So I submitted this with a little help from AI, which they published!
Tory Gattis, Harris County: This concept features a modern and stylized representation of a bridge, symbolizing a pathway to success and a connection to the community. The clean lines and vibrant colors reflect an energetic and forward-looking city. This logo is optimistic and welcoming, embodying the spirit of "The Opportunity City." It would also be super-cool to integrate the "Be Someone" bridge into the logo, although that would require the city to protect it going forward.
Some of the other submissions were also quite good and had great elements to them. But a lot of them also use elements that are not timeless and will run into the same issues as the current aging seal, like the downtown skyline or oil rigs or rockets. It’s hard to make something timeless, which mine kinda does (accidentally). I also just noticed the two sides of the bridge in mine are red and blue coming together, a nice subtle political reference. Houston has always done best when it operates in a working together ‘purple’ manner.
Honestly, I doubt the City will really consider undergoing a revamp, as it would create a ton of political interests weighing in and end up as some bland compromise-by-committee monstrosity 🙄
One more lead item so the blog lives up to its name this week ;-) Assuming the River Oaks Theater won't be taken over by a live theater group (really the best option), my suggested best realistic option in a streaming world: since Weingarten wants another high-rise there, preserve and repurpose it as a cool public lobby and coffee bar, marquee and all. Sure it's sad to lose the actual movie theater, but does that have any chance when you can stream pretty much any independent film at home any time?
Moving on to lots of backlogged items to catch up on this week:
Dallas insanity: $1.7 billion for 2.4 miles of mostly subway. That's $708 million per mile! Glad Houston METRO is being a lot more pragmatic and prudent with their resources than this. Hat tip to Oscar.
Antiplanner on Reinventing the Jetliner (i.e. high speed rail) with some compelling opening paragraphs:
"Suppose I told you that I have reinvented the jet airliners that carried Americans more than 750 billion passenger miles–about 10 percent of all passenger travel–in 2019. My reinvented jet will go less than half as fast as existing jets. It will cost six times as much to operate, per passenger mile, as existing jets. Unlike existing jets, which can go anywhere there is air, the reinvented jet will only be able to go on a limited number of fixed routes.
This wondrous invention will become a reality if the federal government spends a mere one, two, or possibly three or four trillion dollars. Does that sound like a good deal? No? Yet that is exactly what high-speed rail advocates are proposing. Some proposals, such as the Green New Deal, even call for almost completely replacing low-cost, fast jet airliners with high-cost, relatively slow trains."
Now on an opportunity cost basis, just imagine if those trillions went directly into carbon reduction instead of white elephant high-speed rail lines??
"Less than 50 percent of people who worked in Manhattan offices in 2019 will be working from those offices in the coming years, according to a recent survey by the Partnership for New York City."
"One thing I always admired about Houston is how confidently immigrants claim public space for themselves—how working families picnic in Hermann Park or elated quinceañeras roam the Galleria with their brightly attired entourages and pose for portraits before the Waterwall."
Which relates to this good news for Houston: "Among his clients, more than half now cite diversity as a top criterion when choosing new locations"
I keep reading how Houston is losing its affordability and median home prices have gone up 34% since 2010, but isn't that just 3% per year (compounded), slightly above inflation?
Joel Kotkin: The death of the American city - Rising crime and a pandemic-inspired exodus are powering urban decay. Great quote:
"Cities do not thrive by having more cutting-edge coffee shops, trendy restaurants and edgy boutiques; they need safe streets, decent schools and jobs for middle and working-class families."
My HBJ piece on NZ adopting TX MUDs, Techxodus, video on Houston's identity, future of offices, HTX developments in 2021, Stack City, rich zip codes, and more
"Harris, the most populous county in fast-growing Texas with 4.7 million people, went to six zip codes on this year’s list from just one last year." ...
"Almost half of the richest zip codes, 49 of the 100, are in just seven counties: Manhattan & suburban Westchester County in NY, Connecticut’s Fairfield County, Chicago’s Cook County, California’s LA & Santa Clara counties, & Houston’s Harris County (6)."
Techxodus: The flight of terrified techies from California to Texas marks the end of one era, and the beginning of a new one
"Travel is a part of our lives. Instead of treating it like a cost, we should embrace it, using it to enhance our economic and social well beings. To the extent that government is involved in transportation, instead of trying to limit travel it should do what it can to enable it and to extend the benefits of travel to as many people as possible."
“There are a number of examples of the Texas-style stack in and around our larger metropolitan areas, including Houston, which, because of its large number of stack interchanges, is known as “Stack City””
My first time hearing that nickname - curious to hear in the comments if others have come across it before?
NYT: The Future of Offices When Workers Have a Choice (archive link) - Some work spaces in central employment districts may become housing, and some housing in residential areas may become work spaces. My prediction is that managers will try to get people back to the office, but it will be very bumpy (not everybody vaccinated, virus continues to circulate at a low level, employers sued by employees that get sick, people unhappy with returning to commute), and talent will start looking for employers that don’t require the commute, even a day or two a week. Also companies will find they can access much more affordable remote talent globally, and those companies will start winning vs. companies constraining themselves to limited, expensive local talent pools. Key excerpt:
“Even before the pandemic, there were signs of trouble with the office market in the handful of cities where the “creative class” had been flocking. In 2018, net migration to New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco was negative, while the U.S. economy grew at a healthy 2.9 percent. Creative magnets like London and Paris were experiencing similar declines.
The explanation for the declines — mostly high housing costs because of severe limits on new construction — obscures other forces that were destabilizing the traditional office market. In the middle of the 2010s, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and others started splitting their headquarters into multiple locations. Stripe, one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, went a step further. In 2019, it “opened” a remote hub, hoping to “tap the 99.74 percent of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs” in San Francisco, Seattle, Dublin and Singapore.
For the fastest-growing companies, being able to tap into talent anywhere became more important than having all their teams in one place. Smaller cities were good enough. In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been a surprise, despite all the talk about the importance of giant, dense labor markets to fuel innovation. After all, Silicon Valley itself is not a city but a cluster of sprawling towns scattered along a highway.
The defining characteristic of this new version of the creative class may not be where it lives, but its ability to live anywhere it wants. Put differently, people move to certain cities in search of better-paying jobs, but it’s now possible to earn high (if not the highest) salaries from almost anywhere. That has been true in certain smaller cities in recent years (Austin and Denver in the United States, for example, and Manchester and Leeds in Britain). To a lesser extent, it has also been true for people who chose not to live in cities at all.”
“All of that was overblown. We never even got close to capacity,” Delgado stated. “It’s just crazy. Crazy, crazy, out of control, overblown stuff. It’s fear, basically. It’s a fear-factor so the patients, particularly older patients, are afraid to death to do anything. There’s elderly people with chest pain staying at home and just dying, or coming in late — someone brings them in — they’ve already had a big heart attack. A lot of that is going on, and it’s really unsettling.” ...
“We always had the idea that we would not be overwhelmed quickly like New York,” Delgado said. “A lot of people got infected very quickly in New York because the population density there is just many orders of magnitude greater than Houston, Texas. That is the problem, the problem is all of them getting infected at a short period of time. That’s the problem, and that’s what screwed up everything in New York. That never was going to happen in Houston.”
"I love the ugliness of Houston, but I know that’s far from all this city is. I can’t wait to get to know the community that has already felt welcoming and warm and to experience the food, music, museums, parks and more. Houston is far, far more than its outward appearance.
Until then, I’ll appreciate the comforting ugliness and continue my mission of trying all the take-out I can. Houston already has the best food in Texas, hands down."
"In Houston, African Americans enjoy high political representation, homeownership, historically black universities and several black newspapers – all of which empower the community, Conyers said.
“If people can negotiate and communicate, they don’t need protests,” he said.
Stein agreed that leadership in Houston has played an important role – and not just in city government.
“The black leadership in these communities tends to be church-centric, very much built into the churches. That’s not what you see in the North and Northeast,” he said. “And the second is, it’s an older population… and to a large extent, these are people who followed Dr. King’s nonviolence.”
Stein also credits less racial segregation than in other cities and its low density as factors that help keep Houston relatively peaceful in times of social unrest."
Great piece in Texas Monthly by Evan Minz on the new Houston book from Rice's Stephen Klineberg. I get that education is critical to Houston's future, but who's the right model for us to follow? Who's doing it right? I have trouble finding good examples, even in the much higher spending blue states. California spends much more per student than Texas but with worse results. The most success I've seen is the big charter operators - maybe we just need to let them expand even faster? That, plus more pre-K funding. The comments are also really good on this one. A favorite:
"The article is right, Houston isn't about the city, it's about the people. What most people outside of Houston don't understand is what that means. Houston is an attitude, a drive, a motive. Houston thinks forward, never back. The most generous, open people you will ever meet. Houston is not a destination, it's a journey."
WSJ: The Coming Urban Exodus - Failing progressive governance is making daily life too chaotic and stressful in many U.S. cities. A warning for Houston, where we're already seeing population shifting out of the city and county.
Scott Beyer, Market Urbanist: Three Ways the Government Blocks Urban Density - Limits on height, floor-area ratio, and dwelling units per acre have tremendous societal costs. Luckily Houston has very few of these. Excerpt:
"All these rules and more strip creativity and artistic flair from the city development process. Ultimately they raise rents preventing our cities from densifying, robbing the nation of wealth, productivity, and the opportunity for more people to live in economically vibrant urban settings. They’re perhaps the costliest regulations we have in the U.S., and, at least to me, make for our biggest domestic policy mistake."
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.
“New 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.
It’s 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.”
"For some, it’s 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 country’s most expensive cities, it’s 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 it’s 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 — New York, San Francisco and Seattle — 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 she’s hearing from mostly young families — professionals with small children — who want to trade the confines of a locked down New York City for houses with home offices and yards.
“It’s no longer temporary. People are saying, ‘I’m not going back. This could happen again and we don’t know when it’s going to end,’” said Bernstein.
“New York doesn’t feel worth it anymore,” 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 Houston’s (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).
What Hawaii can learn from Houston, our tourism niche, metro population racing, and more
Just a few items this week:
Very cool animated "bar race chart" of metro areas adding the most population between 2011 and 2018. As you can see, Houston was #1 much of it while oil boomed and the rest of the country struggled to get out of the 2008 crash. But then the rest of the economy took off, oil faded, and Harvey happened but we're still resilient enough to be #3, just getting edged out by Phoenix as California baby boomers cash out of their inflated houses and retire somewhere much cheaper but with easy access to kids and grandkids they leave behind in CA. Watch NYC, LA, and SF all drop like a rock as they become increasingly unaffordable.
Houston Strategies from 2006 on Chron Wayback machine. As you can see it hasn't changed, lol. My design is sort of stuck, and that's because I have a legacy Blogspot template that can't be upgraded to a newer design without either a lot of work outside my expertise or losing my archive of old posts. Hope you don't mind the old format. I'm kinda assuming the content matters more to my readers than a slick modern design ;-) Hat tip to Rich for the catch.
The real reasons Amazon didn't shortlist Houston for HQ2, urbanism doesn't reduce transportation costs, your TX right to AirBnB, and more
I'd like to open my post this week on Houston's hand-wringing over not being shortlisted for the Amazon HQ2. Now while I'm all for improving the city, and am excited about the new developments in the "innovation corridor" that might have been at least partially sparked by the rejection, we need to get some clarity on the real reasons Amazon didn't shortlist us (IMHO), and it's not because we're not good enough:
They don't want to compete with the energy industry for talent, especially when oil might spike to unknown highs at any time. At the end of the day, Amazon runs a pretty thin-margin business built on tech talent, and if the energy companies poach their talent whenever they're swiming in cash from high oil prices - or make them pay that talent more to keep them - it will destroy those margins. Not an option.
They didn't want to be seen as squeezing Houston for incentives while it's recovering from Harvey. That would definitely look very, very bad from a PR perspective.
As I've mentioned before, I ultimately think they're angling to end up in the DC area, mainly because there is a plentiful supply of underpaid and demotivated government tech talent there they can easily poach.
Moving on to this week's items:
TXDoT has posted updated schematics for the 45N/downtown project, which very unfortunately did not integrate any of the very thoughtful improvements suggested by Oscar Slotboom (updated). Come on guys, you can do better on a project that is going to reshape this city for most of this century! I am especially disappointed they will not be connecting any MaX Lanes through downtown to provide through-connectivity to other job centers (like TMC, Greenway, and Uptown - and the Interstate 10 express lanes don't connect into the MaX lane network).
Weekly Standard: The End of the Line - Light rail is a very expensive way to move very few commuters. Ironically featuring a picture of one of our light rail lines downtown, one of the most successful lines in the country.
"Perhaps the paper’s significance was best summed up by Smart’s mother, who was apparently unfazed by its somewhat surprising conclusion. “She was like, ‘Of course,’” Smart recalled. “’Everyone loves cars. It doesn’t matter where you live.’”
"The reason is simple — cars are vastly superior to alternatives for the vast majority of individuals and circumstances. Automobiles have far greater and more flexible passenger- and cargo-carrying capacities than transit. They allow direct, point-to-point service, unlike transit. They allow self-scheduling rather than requiring advance planning. They save time, especially time spent waiting, which surveys find transit riders find far more onerous. They have far better multi-stop trip capability. They offer a safer, more comfortable, more controllable environment, from the seats to the temperature to the music to the company.
...
The superiority of automobiles doesn’t stop at the obvious, either. They expand workers’ access to jobs and educational opportunities, increase productivity and incomes, improve purchasing choices, lower consumer prices and widen social options. Trying to inconvenience people out of their cars also undermines those major benefits.
Cars’ allow decreased commuting times if not hamstrung, providing workers access to far more potential jobs and training possibilities. That improves worker-employer matches, with expanded productivity raising workers’ incomes as well as benefiting employers. One study found that 10 percent faster travel raised worker productivity by 3 percent, and increasing from 3 mph walking speed to 30 mph driving is a 900 percent increase. In a similar vein, a Harvard analysis found that for those lacking high-school diplomas, owning a car increased monthly earnings by $1,100.
...
As Randal O’Toole noted: “Anyone who prefers not to drive can find neighborhoods … where they can walk to stores that offer a limited selection of high-priced goods, enjoy limited recreation and social opportunities, and take slow public transit vehicles to some but not all regional employment centers, the same as many Americans did in 1920. But the automobile provides people with far more benefits and opportunities than they could ever have without it.”
Houston's changes, challenges, opportunities, and identity
Apologies for the sporadic posting lately - it's been a crazy couple of months. My Center for Opportunity Urbanism recently held an HBJ-sponsored event (alternate link) to release our major report on Texas Urbanism, with a focus on the Texas Triangle cities. I'll have more to discuss on this in future posts, but in this one I wanted to give my thoughts/notes on the questions the HBJ moderator asked the panel during the event. How has Houston changed in the past 30 years?
Culturally, from provincial to much more cosmopolitan (including restaurants). Much more educated, attracting many more college grads. Higher demographic diversity. Economically full cycle, from the collapse of the first oil boom to the collapse of the second oil boom. Massive growth - more than doubled in metro population. Huge growth and densification inside the Loop, especially townhomes, apartments, and residential towers. Also the rise of the suburban edge cities: Sugar Land, Pearland, Katy, Woodlands, League City.
Why?
Obviously the second oil boom was a massive driver. The lack of zoning enabled easy densification. Culturally, our long history of comfort/tolerance with diversity has made it easy for immigrants to move here and assimilate. The energy industry has become much more global. Massive housing unaffordability developed on the coasts which made Houston a much more attractive proposition for all classes (including recent college grads). Freeway investments/expansions helped enable the suburban growth, especially the edge cities.
What are Houston’s biggest challenges?
Traffic congestion, and in turn keeping major employers in the core instead of moving out to the suburbs like Exxon and Shell (solution = network of MaX Lanes – Managed eXpress lanes moving the maximum number of people at maximum speed).
Education (Klineberg).
Risk of the fossil fuel industry being replaced with renewables – how long will the transition take and how will we adapt?
Building the Ike Dike before the Big Hurricane hits.
Resolving the City pension funding crisis and making them sustainable long-term.
What are Houston’s biggest opportunities?
Continuing to offer the highest standard of living among major metros in the US (esp. for families and mainly thru housing affordability), which helps attract a diversity of talent and cultures.
Continuing to develop a more urban core.
Growing the port, esp. trade via the expanded Panama Canal and downstream petrochemical investments with some of the cheapest feedstocks in the world.
Becoming the city of choice for foreign companies to put their Americas regional headquarters offices.
Houston’s has struggled with its identity in the past. How would you describe Houston?
America’s most affordable global city.
Cultural crossroads of opportunity: Started with South meets West meets Mexico in the 1800’s and evolved from there with immigrants from all over and the international energy industry.
Is it possible for Houston’s dynamic be appropriated in other cities, like Atlanta or Denver since they seem similar. Can they learn from us? They are not as global or diverse as us, but they can certainly learn from our mobility investments (freeways, toll roads, managed lanes) and free market in land use/development.
A New Yorker rediscovers Houston, Ike Dike case, 2004 vs. 2017 Houston, and more
This week's items:
A Tale of Two Super Bowls: Houston in 2004 vs. 2017. Some pretty cool statistical comparisons, like nearly double the hotel rooms, ~25% more airport flights, 67% more restaurants (!), and the Galleria has almost doubled its annual visitors! And how crazy would it be if the game is an exact rematch? But here's to hoping it's the Texans instead, which are looking pretty solid with a 3-0 preseason.
"In 2004, the New England Patriots defeated the Carolina Panthers 32-29 at Reliant Stadium. According to sports analysts, we could see this exact same matchup in the newly renamed NRG Stadium in 2017. Will Cam&Crew have a major chance at redemption? Only time will tell…"
Most of the country’s new apartments are going up right here in Houston. Almost a quarter of all apartments under construction in the country are in Texas, and Houston has the most in the state, which I would at least partially attribute to the lack of zoning, which often tends to be anti-apartments in most cities.
Finally, a longer but great piece in Thrillist, "Houston Has No Problem" by local that moved to NYC and has been amazed by how the city has matured since.
In New York City, I noticed the difference over the years. It went from people saying “Why would you ever go to Houston?” to “I wanna check that place out!”
It does an amazing job extolling Houston's virtues and what makes us a great city. It'll make you a proud Houstonian all over again. Highly recommended.
"Under a shared mobility system, the Gini co-efficient dropped from 0.27 to 0.11 for access to jobs; from 0.26 to 0.08 for access to health services; and showed near perfect equality at 0.01, down from 0.26, for access to education. The more efficient use of vehicles makes it possible to cut current prices of public transport journeys in the city by 50% or more without any subsidies."
"...transit can provide mobility for people who can’t or don’t want to drive, but it can’t relieve congestion, reduce transportation costs to taxpayers, save energy, reduce pollution, create real estate development, or stimulate the economy of a region."
"...these self-driving fleets will be significantly cheaper than owning a car, which sits idle roughly 95% of the time. With the savings, you will be able to escape your cramped apartment in the city for a bigger spread farther away, offering more peace and quiet, and better schools for the children.
Your commute will be downright luxurious, quiet time in a vehicle designed to allow you to work or relax. Shared self-driving cars will have taken so many vehicles off the road—up to 80% of them, according to one Massachusetts Institute of Technology study—that you’re either getting to work in record time or traveling farther in the same time, to a new class of exurbs."
Avoiding CA's mistakes, Astrodome talk, great rankings, cool H-town video, and more
Let's kick off this week's post with an event announcement: if you have even the slightest interest in the Astrodome, don't miss Jim Gast's talk this Thursday. I saw him speak at Rice, and he has a really compelling mix of great slides and stories of the Astrodome's history - so good I suggested he get it turned into a documentary. As an added bonus, he'll sign a copy of his Astrodome book ("The Astrodome: Building an American Spectacle - A book about the people, technology, and times that built the biggest room in the world") for you. Not to be missed. Details here.
In other news, our new Center for Opportunity Urbanism think tank had an incredible inaugural luncheon event last week, with over 200 in attendance (!) and yours truly got some nice pics and quotes on the front page of the Chronicle. California land use attorney David Friedman gave a scary talk about how environmental good intentions went awry in California starting in the 1970s and, combined with judicial activism, led to complete development and infrastructure stagnation as well as a gutting of the middle class there (housing and jobs). You can see his slides here. A cautionary tale for Houston and Texas.
"Paradoxically, perhaps the city’s biggest strength is its sprawl. Unlike most other big cities in America, Houston has no zoning code, so it is quick to respond to demand for housing and office space. Last year authorities in the Houston metropolitan area, with a population of 6.2m, issued permits to build 64,000 homes. The entire state of California, with a population of 39m, issued just 83,000... Joel Kotkin of Chapman University in California argues that thanks to cars, even over its vast size, Houston creates the same possibilities for people to meet and share ideas that generate wealth in denser cities such as New York. Sprawl may not be pretty—but it seems to work."
"Since 2009 the area has welcomed some 1,500 corporate relocations or expansions—and that’s just counting those that created 50 or more jobs, leased 20,000 or more square feet of office space, or invested $1 million or more in capital improvements.
...
In the past four years, greater Houston grew by half a million people—half from moves, half from births. Population growth means housing demand, and realtors sold more than 425,000 homes in the last five years, amounting to a home-closing rate of one every six minutes, according to the Greater Houston Partnership. What’s more, jobs boost construction, which is why last year Houston topped our list of Building Boom Towns: metro areas with the most new construction.
What’s behind the boom, besides the obvious oil explosion? Exports. Between 2009 and 2013, the value of Houston’s exports grew 74.5%. More than 3,000 companies in greater Houston do business internationally, by Jankowski’s count, from oilfield services giant Schlumberger to Universe Technical Translation. The metro area is now the nation’s top exporter, ahead of New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Detroit. "
Finally I'd like to end with this really well done short promotional video of Houston by the GHP. It'll make you proud to be a Houstonian (you can make it a more impressive full screen size with a click on the lower right corner brackets).
Big news, critiquing Dallas, Houston's transportation history, and more
First, some big news I want to share with all of you: the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism is pulling together a book on the future of cities and their suburbs, and they've asked me to contribute a paper! Very exciting yet humbling. Publication is estimated for the spring of 2016, so fortunately I have a bit of time to pull it together...
On to this week's smaller misc items:
Thanks to Bill King for the shout out. Total agreement supporting METRO as it revamps the bus system and backs off from the costly obsession with rail.
The Urbanophile does Dallas (doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same way, does it? ;-) followed by a mixed review of Downtown Dallas specifically. Reading the critique, I think he'd give our downtown a better review, although still mixed. I think he has some good thoughts on potential solutions that Houston should be considering, especially #1 on creating an authentic street experience appropriate to Texas. It also includes a great excerpt on the walkability challenge that I have also stressed for Houston:
"For one thing, Dallas temperatures are very high. It was in the 90s and blazing sun every day I was there. This renders the city functionally unwalkable. I wanted to do a lot more exploring but just couldn't because if I spent more than about 10-15 minutes outside I needed to take a shower.
When I tweeted this people kept talking about other places in the world with high temperatures. It may be that some places are acculturated to this, or too poor to afford air conditioning. But I actually didn't even get a good counterexample once you factor in humidity. Some folks mentioned Seville, Spain, but the July dew point in Seville ranges from 51-66 while in Dallas it’s 64-72. That’s a big difference.
So walkability and urbanity is going to mean something different in a hot, Southern climate vs. northern cities. Think of that as challenge #1."
Quote of the week from David Brooks at the NYTimes, the last part being relevant to Houston:
"Great and small enterprises often have two births: first in purity, then in maturity. The idealism of the Declaration of Independence gave way to the cold-eyed balances of the Constitution. Love starts in passion and ends in car pools.
The beauty of the first birth comes from the lofty hopes, but the beauty of the second birth comes when people begin to love frailty. (Have you noticed that people from ugly places love their cities more tenaciously than people from beautiful cities?)"
Yes, yes we do.
Finally, H-GAC recently released a new Mobility Now special edition video on "The Art of Transportation" celebrating 40 years of transportation planning in the region, including an extended conversation with County Judge Emmett. A lot of interesting history in here, including (surprise!) yours truly at the 4:32 mark.
If I were mayor, Houston planning and opportunity, complete streets downside, Buffalo Bayou history, and more
Some smaller misc items this week after an event announcement: a new preservation group called "Pier and Beam" is launching with a happy hour this Wed evening (11/20) at Mongoose vs. Cobra. If you're interested you can read more at the invite here and register here. Hat tip to Dave.
Q: After 33 years studying it, do you believe Houston's lack of zoning hurts or helps the city?
A: It's kept Houston's marketplace moving, and I think it puts us at an advantage over other cities. I'm not your typical planner. I have seen a warehouse piece of property become a single-family development in just a matter of a year, year and a half. You go to another, zoned city and that takes years to get through the approval processes. The lack of zoning gives us a lot of flexibility as a city to reinvent ourselves fairly quickly, and it allows us the ability to amend our rules fairly quickly to respond to problems. It's part of the energy, part of that can-do spirit that's in Houston.
KUHF asked respondents to finish this statement: "Please tell us what you would do if your were the mayor of Houston, using the sentence as a springboard: If I was the mayor, I would ..." My three answers around the Ike Dike, city branding, and METRO are near the bottom here.
"Our little squabble illustrates the tactics you can expect to see when the bike wars reach you. Cyclist-commuters may number no more than 2% of the adult American population according to a 2002 report by The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, but they are the ones who go to city council meetings. They'll push for the kind of "Complete Streets" policy that our city adopted, one that gives priority to pedestrians and cyclists over cars.
In the abstract, that will sound innocuous, but when the time for implementation arrives, you'll find yourself losing your street parking, street by street, as roads are repaved."
For Ting, Houston still promises “the idea of ‘if you work hard, you’ll reap the benefits.'" ...
He seriously thought about moving to Austin, given its young population, but to him, “the city just feels like a college town.” Next to Austin’s revelry, Houston is the mature, moneyed older brother: “It has the resources and the population I’m going after.”
Speaking of opportunity, there are fresh links to the Opportunity Urbanism report Joel Kotkin and I created at the GHP web site here (scroll down under Independent Research), including my policy framework. Hat tip and thanks to Patrick.
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.
