutely optimizing the lowest-cost electricity plan for you. I've known David over there for years (fellow Rice MBA), and his optimization algorithm is the best, bar none. And completely unbiased too, which can't be said for some of the other optimizers out there that have been uncovered as fronts for electricity marketing companies. Send him (or me) your latest electricity bill to get an estimate of your potential savings - it's free, and you have nothing to lose while potentially saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars (as he's saved me over the years).
On to this week's items:
The Greater Houston Partnership has released its 2020 Employment Forecast. Only time will tell if their vision is 20/20... (sorry, couldn't help myself! ;-)
Speaking of density, the City is moving forward with plans to allow more density (reduced setbacks and parking) near transit, but Michael Skelly doesn't think they're going far enough. I think it's a modest start that can be expanded incrementally to minimize opposition.
And a funny story: came across these stories in my newsfeeds, thought they sounded familiar, then realized they're older posts of mine being republished at the Market Urbanism Report, lol! (with permission, of course) Just glad to see the ideas spread.
The Global Housing Crisis by Richard Florida at Atlantic CityLab. This is a long-term competitive advantage for Houston and Texas, one of the few places still building enough housing to meet demand.
Houston's Intercontinental Airport (IAH) did really well in the most recent Skytrax rankings (direct link). And Hobby moved up 20 places to 99th overall in the world (15th in the US), and 9th Best Regional airport in US. Hat tip to Ryan.
IAH
1st most-improved in US (7th in the world)
1st in North America for best airport dining (7th in the world)
3rd overall in US
5th overall in North America
48th overall in world
Great paper from Dr. Luis Torres at Texas A&M on The cost of building regulations. I'm looking forward to collaborating with Dr. Torres on future COU papers.
"So which metro areaâHouston or Portlandâis doing urban density better? In the objective sense, Houston is, by fitting in more people. Subjectively, it depends on oneâs tastes. Portlandâs dedication to historic preservation, low-rise, so-called tasteful development, and pedestrian orientation is indeed charming. The core area feels like a slightly bigger version of an antiquated liberal arts college town, where the pace of life is slow and the people are intentionally offbeat. The fact that this sits amid the backdrop of cloudy skies and evergreen-covered hills gives the place an ethereal quality.
Houston, meanwhile, is too busy urbanizing to even try and achieve this pretension. It is building upward, outward, and everything in-betweenâand is doing so rapidly and unapologetically, with the metro area population increasing since 2010 by 852,054, compared to 208,946 in Portland. This has made Houston, inside and outside of its core, a completely different place than Portland: more grandiose, vertical, diverse, global, monied and in your face. Indeed, there is an extent to which Houston, with its large gleaming skyscrapers and overt street-level multiculturalism, almost makes Portland feel like a cow town.
This is not to say that one is obligated to likeâmuch less live inâeither Houston or Portland. But it does make a statement about markets versus planning, in respect to urbanization. If people want citiesâas many Americans seem toâthey should embrace growth, markets and deregulation; it they want âtownsâ, they should embrace planning, regulation and a collaborative process that allows community interests to navel-gaze about every last land-use decision.
I certainly know what type of place Iâd rather live in."
Bike plan prudence, how spontaneous order keeps Houston affordable, suburbs winning, high cost of zoning, and more
Before getting to this week's items, a short comment on the city's new bike plan: while Iâm all for making biking better/easier/more popular (especially along bayous and power-line rights-of-way), Iâm a bit worried that some activists are using it as a smokescreen to attack cars (reduce speeds, take away lanes for bike lanes, etc.), which of course carry magnitudes more people than bikes do, especially in Houston. It would be the equivalent of disrupting/slowing big jets at IAH so little single-engine prop planes have an easier time, and how much sense would that make?
I feel the same way about initiatives to reduce traffic deaths: noble intention, and we should certainly work on it, but within the realm of prudence. For example, radical reductions in speed limits would certainly reduce traffic deaths, but it would also slowly suffocate cities from a lack of mobility. Thank goodness autonomous technologies are coming to save us from our own bad driving...
There are a heck of a lot of new items this week, so here we go:
Big Ideas for Houston's Big Problem Areas: Some good creativity in the ideas here, but I just have to laugh at any idea that involves closing Westheimer to make it a pedestrian greenway. Oh the utter traffic havoc and local business/resident riots that would cause...
"Increased frequencies did far more to increase ridership than fare reductions, the paper found. So-called âchoiceâ riders are most likely to value their time more than money (at least, within the range of transit fares), so this makes particular sense in areas where most people already have cars.
The Antiplanner remains convinced that transit will soon be rendered obsolete by shared, self-driving cars. But until that happens, there seems to be little reason in most cases for cities to build new rail lines, as innovative bus services should be able to attract riders at a far lower cost."
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, many US cities have a lot to learn from Houston. With tight development restrictions, out-of-date urban planning regimes, and burdensome regulations forcing middle- and lower-class Americans out of West Cost and Northeastern cities, Houstonâs mix of affordable housing and economic opportunity is more valuable than ever. As other cities have attempted to maintain tight, centralized control on urban and economic developmentâexemplified by a recent push by Dallas to shutter local businesses in order to attract chainsâHouston has opted to take a back seat to residents, entrepreneurs, and civil society groups in cultivating economic development and crafting urban communities.
Some continue to blame Houstonâs unique approach for everything from flood damageâas if imposing side setbacks and keeping delis out of neighborhoods would avoid statewide floodingâto remaining pockets of poverty within the city. Certainly some form of citywide coordination on data collection and service allocation in pursuit of efficiency and equity makes sense. Yet past attempts to impose greater centralized urban planning on Houston have been defeated by overwhelming working-class opposition every time. Those residents know something many in the urban planning world donât. It is well past time that we start taking Houstonâs success seriously."
"According to a recent paper by the economists Chang-Tai Hsieh, from the University of Chicagoâs Booth School of Business, and Enrico Moretti, from the University of California, Berkeley, local land-use regulations reduce the United Statesâ economic output by as much as $1.5 trillion a year, or about 10 percent lower than it could be."
Super Bowl kudos, Houston keeps winning, Texas HSR questioned, and more
First the Super Bowl items this week, which was the biggest NFL comeback/collapse since... well, this, which I remember all too well. From everything I've seen and everybody I've spoken to, we pulled off the hosting with flying colors. Congrats and thanks to everyone involved for their hard work. Unfortunately it could be quite a while before we get another one - too many cities are building new stadiums or upgrading old ones (Miami, NOLA) - each guaranteed at least one Super Bowl - and I'm betting the $2.6+ billion behemoth in LA will get more than that.
Great four-minute introductory video to Houston. I love it, but it has a bad stat in it at the 2:40 point (1:46 left). Houston may have ~190 nonstop *destinations*, but we have *way* more daily flights! 190 would be pretty pathetic for daily flights â we have north of 5 or 600 at IAH plus ~200 at Hobby â canât find current hard stats that would include all airlines. Wish the HAS kept them on their website...
"Houstonâs Quiet Revolution: A modern settlement house movement is brewing in Texas. Have organizers figured out the secret to reviving the immigrant dream?" Great excerpt:
"I sat down with Angela Blanchard last year at a coffeeshop in the Third Ward, a historically black neighborhood about two miles from her house. She had walked there to meet me, so I brought up the concern of some self-appointed urban advocates who want to redesign Houston to make it âwalkable.â She laughed:
'Iâm sorry. I didnât mean to roll my eyes, but everyone is trying to create these precious neighborhoods. I remember being at a conference and someone said the thing we need to do with poor neighborhoods is make them walkable. I thought this was absolutely hilarious. If youâre in a poor neighborhood, your neighborhood is walkable. It might not be a nice walk or a fun walk, but you walk. ⌠I actually love Houston for its total, messy, sprawling randomness. I get invited to conferences where people talk about Houston with frowns on their faces. People havenât been able to figure out our city and how to make it smart and precious like other cities that no one can afford to live in. My biggest concern for this city is that it remains a place where you can start at the bottom and work your way up. Where itâs a good city to begin in, and where if you have a dream and water it with hard work, it amounts to something.' "
Our food beats NYC, increasing METRO's P&R ridership, canal expansion impact, solving civic problems, Katrina refugees did better in Houston, and more
Happy New Year everyone! New year, new mayor, new 4-year term - it'll be interesting to see how the city addresses its challenges and goes forward from here. Time for some fiscal new year's resolutions? Lots of small items stacked up over the holidays:
"Houstonians know our city offers great food, and now the rest of the country is learning that, too. In an article published Monday, Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema ranked the Bayou City as the fifth best food city in America.
That puts Houston ahead of traditional powers like New York (eighth) and Chicago (seventh) and just behind New Orleans (fourth). Portland tops Sietsema's list.
...
And there were plenty of surprises on the journey. I canât wait to eat in Houston again, but New York let me down, at least for the present.
...
Houston, where have you been all my (food) life? Your best Vietnamese cooking returns me to Saigon, and some of your Chinese menus rival those Iâve dipped into in Beijing. As for Mexican, the seafood-themed Caracol and Cuchara, staffed by female chefs from different regions of Mexico, set the pace. Meanwhile, locals of all persuasions gather around the cityâs signature: not fajitas, but Asian-Cajun seafood boils. Few food scenes enjoy the easy, Texas-size camaraderie found in the countryâs fourth-largest city; the chef of the popular Underbelly goes so far as to promote the competition by sharing a list of his favorite eats with his customers. As one discerning palate put it, âIf L.A. and New Orleans had a baby, it might be Houston.â
"Houston-area builders permitted more new houses and apartments between 2011 and 2014 than their counterparts in every other large U.S. metro, equal to almost 10 percent of this area's housing supply in 2010" Center for Opportunity Urbanism ranking in Forbes. Chronicle article here. That is a pretty staggering amount of new housing stock!
"Higher tax-free benefit for mass-transit commuters: One of the expiring tax breaks the huge new federal spending bill has made permanent is a gift to those who pay for mass-transit commuting costs. The bill raises the monthly amount allowed to be paid with pretax income to $255 starting in 2016. The current limit is $130, so this will be a big benefit. The same amount will also apply to the pretax monthly amount car commuters can use for parking costs (which was $250 per month)."
Air New Zealand arrives in Houston! âWith the beginning of Air New Zealandâs service from George Bush Intercontinental to Auckland, Houston becomes the only city in North America with nonstop air service available to all six inhabited continents,â said Houston Aviation Director Mario Diaz."
"The women werenât going to Fayetteville but, rather, to places like Houston. âFor low-income people in the South, Houston is a pretty darn great place,â Hendren said. âItâs not a beacon of phenomenal upward mobility like Salt Lake City. But itâs kind of the Salt Lake City of the South.â The odds of going from the bottom to the top in Houston are 9.3 per cent, which puts it fifteenth out of the top fifty U.S. metro areas.
...
Those who preferred Houston saw things very differently:
Better schools in Houston: 35%.
Found a better job in Houston: 35%.
Overall quality of life in Houston: 33%.
Lower crime in Houston: 31%.
Better housing in Houston: 27%.
Better access to health care in Houston: 21%."
Finally, our comment-of-the-month for December with good, practical suggestions for Houston on improving HOV/HOT/MaX lanes. Hat tip and thanks to John Augusto.
Lots more where those came from, but that's enough for this week. More next week. Good luck to everyone with their new year's resolutions!
Houston vs. architects & Dallas traffic, DC loves our food, WSJ hates our pensions, and more
This week's items:
I think this is a pretty good analysis from Kinder on why Houston has (marginally) more traffic congestion than Dallas. I especially agree with the last part about Houston keeping more activity in the core vs. more widely spread-out in Dallas. Yes, we are both multi-centric cities, but if you look at the job and activity concentration we have in the Downtown-TMC-Uptown triangle, Dallas doesn't compare - and I think that's a good thing. I like our balance of a vibrant core with multiple centers better than the more pure dispersion of DFW, even if it does create a little extra traffic congestion.
Houston, the 'stroboscopic' city. News flash: architects aren't fans of our less-than-tidy-nor-avant-garde design aesthetic. Talk about a narrow perspective. Theyâre completely judging the city on architectural aesthetics â not even a nod to the economics of the free market making lives easier for millions. I blogged about this long ago: architects often think about cities as just one big beautiful architecture project enforced through planning and regulation â they couldnât care less about the functional aspect of millions of people living and working together or keeping cities affordable for the poor and middle class.
"Ranking first in every category, Houston is hands-down the best metro area for registered nurses. At 14.6 percent, the Houston metro made up the largest share of nursing jobs among the top ten. Combined with the highest average salary and the most affordable housing options, RNs can enjoy a high standard of living in Bayou City."
The Washington Post is reviewing the top ten food cities in America, with this month's focus on Houston - and they were very impressed! Love these quotes!
âEverything you know about Texas is wrongâ "Houston, you have a problem. Your food scene deserves more love."
Why expand freeways when they just refill? plus local think tanks, we're #1 in N.America trade, and more
Before getting into this week's smaller items, I have to call BS on this disparaging of the Katy freeway expansion because congestion and trip times are back up. It completely ignores both the fact that the new I10 has the two-way HOT lanes option for all drivers and transit riders, as well as the fact the new 23-lane freeway is moving far, far more people than the old 7 lane freeway - and isn't that what transportation infrastructure investments are supposed to do? How is "we shouldn't build this - too many people will use it" a legitimate argument? It's absurd on the face of it. Have you ever heard someone say "We really shouldn't build or expand that airport - too many people will want to fly"? Sure, economic growth causes freeways to grow congested over time (as can trains, btw - see Tokyo and NYC), but using that as an argument against expansions is a slippery slope that if you ran it backwards through history would lead to Houston having few or no freeways - and how many people think we'd be the economic powerhouse we are today without our robust, multi-lane/multi-loop freeway network we've expanded over the decades?
Brookings Global Cities initiative: scroll down to the map and click on Houston to see our trade flows across North America, where we rank #1 among metros, ahead of NYC, Chicago, and LA. You can also download a pdf with details about Houston's trade flows. Hat tip to Carroll.
Finally, last week I mentioned this great fact sheet infographic on Houston from Patrick over at the GHP, but I forgot to mention that my favorites are the fact that we're up to 190 nonstop destinations from our airports (seriously impressive - the airports have been on a tear lately adding new service) and that we have more jobs in the metro area than 36 states!
"Thus, my conclusion on Texas Central Railway is about the same as on All Aboard Florida. Both are private sector projects, to be done via project finance that must be paid back from the project's own revenues. There is little or no risk to taxpayers, federal or state, in either project."
ULI makes the economic case for increased walkability in Houston. While I do support overall efforts to increase walkability, I suspect they have their cause-and-effect a little muddled here when they claim walkability adds so much value. Walkability is a proxy for density which is a proxy for an in-demand neighborhood, so of course rents are higher, but walkability isn't necessarily the primary driver (although I'm sure it helps). That doesn't mean a developer can move a strip center up against the sidewalk and put apartments on top of it in the far suburbs along 1960 and instantly add value to it - in fact he might kill the retail with the inconvenient parking. Same reason suburban developers don't build large subdivisions of tightly packed mixed-use and townhomes up against the sidewalk. A comparable analogy would be noting that cars with a top speed over 150mph (i.e. luxury and sports cars) can charge, on average, much higher prices, so all cars should be designed to go that fast - the logic doesn't quite hold.
Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile) has an excellent piece in the City Journal: "Libertarians of Convenience: Urban progressives favor deregulationâbut only for things they like or want to do." At least the urban left is starting to realize the significant negatives of urban overregulation, but let's hope they broaden that freedom over time to things that aren't part of their orthodoxy. I love the concluding paragraphs that give a nice shout-out to Houston:
"In Texasâs cities, by contrast, progressives often share, to some degree, the stateâs pro-freedom, pro-market ethos. Thatâs why Houston, though hardly without restrictions on building, has no zoning per se and a pro-market Democrat, Annise Parker, for mayor. Unsurprisingly, it remains an affordable place to live, as do other low-regulation cities, such as Indianapolis.
At least some on the left appreciate the principle of liberty when it comes to things like free speech: they understand that odious opinions have to be tolerated, or everyoneâs liberty is at risk; and that selective free expression isnât really free. But they fail to see that selective economic freedom brings its own injustices and inequities. Progressives should embrace a broader principle of economic liberty for American citiesânot only for the sake of their own pet causes but also because itâs the right thing to do."
"Forty-four of North America's largest airports have "international" in their title. Only one has the word "intercontinental." No word yet on whether Houston's proposed space port will be named "intergalactic."
Fifteen of the world's 20 busiest airlines serve Houston. They are Delta Air (1), United (2), Emirates (3), American (4), Southwest (5), Lufthansa (6), Air France (7), British Airways (8), Air China (12) Singapore Airlines (14), Turkish Airlines (16), Air Canada (17), KLM (18), and Qatar Airways (19).
When Air New Zealand starts service later this year, IAH will be the only airport in North America that serves all six inhabited continents. There are only four other airports in the world that can claim the same--Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Johannesburg.
...
When the Houston's Hobby International Terminal opens this fall, Houston will be one of only six markets with dual international hubs"
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.
