Houston Strategies

Protecting residents from dangerous industrial businesses, reducing crime, street parking for mixed-use retail, and rethinking Vision Zero

This week we have a special edition of Houston Strategies focused on... specific strategies for Houston (;-). The specific topics are protecting residents from dangerous industrial businesses, reducing crime, street parking for mixed-use retail businesses, and rethinking Vision Zero plans.

First, Judah passed along this story on zoning (or lack of it) coming up again in Houston since the warehouse explosion on the westside.  My simple observation is that we don't need zoning to address this problem.  If we have laws about minimum distances between adult business or liquor stores and schools+churches, we could certainly do the same for certain kinds of hazardous industrial businesses without adding zoning. More on this at blogHouston.

As far as reducing crime, the Houston police need to be all over using NextDoor as an intel source for neighborhood crimes.  It could make a huge difference in reducing all sorts of minor (and not-so-minor) crimes in the neighborhoods.

Midtown recently lost a very popular long-time bakery at least in part due to a lack of convenient parking near her street retail store in a mixed-use space.  This one hits home since it's my neighborhood.   Here's the quote:

“I’m so sick of Midtown,” Masson says. “The biggest issue is parking. Even though there is a humongous parking garage behind the bakery, no one knows it’s there. No one takes the time to look for it. They drive by, they don’t see a parking spot, they don’t pull over.”

I posted this to the Market Urbanism Report Facebook group and it generated a huge debate in the comments. While mixed-use sit-down restaurants seem to do well (people are willing to hunt for parking if they're staying a couple of hours), I think part of the problem for a quick in-and-out business like hers (bakeries, laundries, convenience stores, etc.) is she needs a couple of dedicated parking spaces right in front limited to her customers.  But since it's City of Houston street parking, they can't do that, so those spaces are always full of longer-term parkers visiting the neighborhood. I've noticed most strip centers (hated by urbanists), will offer their tenants dedicated spaces right in front of their businesses (with signs limiting parking to customers). Maybe the City needs to offer that for street parking as well?  Maybe the businesses pay for it?  For those sorts of businesses, people are not willing to hunt for parking and they’re also not willing to go through the parking meter hassle (it takes several minutes to go through the process at a CoH meter).  Just let the business pay for dedicated spaces during business hours (or, alternately, spaces limited to a quarter or half-hour).

Finally, Vision Zero plans have been adopted by many cities - including Houston - to reduce traffic fatalities, but they aren't working. Excerpts from another piece are a cautionary warning to Houston's efforts:

Labels: crime reduction, land-use regulation, market urbanism, mixed-use, mobility strategies, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:41 PM 0 comments

Vote for mobility solns, defending the Katy expansion, H-GAC cool tools, and more

A few quick small items this week followed by my response on debate about the Katy Freeway expansion:

• The Mobility Houston traffic solution forum was launched this month (background here) to crowdsource solutions to Houston's mobility problems, and I'd like to request up-votes for my proposal on MaX Lanes as well as this proposal for intersection improvements.  I know it's a slight hassle to register to up-vote, but there's not that many votes on the site, so yours can really make a difference and help good ideas get in front of public officials.  Thanks in advance for your support.
• Today I attended an impressive H-GAC presentation by Jeff Taebel on new mapping tools for figuring out which parts of the city are the best for investing to create dense mixed-use neighborhoods.  One tool makes it easy to identify neighborhoods that have the right density and street connectivity, and the other has impressive data on commuting patterns.  They are extremely slick tools, and wide open to the public, so try them out - I'm pretty sure you'll be impressed.  I really like and support their approach, which acknowledges the car-centric spread-out nature of our region, but rather than trying a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all, top-down approach to planning, they figure out targeted neighborhoods to prioritize investments (like bike and pedestrian amenities) where they'll have the most impact and do the most good.  An interesting data tidbit that came out of the presentation: average commute times have actually dropped in Houston since 2000, and at ~28 mins are only the 11th-worst in the country - not bad for the 5th largest metro area.  I'm guessing you're incredulous at that stat, but there's a good reason: as we added more than a million jobs, all of those newcomers tried to pick housing near their new jobs (including all of those recent college grads inside the Loop), thus lowering the overall average commute times for the region.  
• How much salary do you need to live comfortably in Houston? Not much is the short answer: around $50k, vs. well into six figures for cities like SF, San Jose, NYC, LA, San Diego, and Seattle.
• Joel Kotkin in Forbes on America's Next Boomtowns.  Houston is #6, although that's dependent on oil coming back to a more reasonable price.  Really nice picture of the Chevron buildings and circular skywalk downtown.

Joe Cortright responded to my post a couple weeks ago defending the Katy freeway expansion, but strangely chooses not to address the core points of not getting proper before and after congestion data (the expansion opened in 2009, not 2011 or later, so his data just shows the added congestion of the oil boom after it had already opened) or that more employers would have given up on the core city for the suburbs.  He does make a point about properly valuing external impacts like pollution, but that's not the role of transportation planners - that's the role of gas tax policy, CAFE mileage standards, and pollution control regulations (set those and then let people make choices).  He raises the alternative of investing in denser housing (the private free market does this, not government - and they're free to build as much as they like wherever they like, and they do wherever there's demand) or transit - but by any measure an equivalent spend on transit would have moved far, far fewer people for the tax dollars invested.  His data chart is actually a fantastic argument for Houston's freeway-heavy transportation spending: peoples' commute time tolerance is pretty much the same all over the world (roughly a half-hour), but in Houston (and DFW) they're able to go 12.2 miles during that time vs. much shorter distances in other cities.  That means they were able to access a better value house in a better neighborhood with better schools while still staying within a reasonable commute of their work.

Restricting freeways has three obvious consequences: 1) housing gets much more expensive, since there's less of it within commuting range of employers, 2) employers give up on the city and move to the suburbs with better value houses, neighborhoods, and schools for their employees (reducing the tax base), and 3) a city/metro becomes less of a unified economy and more of a series of fragmented, disconnected islands where people have limited employment options without moving.  I have no problem with dense or transit-oriented neighborhoods (see H-GAC bullet point above), and we have those options that people are welcome to choose.  But the fact that we build freeways and they fill up mean that the majority of people are making different choices based on weighing up their own values.  Since we live in a democracy, it seems reasonable for our elected representatives and their transportation planners to respond to those market choices rather than trying to force some socially-engineered alternative.  I stand by my original point: the government invested in a piece of infrastructure that has proven extremely popular and highly utilized - isn't that what we want from government investments of tax dollars?

Labels: affordability, development, economy, home affordability, MaX Lanes, mixed-use, mobility strategies, planning, rankings, transit-oriented development, walkability

posted by Tory Gattis @ 6:27 PM 5 comments

The Future of Transit

Last week I attended the GHP State of METRO luncheon and was pleasantly surprised.  The running theme is "Back to Basics" which I heartily applaud.  They are aggressively focusing on improving the core bus network and reversing the massive bus ridership losses of the last few years (from 90m in 1999 to 60m/year today).  Ridership is back on the upswing, and they're working a very promising new initiative to re-imagine the entire bus network.  They've completed a great initiative to convert the HOV lanes to HOT lanes, and they're expanding the P&R network.

Of course, rail is still the big issue.  The 3 new lines have consumed billions, and readers of this blog know I'm skeptical of their value.  To pay off they'll need to lead to a massive redevelopment and revitalization of the north, east, and southeast side neighborhoods they cross.  There is excitement about the Uptown BRT plan, although it won't be connected to the rest of the network until the University Line gets built, which is an open question.  Gilbert Garcia stated that they're studying doing a first phase shortened version of the U-Line "to Greenway Plaza", although it's unclear to me where that would start.   It seems obvious to me that if they're going to do a shortened University Line in the short-term it should connect the new Uptown BRT to the Main St. line - and they can circle back and add the Hillcroft transit center and UH later (UH is already on the SE line, so it would just require some transfers).

One really good idea I heard from an attendee that METRO needs to strongly consider: making the new protected Uptown BRT lanes open to vehicles from the I-10 and 59 HOV/HOT lanes, so a bus could exit directly into those lanes and get their passengers right to their buildings instead of requiring a transfer.  Brilliant.  I'm guessing the mixing of those buses with the BRT could be a little tricky, but I don't see why it would be impossible.

But what I really want to do here is back up and look at the big picture future for transit.  I don't think people truly appreciate how much self-driving vehicles will change things 10 and 20 years from now.  Not only will the capacity of the freeways vastly increase (automatic vehicles can travel much closer together and at higher speeds), but imagine this: waves of automated, driverless, small shuttle buses and taxis wandering the city all the time. You tell your smartphone where you want to go, and the network automatically sends the right shuttle your way to pick you up and take you nearly directly to your destination, with the potential for a few stops along the way to pick-up or disembark other passengers.  Now imagine the capacity of the freeways if they not only have more vehicles much closer together at higher speeds, but they're also carrying multiple passengers each in this manner.  And congestion priced lanes to keep them free-flowing.  Rail can't compete with that, either on a travel time or overall cost basis.  Investments we make in rail over the coming years may look particularly foolish a decade or two from now as these automated vehicles become more ubiquitous. I'm not sure any transit agency today is really thinking about this in their planning.  Houston should be the first.

Ironically, what destroys the viability of rail may actually stimulate higher-density mixed-use/TOD-type development.  What really impedes street-level retail is the lack of easy parking.  But that's not a problem if you can just step out of your vehicle and it can putter off on its own to remote parking.  Later, you just call it up on your phone and have it come right over to pick you up.  This could also reinvigorate retail in downtowns, including Houston, which has been trying desperately for years to do so.

There is growing consensus that this technology is coming.  We need to start integrating it into our planning instead of wasting money on the next wave of rail assets that will soon be obsolete.

Labels: commuter rail, Metro, mixed-use, mobility strategies, new urbanism, planning, rail, technology, transit, transit-oriented development

posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:59 PM 12 comments

Houston's last opportunity for another university campus?

Recently the Chronicle ran an article exploring options for developing KBR's 136 acres of land in the east end.  Peter Brown even put in his two cents.  It's a pretty amazing piece of land in the core, right on Buffalo Bayou with a downtown skyline view.

Source

The Greater East End District even says it's part of a larger set of 400 underutilized and vacant acres, which you can see some of in this picture:

Source

It also sparked quite a discussion over at HAIF.

Everybody seems to want this land to end up like CityCentre or the Sugar Land or Woodlands town centers, but the retail components of those places absolutely require the vast numbers of upper middle class residents in the many miles of neighborhoods around them to support them (the residents on-site are nowhere near enough support).  Given that this site does not have those income levels surrounding it, I'm not sure what's feasible.  It seems like there are a few options:

• Go for very high density so the on-site residents can support the retail.  There will definitely be a chicken-and-egg problem for quite a while as it is built out.  It seems unrealistic.  If people are going to live in that kind of density, I think they'd prefer to be inside the Walled Garden.
• Focus mainly on residential space, and the residents will drive elsewhere for most retail.  Possible, but not very interesting for such a prime parcel of land.
• Try to do something more tailored to the area demographics, like maybe a town center version of Gulfgate? (which I believe has been quite successful)  The problem is that the key to Gulfgate is being at the intersection of two major freeways, which is not exactly the case here.  Gulfgate is also mainly built around big box stores, which are hard to do in a town center format.

But I think there is a much bigger and more viable opportunity here.  Houston is weak relative to its peer metros in higher education.  We're below the national average, and even behind Atlanta and Miami.

Source

This parcel of land could be the last opportunity for Houston to add a major college campus to the city.  We should consider something similar to what NYC just did with Roosevelt Island, where after a long evaluation process they awarded it to Cornell for a technology campus.  That is likely to eventually be a huge economic development boon for New York.  Of course the City of Houston doesn't own the land, but it could be a facilitator (along with the GHP) to open discussions with the landowner and various universities to explore interest.

There are a lot of potential options:

• A branch campus of UH, like my proposed Houston Institute of Technology, an elite Berkeley-level campus to go along with the Tier 1 main campus and the open-access UHD campus.  Or the University of Minnesota is an example of a university with multiple campuses in the same metro area (Minneapolis-St. Paul).
• A branch of Texas A&M.  I like this option a lot.  We're close enough to the main campus it would be easy for faculty and students to travel back and forth, and it opens up a large pool of students for them that would prefer to save money by living at home in Houston instead of College Station.
• A branch of Texas Tech, like the way Atlanta has Georgia Tech.
• A branch of UT, since they have them in every Texas Triangle city except us (not counting UT Health in the TMC or UTMB Galveston), including two in the DFW metro.
• A branch of one of the more elite private or foreign universities.  This is a stretch, but worth exploring.
• We have traditionally African-American universities like TSU and Prairie View A&M, but I can't think of anything similar on the Hispanic side.  Would that make sense?  It would certainly fit the demographics of east Houston.
• In a similar vein, maybe a University of the Americas, with a Latin American focus, including both partnerships and exchange programs with schools in those countries.
• A new private university from scratch, endowed by one or more of our local billionaires.  A long shot, and of course Rice and UH would much prefer that money went to them.
• Something like what they've done with the Compaq campus, where multiple colleges share the site.  This might even work for branches of foreign universities looking to bring their programs to the U.S.

UH probably wouldn't be thrilled, but a little competition is good (see: SWA going international at Hobby vs. United at IAH), and it would attract more students from across the state and region to Houston, as well as provide new a new higher ed option for locals, which would have to be good for the city.  I think it would ultimately be a net positive for UH as we become more of an academic hub with more opportunities for collaboration.  Don't you think Harvard and MIT strengthen each other in Boston? (not to mention all the other schools up there)  And do you think the Texas Medical Center would be anything close to what it is today if it was a single monopoly institution instead of 50?  We need a synergistic cluster building attitude, not a "not in my backyard" one.

I'm looking forward to your feedback in the comments.  And if you know any of the right people that might initiate or facilitate something like this (or even just start the conversation at the right levels), please pass it along.  Thanks.

Update: The Chronicle of Higher Education picks up on the idea.

Labels: development, economic strategy, education, mixed-use

posted by Tory Gattis @ 9:26 PM 27 comments

Paying for Ike Dike and rail, aspirational cities, Metro's new GMP, and more

Before I get to some more misc items, a reader recently asked me my opinion on the new Metro GMP  referendum.  Bottom line: Nothing's perfect, but overall I like it. I wish Houston was getting more of its fair share vs. the other entities. But I like the slow, very modest GMP reductions, and that the extra is required to go to critical Metro needs like increasing ridership via buses and reducing debt.

On to the smaller items:

• The Chronicle on the stalled Ike Dike plan from the lack of funding.  It should reduce home insurance rates dramatically, so why not just tax those insurance plans equal to the savings to pay off the dike and come out ahead?  Nobody pays any more than they already are, and we go ahead and skip all the death and destruction.  If you agree and know any of the decision makers, please pass it along. Would love to see this get done.
• A Chronicle op-ed calling for more light rail to support pedestrian districts.  It's worth noting that these touted pedestrian districts in The Woodlands and Sugar Land are doing great without any light rail.  Houston also has plenty of these areas, starting with the big daddy, The Galleria. (A/C to boot!)  Then there's downtown, parts of Midtown, Uptown Park, City Centre, and the West U Village.  And new ones are being built near River Oaks and Uptown, including that new project east of the Galleria I forgot the name of.  When you look at all those, we're absolutely smoking The Woodlands and Sugar Land.
• Speaking of rail, Houston Tomorrow has a story on all the property value increases along the existing rail line.  High value-add along rail lines means Metro could fund them with a TIRZ instead of taxing the broader metro area for lines most will never use.  Why not?  Let the property owners that benefit pay for it.
• New Geography on the huge burden zoning puts on development.  Yet another point for Houston avoiding the whole mess!
• The benefits of cities come from size, not density, meaning it's ok if Houston sprawls rather than densifies (or does both, as it is doing). And, as I've mentioned before on this blog, it means it's important for Houston to continue supporting growth, even with the growing pains.

"Specifically, West, a theoretical physicist, and his team show that measures such as gross domestic product per capita and income per capita rise, on average, 15 percent with each doubling of city population....For example, the Seattle and Houston urban areas have population densities much lower than those of Paris, London, Hong Kong and even Los Angeles – yet they still rank higher among the most productive metropolitan areas in the world, according to the Brookings Institution Global Metropolitan Monitor 2011."

• Houston ranked #2 best city for millenials.
• The Urbanophile on "aspirational cities", meaning cities people aspire to live in without any direct connection to it.  Houston qualifies on 2 of the 3 possibilities: if you want to work in the energy industry, or if you want to live in a growing economically vibrant city.  Lifestyle - like Austin or Portland - not so much, although I think if more people really understood the lifestyle advantages of Houston, we might qualify in that category too.
• Houston has done very well adding college grads in recent years.  Good excerpt:

Atlanta, Houston and Dallas each have added 300,000 college grads in the past decade. This is far more than Boston’s increase of 240,000 or San Francisco’s 211,000. Once considered backwaters, these Sunbelt cities now all enjoy a critical mass of educated people. 

Houston boasts a percentage of college grads over 25 somewhat above the national average. Dallas-Fort Worth is just about at the national average. The total Houston increase in college grads over the past decade amounts to three times that of the capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif., twice that of San Diego and more than Philadelphia. Since hipness is not a well-known Houston trait (though it did place first this year on Forbes’ list of America’s Coolest Cities), and climate can hardly be seen as a positive, one has to imagine this growth has something to do with a job machine that has created over 100,000 new positions between 2006 and 2011. 

The addition of college grads leads to changes on the ground that tend to make cities even more attractive to future graduates. In the case of Houston, there’s been a proliferation of more sophisticated restaurants, clubs and bars in growing inner-city districts like Houston Heights, Montrose and Midtown. 

In the past, executives often turned up their noses at the prospect of relocating to the Gulf Coast metropolis, says Chris Schoettelkotte, founder of the Houston-based recruiting firm Manhattan Resources. Now, particularly given the weak national economy, Houston is increasingly competitive in the race to recruit skilled, educated labor, he says. This is particularly true with people at the beginning of their career. “I don’t get the pushback I used to get,” Schoettelkotte says. The message to recruits: “ You try to find a city with a better economy and better job prospects than us.”

That's probably enough items for this week. Be sure to check out this new site, "Houston Has Heart".  I love it! And this brand.  "Houston Has Heart" might even beat out "Houspitality" ;-)  Check out my item near the top of the Most Loved tab ("American Dream").  Vote for it if you like it, and/or add your own.  And their logo is pretty cool too:

Labels: density, development, growth, hurricanes, identity, infrastructure, land-use regulation, Metro, mixed-use, mobility strategies, new urbanism, rail, rankings, sprawl, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 7:08 PM 5 comments

Houston=Brooklyn? plus rankings, not-so-smart growth, anti-poverty incentives, mixed-use difficulties

Clearing out some smaller items:

• In case you missed it, Randal O'Toole had a must-read Sunday Chronicle op-ed on how smart growth would not save Houston from future Ashby high-rises, and in fact would create more.
• New Geography: Smart Growth loses Houston mayor's race. Hat tip to Josh.
• Has anybody seen a chart similar this one for Texas or other states? Note to politicians: incentives to stay in poverty are not good.
• An older Dallas Morning News article I recently came across on the difficulty of filling the ground-level retail space in mixed-use projects, which seem to be more popular with planners than with retailers, usually because of the difficulties of access/parking. The upper-floor residential is not enough to support the shops or restaurants. This may become more of a problem in Houston as development happens under the Urban Corridors ordinance near the LRT stations. Hat tip to Neal.
• From the national DMIBlog: Is Houston becoming the new Brooklyn? Not much news here, but might be of interest if you want to see an outsider's perspective. Hat tip to Jessie.
• The Milken Institute has released its 2009 Best Performing Cities list. Houston scores very well at #5, up from #16 last year and by far the largest metro in the top 10. Austin is #1, and Texas has 9 of the top 25. Hat tip to Neal.
• Continuing the rankings theme, a few cultural ones from Travel and Leisure magazine (out of 30 cities):

1. Theater: Houston #5, Austin 23, San Antonio 24, Dallas 27.
2. Museums: Houston #8, Dallas 24.
3. Classical Music: Houston #5, Dallas 22.

A nice sweep of our in-state rivals, and not a very close one at that. Hat tip to Brian.

Labels: economic strategy, mixed-use, politics, rankings, smart growth

posted by Tory Gattis @ 9:44 PM 2 comments

Lessons for Houston from the global urban revolution

Thanks to a generous invitation from the World Affairs Council of Houston, I was able to attend a recent talk by Jeb Brugmann, author of "Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World", on "Cities of the Future: Ideas for Houston from Cities of the World." Most of his talk focused on the benefits and risks of the rapid urbanization of our planet, especially in the developing world (with a focus on India). He articulated four primary benefits that are driving the global rural-to-city migration:

1. Concentration: making markets with proximity economies of scale. Our own example is the concentration of flower shops along Fannin north of the Medical Center, not to mention various farmers' markets.
   
2. Density: the most efficient possible cost structure. His developing world examples were similar to what you'd see in the NYC immigrant tenements 100+ years ago. While I agree that, in a world of walking and transit mobility, maximizing density is important, I don't think it's necessarily the optimal answer when societies become wealthy enough that other mobility technologies start to dominate, like the personal vehicle. It is all about maximizing connections to other people, and that is a combination of density and mobility, or what I refer to as opportunity zones.
3. Association economies
4. Extension of urban infrastructure and connections
   

As for urbanization risks, he mentioned several: crime (inc. organized crime), populism from income disparities, disease spread and mutation, and the financial/housing crisis. I did not know that the Pearl River delta in China, home to hundreds of exotic live animal markets, is a major source of mutating animal diseases that jump to humans (like SARS a few years back).

The most interesting part of his talk was on Curitiba, the Brazilian city famous for its BRT transit system. Some of his points on their system offer good lessons for Houston:

• The transit system is profitable, which is unheard of.
• 100 private bus companies compete
• Not master planned (more organic)
• Dedicated bus corridors
• Different optimally-sized buses by route
• Boarding tubes/shelters like the subway, to speed payments and boarding
• 385 routes
• 40-second headways (not sure on how many of the routes)
• 45% of daily trips are profitably served by BRT
  
• They have the most autos per capita of any Brazilian city, but the least gas usage per capita
  

This amazing high-service, low-cost system could easily be achieved in Houston if we were less obsessed with pouring billions into rail.

He ended abruptly by saying the new urbanist, mixed-use densification of San Jose, CA represented the future, and Houston should emulate it. He said they wanted to move away from the private corporate campus model of the tech companies. I don't buy it. Can you imagine Google or Apple maintaining their security if their buildings were part of a mixed-use campus open to the public? And San Jose's transit system is one of the larger disasters in America. A key excerpt:

...VTA has “the worst operating statistics of any American transit operator.” The reason for this, he says, is that San Jose — being built mostly after World War II — is one of the most spread-out urban areas in the country. Not only are people spread out, but jobs are spread out, with no job concentrations anywhere.

This makes large buses particularly unsuitable for transit because there is no place where large numbers of people want to go. So what was VTA’s solution when its bus numbers were low relative to other transit agencies? Build light rail — in other words, use an expensive technology that requires even more job concentrations.

Now it has one of the, if not the, poorest-patronized light-rail systems in America. So what is its solution? Build heavy rail, a technology that requires even more job concentrations.

The initial analysis for building BART to San Jose, Rubin notes, projected that it would cost more than $100 to get one person out of their car for one trip on BART (!!!). (By comparison, most bus improvements cost $2 to $6 per new ride, while light rail usually costs around $10 to $30 per new ride.) To make the numbers look better, VTA assumed that downtown San Jose would grow to be 80 percent the size of downtown San Francisco, which Rubin considers unlikely in the extreme. Even if it builds this BART line, VTA admits it doesn’t have the money to operate it.

VTA is now so heavily in debt that when the dot-com bust hit Silicon Valley, it was forced to cut transit service by nearly 20 percent. The in turn contributed to a 33 percent loss in transit riders. This makes San Jose’s light rail a true planning disaster and suggests that BART to San Jose, if it ever gets built, will be an even bigger disaster.

The fact that VTA is willing to sacrifice its transit riders in order to persue a dream of ever-more-expensive rail transit leads Rubin to conclude that, while he doesn’t know for sure if VTA is the worst-managed agency, “if there is a worse one out there, I hope I never find it.”

Does any of this sound ominously similar to Houston's direction?

I think there will be many more mixed-use, new urbanist projects, and they will be popular, but they will not be fundamentally transforming either San Jose or Houston. We will change the propulsion technology of cars before we make any mass, fundamental shift to density and transit.

On the other hand, he did make one point that I wholeheartedly agree with: it is extremely important to have a vibrant local developer community to do customized local development for a particular city's situation. Customize the urbanism, transit, and transportation to the city. Curitiba went against convention with BRT over heavy rail like NYC, London, and Tokyo. Houston should do the same.

Labels: commuter rail, density, development, Metro, mixed-use, mobility strategies, new urbanism, rail

posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:27 PM 10 comments

Critiquing Gene Locke's Transportation Plan (and HRG, NPR)

Today I attended mayoral candidate Gene Locke's transportation briefing, during which he unveiled his transportation plan, which had the usual stuff (improve regional coordination, get more state and federal money, etc.) but also introduced a few novel items (including the cute C.H.O.I.C.E.S. acronym).

I also had the opportunity to attend the Quality of Life forum last evening, in which all the major mayoral candidates contributed their particular policy dish to a political buffet intended to appeal to the most democratic palette possible. Over the course of the evening, the mayoral candidates spoke about parks, trails, trees, water, visual blight, etc. So this one is easy to sum up: "We all support improving quality of life within tight city budget constraints." No news there.

Here are some of the Gene Locke plan points that jumped out at me, most of which I support:

• Creating a "City Department of Mobility" and a Director of Mobility. Long overdue.
• Syncing traffic lights across the city as well as regionally. Fantastic idea. Although, good luck with cities like Bellaire, West U., and the Villages, which seem to revel in making it as slow as possible to cross their cities. Of course, their motivation is understandable: they don't want the Houstonians' traffic. But then, we do control their water supply, so we might have some leverage there...
  
• Expanding HOV service, which would mean longer hours, more Park-and-Ride centers, and, most importantly, increased service to business centers outside of downtown like Uptown/Galleria, Greenway Plaza, the Medical Center, and the Energy Corridor (a tough one because of widely spaced destinations).
• Getting real-time bus status online. Locke mentioned an iPhone, but I think any plain cell phone should be able to text a stop number to Metro and instantly receive a text reply with the bus routes headed to that stop along with their estimated times of arrival.
• Bring back the downtown trolleys. (And maybe also in Uptown and the TMC-Rice Village area.)
• "Reducing bus fares to increase ridership." That one's a direct quote from the plan, which went on to say that the city would "also look at a pilot program to eliminate bus fares at certain times" (like rush hour). Similar to Bill King's op-ed, this concept could substantially increase ridership, reduce cars on the road, and speed trip times (no fumbling for money).
• Promoting transit-oriented development, or "TOD," which can help accommodate growth without adding much traffic. Significantly, Locke does not support government planning to dictate how or where to build. "Let the market figure it out." Huzzah!
• Accelerating commuter rail. My long-time readers know I have mixed opinions when it comes to commuter rail. Some lines may make sense in narrow circumstances, but economics tend to force the shutdown of any express buses that even remotely compete with the rail line, often leading to longer commutes for riders (more stops and transfers, slower net speeds, longer walks to their final destination).
  

In Q&A, Locke endorsed continuing Mayor White's Safe Clear program, a very successful program recently backed up by a study. As far as what to do with the 25% of Metro's revenue that they turn over for "general mobility" (i.e. street improvements), he believes that decision will be decided by the voters. Personally, he would like to see some flexibility in how it's spent to improve regional mobility. I don't see any of Metro's member cities wanting to give it up, including Houston Public Works, despite Metro's desire to redirect it to transit/rail.

Overall, a pretty good plan.

Speaking of mayoral candidates, Houstonians for Responsible Growth came out with their endorsement yesterday of both Annise Parker and Gene Locke, while, not surprisingly, taking some shots at Peter Brown. Chronicle coverage and Brown response here. Even though some people believe HRG = "evil developers against neighborhoods," they're really a broader collection of well-intentioned people that want to preserve the strengths -- including vibrancy, competition, and affordability -- of Houston's historical free-market approach to development. That includes reforming and strengthening deed restrictions to protect neighborhoods. And don't forget that developers transform underutilized land into better and higher uses by increasing property value, which adds to the city's tax base to support public safety, schools, libraries, parks, flood control, and infrastructure investment and renewal.

Finally, if you haven't heard already, NPR is doing a series of stories on Houston this week (hat tip to Mark). This is the lead story, which contains links to the others. Two stories so far will particularly appeal to readers of this blog: this one on our approach to growth (including great comments by Rice prof Stephen Klineberg and Harvard professor Edward Glaeser), and this interview with Mayor White, which include discussion of energy efficiency, Ashby, light rail, and TOD.

Labels: commuter rail, deed restrictions, development, home affordability, land-use regulation, Metro, mixed-use, mobility strategies, quality of place, rail, transit-oriented development

posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:54 PM 3 comments

Houston vs. how Americans want to live

David Brooks had an extremely insightful column last week in the NY Times on what Americans are looking for in their ideal living environment. I liked the opening in particular:

You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.

Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption.

The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.

America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.

Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option.

He then dissects the recent Pew study, noting that Americans are restless (most want to live elsewhere, especially to go West), that rural and suburban residents are happier with where they live than urbanites, and that cities are mostly attractive to the young, but far less so over the age of 35 (esp. NYC and LA). Continuing:

If you jumble together the five most popular American metro areas — Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Tampa (how is Austin not on this list?) — you get an image of the American Dream circa 2009. These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage — filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor lifestyle.

These are places (except for Orlando) where spectacular natural scenery is visible from medium-density residential neighborhoods, where the boundary between suburb and city is hard to detect. These are places with loose social structures and relative social equality, without the Ivy League status system of the Northeast or the star structure of L.A. These places are car-dependent and spread out, but they also have strong cultural identities and pedestrian meeting places. They offer at least the promise of friendlier neighborhoods, slower lifestyles and service-sector employment. They are neither traditional urban centers nor atomized suburban sprawl. They are not, except for Seattle, especially ideological, blue or red.

They offer the dream, so characteristic on this continent, of having it all: the machine and the garden. The wide-open space and the casual wardrobes.

I previously discussed this survey in this post, noting that Houston scored in the middle of the pack and that it has a clear bias towards high-tourism cities that people are likely to have visited. But I still think Pew and Mr. Brooks are on to something here.

Let's see how Houston measures up to these criteria:

• Yes: skis (water), soccer equipment, boating equipment, loose social structures and relative social equality, car-dependent and spread out, strong cultural identities, friendlier neighborhoods, service-sector employment, not ideological
• No: skis (snow), kayaks, hiking boots, spectacular natural scenery, pedestrian meeting places (does the Galleria count? Discovery Green?)
  
• Mixed: active outdoor lifestyle, wide-open space, casual wardrobes, slower lifestyles (we're considered a pretty fast-paced place, but there's still a lot of the leisurely old South here too)

Not too bad.

I had a phone call with a friend today that moved from Houston to Phoenix for career and relationship reasons, and he's a big fan of Houston, but he positively gushed about the outdoor options in the mountains outside of Phoenix. Another friend of mine talked about the outdoor weekend focus of people in Austin. Not so much here. The outdoor lifestyle is only partially embraced here - mainly golf and boating. We just don't have inherently attractive topography or a summer climate you want to be outdoors in if air conditioning is an option. Neither we can do anything about.

But it does indicate we're on the right track with some of our quality-of-life initiatives: bayou parks and trails, more park space (including flood control), and encouraging and enabling mixed-use pedestrian-oriented developments where there is demand and near rail stops.

What are we missing? Well, I'd certainly vote for a more casual dress standard in our business community. Less of the suit-and-tie fest at Partnership events. We don't have to go all Hawaiian, but maybe Silicon Valley business casual is not a bad compromise standard (especially with our summers).

On the other hand, Xanax in the water supply seems unlikely, and I know of no technology yet for affordably constructing mountains. Maybe a future job for our nanotechnology pioneers and their first swarm of solar-powered self-replicating nanobots... ;-) then they can move on to the weather problem...

Labels: creative class, identity, mixed-use, perspectives, quality of place, rankings

posted by Tory Gattis @ 10:11 PM 9 comments

Rail, bikes, IAH, Texas, infrastructure, and more

Sorry for the late post this week - busy holidays, you know. Got some smaller misc items to pass along:

• Galveston rail moves forward. One of the lines I agree with (also here), and the $400m price is almost reasonable given the length and potential ridership.
• AP gave IAH some nice coverage of their karaoke machines:

"There's no better thing I've seen in any airport, and I've been everywhere," said Flood, 48. "In this economy, there is nothing better than seeing smiles like this. It shouldn't just be for Christmas."

• A new blog advocating bike racks on Metro's light rail cars. The trade-off is less space for passengers. Maybe they could drop down in the wheelchair area when that area's not being used? Hat tip to Peter.
• Thought my readers might appreciate this excerpt from an Economist article on a greenfield city center development in Mesa, Arizona:
  

• Len Gilroy at Reason on what other states can learn from Texas and our budget surplus. Hat tip to Brian.
• A thread on HAIF regarding a study of the new Katy Freeway benefits.
• Joel Kotkin has a good op-ed in the Washington Post on making sure we make the right kind of infrastructure stimulus. In essence, he argues for investments in the much-neglected basics that drive the real economy rather than the flashy, low-substance spending of the recent past like stadiums, convention centers (and their subsidized hotels), and many boondoggle rail transit investments. He does make an exception of our popular Main St. light rail line though:
  

"Spending on upkeep of transit systems in older centralized cities such as New York, Washington and Chicago also seems logical. But with few exceptions -- the heavily traveled corridor between downtown Houston and the Texas Medical Center, for instance -- ridership on most new rail systems outside the traditional cities has remained paltry, accounting for barely 1 or 2 percent of all commuters. Such projects are almost absurdly expensive on a per-capita basis."

A big part of the problem, IMHO, is that politicians can't cut ribbons and get big PR for basic maintenance.

• Texas did well in a recent ranking of The Best State Business Climates:

"While it has been a tough year for state economies across the US, that hasn’t changed the positive views of corporate site selectors when it comes to doing business in North Carolina. The state took the top slot for the fourth straight year in Site Selection magazine’s 2008 Top State Business Climate rankings. North Carolina’s strong education system has been the real difference maker, but other important factors include the state’s aggressive economic development programs and lower cost of living. Other top performers in the rankings include (in rank order): Tennessee, Alabama, Texas and Indiana. A separate poll of business executives produced a slightly different list of the most “business friendly” states with Texas topping that poll, followed by North Carolina and Georgia. When asked to identify the key factors in a favorable business climate, the top three, according to corporate real estate executives, were ease of permitting and licensing, transportation infrastructure, and workforce skills.

Access the article, “Pedal to the Medal,” by Mark Arend (also appears in the November 2008 issue of Site Selection).

Hat tip to Peter.

Not sure how much blogging I'll get done over the holidays. Hope you and yours enjoy them.

Labels: commuter rail, infrastructure, land-use regulation, Metro, mixed-use, new urbanism, rail, rankings

posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:48 PM 4 comments

Doing Urban Corridors the right way, the Houston way

Had a conversation this week with Josh at HRG about the Urban Corridors initiative moving forward at the Houston Planning Commission, which involves encouraging dense development near Metro rail stops. There are debates about the right standards, but the real issue is mandatory vs. incentives. Another big issue is who will pay for needed infrastructure upgrades, like wider sidewalks, landscaping, utility moves (and burials), public space, and street parking (ideally diagonal).

Here's an interesting compromise solution we came up with:

1. The Planning Commission describes their "ideal" development standard around rail stops.
2. Landowners near each stop have the option to voluntarily join together to put deed restrictions on their property meeting something close to this standard (although it does not have to be exact, if there are certain "ideals" that don't make sense for their specific case).
3. If the Planning Commission signs off on the voluntary group deed restrictions (i.e. they're close enough to the ideal), a partial TIRZ gets created around that stop where some (but not all) of the tax increment gets reinvested into infrastructure upgrades around that stop. This is a strong incentive for the landowners to come to a voluntary deed restriction agreement: their value goes up, and that tax increment goes directly into improving the public assets around their land.
   

This is a win for everybody involved:

• Property rights are respected and everything stays voluntary.
• No "one size fits all" standard is forced on everyone. The landowners around each stop have the flexibility to craft specific standards that work in their context.
• Landowners get improved land values, rents, and adjacent public infrastructure investments.
• Development gets maximized because no onerous regulations drive developers away (i.e. no "dead zones" near rail stops), which is also raises the city tax base.
• It creates money for the needed infrastructure investments.
  
• The city gets some dense, new urbanist neighborhoods attractive to a certain young creative class demographic that is more likely to ride the light rail rather than add to traffic woes.
• The citzens and taxpayers get maximum benefit from their expensive rail investments by increasing density and ridership near the stops. (aside: this is not an argument for rail - I'm just taking it as a given and asking how we can get the most out of it)
  

One issue that would have to be worked out is the percent sign-off by landowners to create enforceable deed restrictions. Does it have to be 100%? Can it be a super-majority like 70-80%? By land area or value? I'm not saying everybody within a quarter-mile of each stop has to buy-in - probably just the commercial land (non-single-family-home) nearest the stop. I'm sure acceptable details could be worked out.

I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.

UPDATE: This was passed along to me today. Hat tip to David.

NEW NORTH TEXAS TIF DISTRICT APPROVED

DALLAS (Prescott Realty Group) – The city recently approved its first TIF district focused on multistation transit-oriented development.

The new TIF includes 559 acres in addition to public rights-of-way. It stretches from the Lovers Lane and Mockingbird area along the DART rail line to the Lancaster and VA Medical Center region.

The district will have a 30-year life, during which real property values are predicted to grow from $320 million in 2008 to $3.52 billion by 2038. About $328 million in incremental tax revenue is expected to accrue in the district during the life of the TIF.

"The primary focus of this effort is to encourage high-density, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly developments around existing DART Rail stations," said Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm. "The TIF provides an effective development tool to encourage the redevelopment of important, centralized areas of the city, as well as new development."

Labels: deed restrictions, development, infrastructure, land-use regulation, mixed-use, new urbanism, transit-oriented development

posted by Tory Gattis @ 9:09 PM 8 comments

Why there aren't more New Urbanist developments

A while back, the Austin Contrarian asked why there aren't more New Urbanist mixed-use developments. He articulates several possible barriers and potential solutions, but I wanted to pass along my own theory I posted in the comments.

Labels: mixed-use

posted by Tory Gattis @ 9:12 PM 13 comments

Mixed thoughts on Smart Growth Distinguished Lecture

I attended Scott Bernstein's lecture on smart growth tonight, put on by the Gulf Coast Institute. He came in from Chicago. First, where we agree. Clearly, if a person chooses to live in walkable density close to work and ride transit, they will use less energy and generate less carbon, as well as save money if they can get rid of a car in the household or use a shared car service. And obviously that lower spending on utilities and transportation should be considered when determining credit for a mortgage. No argument there. Clearly a fine and admirable lifestyle choice.

The real question comes down to a city's approach to that lifestyle: allow vs. encourage vs. compel. Some cities can't even get through their zoning regulations and NIMBYs to the 'allow' stage. Fortunately Houston (mostly) avoids that, although we do have regulations (like setbacks and minimum parking) that will need some relaxing (a la the urban corridors initiative). I can see some level of 'encouragement' also making sense - a few incentives here and there (full blown subsidies are probably a bad idea). But 'compel'? That's where they lose me. Active efforts to shut down people who want to live in suburban single-family homes and drive. And requiring mixed-use density around rail stops may well backfire and create stagnant dead zones down each line.

Scott made quite a number of specific points I'd like to address.

First, his stat about Houston households spending 21% of our expenses on transportation vs. lower elsewhere (like 17% in Atlanta). As I've said many times on this blog before: if someone has a good income and a cheap house and they splurge on their ride (luxury car, SUV, truck), that's not the same as saying "Houston forced them to have high transportation costs." They could've bought a Civic or Prius just like anyone else. Check out the ACCRA numbers at the end of this post to see that our transportation costs are actually below the national average and well below other big metros.

He also pointed out we have the highest average vehicle miles traveled per day at 36. It's actually a sign of economic vibrancy: more people going more places, socializing more and doing more things. Also, yes, when you massively invest in freeway infrastructure, people can commute farther in their half-hour time budget, so they live farther out. But if we had fewer freeway lane-miles, people would either live in more expensive housing closer in (less discretionary income = lower quality of life), or jobs would move farther out (fragmented metro where people can't change jobs without moving to a new suburb, plus a weaker tax base in the city core). Clearly, people are rethinking where they live and what they drive with $4 gas, but it's important to understand that doing things that would have reduced VMT would also have weakened the city (IMHO).

He completely ignored school quality in peoples' choices of where to live. He also didn't include private school tuition in his lower combined housing + transportation costs in the urban core. This is why childless households are more attracted to density and the core.

His graphs noted that our household sizes have been shrinking while our houses have been growing, which reinforces my longstanding maxim, "Higher wealth desires more private space." Our economy is always growing wealthier, and people like to convert that wealth into more personal space, as they have all throughout history.

He had another graph of the "hottest" cities for real estate investment, including NY, SF, Portland, etc. - i.e. all the cities that were the most regulated, where supply is constrained far below demand, and where developers who can get over the high barriers have little competition and are very profitable. Contrast this with hyper-competitive Houston with low prices, plenty of supply, and thin developer margins. Which is really better? Should our goal really to be the city most profitable for real estate investors and developers because we limit their competition?

In another graph, he lamented that Houston has increased our job share of over $75K salaries, while reducing the absolute lowest incomes (poverty). This is bad? I think he was trying to make a "rich are getting richer" argument, but I think he was misinterpreting the graph. Isn't this exactly what cities want, to keep adding high paying jobs?

He gave some history of Houston and many anecdotes (to be honest, many seemed less than directly relevant). He pointed out the rise of air conditioning in tropical Houston while lamenting the replacement of trolleys with cars, without catching on to the fact that our cars let us bring air conditioning with us, accounting for at least some of their popularity in Houston vs. walking.

I was flummoxed by his argument that streets beat freeways because people aren't buying things and contributing to the economy when they're flying along a freeway. But aren't these people simply headed to a destination where they will shop and/or contribute to the economy? Might they even go out and do more because they can go farther in the same amount of time? Would Houston's economy really pick up if we shut down all our freeways and replaced them with surface streets? Or, more likely, would people just stay home more because they quickly tire of the options within a couple miles of their house?

Finally, he had a graph that showed higher density means fewer daily vehicle miles per household, but he neglected to point out that it doesn't decrease as fast as the density increases, so you actually get more trips and traffic per square mile, creating London/NYC/LA-style congestion.

Bottom line: a smart nice guy with admirable goals, but a weak foundation of arguments for changing Houston's good direction or interfering in people making their own free market choices. Offer the options - and even promote/market/sell the smart growth lifestyle if you like (as Apple has proven: make something seem cool and people will buy it) - but let people weigh up the costs and benefits on their own and pick the lifestyle that's right for them.

P.S. Erik, he was thankful for the Houston freeway pictures from your site he used in his presentation.

Labels: environment, mixed-use, perspectives, sprawl, transit-oriented development

posted by Tory Gattis @ 11:19 PM 18 comments

Dome films, telework & weather vs. transit, core vs. suburbs, zoning, sidewalk retail

Some miscellaneous smaller items this morning:

• Marginal Revolution has a post on zoning in NYC, with lots of comments on Houston (use your browser search to find them - Edit menu, 'Find in this page').

"Yes, I am opposed to many forms of zoning. Without zoning our cities would be denser, more eco-friendly, cheaper to live in, more able to produce economies of agglomeration, and more immigrants would benefit from American prosperity. "

• Evidently I'm not the only one that thinks weather should be taken into consideration when deciding how much of a push for walkability and transit-orientation is appropriate for a given city:
  

"As for an example of a city truly built around the car, I’d probably point to my hometown of Orlando, Florida (though in its defense, the brutal summers of Central Florida are not particularly conducive to walking and transit)."

• Some of you may have heard that the newest Astrodome conversion idea is that it could be the largest movie production studio and sound stage in the world. I think it makes a heck of a lot more sense than a convention hotel, and is a lot more financially feasible. ABC13 story here, sign the petition of support here, see my previous Astrodome thoughts here, and thanks to HAIF (and Jessie) for the catch.
• An interesting commentary in Forbes pointing out a change in commuting patterns as baby boomers semi-retire, work from home, and telecommute more - but drive more locally and to meetings - which it makes it harder for transit to be effective:

"Fixed routes and fixed schedule like bus services won't meet their needs like they did 50 years ago, because what's inherent in the virtual world is there are no predictable schedules."

• Joel Kotkin notes that while most of the attention of the housing crisis is focused on single-family homes in the suburbs, the urban condo market is taking a much bigger hit - and the "move into the urban core" trend is still a relatively small niche when compared to the bigger picture:
  

"Rarely reported, however, is the fact that more than 90 percent of all metropolitan growth in this “back to the city” decade has taken place in the periphery. One reason: 80 percent of Americans, according to numerous surveys, want to live in suburbs, small towns or the country. In addition, contrary to the notions of city planners and media cognitive elites, the vast majority of Americans prefer a single-family home to an apartment or condo. For most people, the American dream still means a house with a yard -- not a high-rise apartment.
...
It is also hard to make a case that urban centers are now attracting hordes of the upwardly mobile and well-off aging boomers, as is often suggested. Studies by the Brookings Institution demographer, William H. Frey, and real estate industry experts have found that relatively few well-heeled empty-nesters are deserting their suburban nests for the core. In fact, most are staying close to home, while about as many head further out than move in."

• Neal covers a DMN story about ground-level sidewalk retail failing (i.e. staying empty) in mixed-use projects in Dallas. Developers know the market won't support it, but politicians force it anyway. I've seen similar stories on blocks of empty street retail in Portland and LA. With retail, it's all about the parking, because the residential density is never high enough to support the stores on their own.

Labels: Astrodome, mixed-use, perspectives, transit, transit-oriented development, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 8:20 AM 1 comments

The renewed zoning debate

I feel compelled to respond to Sunday's Chronicle story on public support for zoning and the debate it has sparked in the paper (Kendall Miller/HRG response, former Mayor Bob Lanier response calling for a formal zoning vote (vs. the "backdoor zoning" sometimes being implemented piecemeal now), and pro-planning response to his response, Chronicle editorial board), but I'm not sure what to say that isn't going to be a repeat of everything I've been saying on this blog for three years.

"Zoning" and "planning" are both words that poll very well, because most people associate them in their mind as some vague cure-all for everything they don't like about Houston - the "grass is always greener on the other side" fallacy. I understand Dr. Klineberg's need to keep questions consistent over time to watch trends, but this one has very unfortunate wording:

"Need better land-use planning to guide development, or leave people free to build wherever they want?"

Clearly biased. Gentle guiding vs. anarchy. If I was writing a mirror-image of the question for the other side, it would go something like this:

"Need more government control of land-use, or leave people free to control their own property?"

There's also an inherent conflict here, as people support both "neighborhood protection" and "redeveloping older urban areas was the best way to absorb population growth" i.e. increasing density. The fact is, we're doing absolutely great on the latter- better than most cities - and that means less sprawl, less driving, lower air pollution, and a more vibrant core. And the best approach to neighborhood protection is debatable. Certainly it seems voluntary deed restrictions can do just about everything for neighborhood protection that zoning can, although maybe that process needs to be streamlined to be less cumbersome. And I agree with City Controller Annise Parker that limiting high-rises to major thoroughfares is a reasonable requirement, although my understanding is that the approach working through the system right now is traffic-based rather than focusing on height.

Let's analyze one of Councilmember Peter Brown's quotes:

Without sound development standards, he said, "we're losing our share of the middle class. We're getting flooding, air pollution, neighborhood blight and decline."

We're getting a massive number of affordable townhomes built in the core with our light regulatory touch. Those townhomes are built on expensive land that either would become a McMansion instead (so much for the middle class), or not redeveloped at all if there weren't enough buyers for high-priced McMansions, in which case the original blight sticks around. Those townhomes accommodate several households that otherwise would live on an even bigger footprint in the suburbs, increasing sprawl, flooding, driving and air pollution. They also increase the tax base here, improving the city's ability to address exactly the problems he describes. So, essentially, the exact opposite of his argument is true.

The Chronicle editorial board states:

As reported by the Chronicle's Mike Snyder, Councilman Peter Brown, Controller Annise Parker and former Kemah Mayor Bill King all speak favorably of development regulations that fall short of conventional zoning. The incumbent, Bill White, supports more flexible ways to control urban density such as regulations concerning drainage, traffic congestion and public safety. He called zoning "an old and somewhat clumsy tool."

Mostly good and agreeable, except for the statement that Peter Brown's desire for a form-based code "falls short of conventional zoning." Conventional zoning simply specifies land-use, i.e. single-family residential, commercial, industrial, etc. His code would allow mixing of commercial and residential (a slight loosening), while specifying in great detail exactly how buildings would be built (min and max height, parking amount and location, required sidewalk retail, zero setbacks, etc.). If anything, that seems to go beyond conventional zoning in terms of restrictions and controls.

I'll end with a great excerpt from Kendall's letter:

City after American city has answered friction between redevelopment of inner-city areas and neighborhood concerns with such restrictions over the past 40 years, only to find that well-intentioned land use controls have caused economic woes, greater congestion and even urban decay. Further, these restrictions have done little or nothing to relieve such friction. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas recently noted that because local government polices here don't artificially distort consumer-driven growth, Houston tops major cities in resisting the economic problems now affecting most large cities. Other national experts cite Houston as an example of a city that "got it right."

There are responsible paths to balance legitimate neighborhood concerns with a healthy trend to greater population density within Houston. Improvement of the cumbersome process for renewing and updating neighborhood deed restrictions is part of the solution, and other market-sensitive answers would serve us all far better than the heavy-handed land use controls that some advocate.

Update: Peter Brown's response letter in the Chronicle (scroll down)

Update 2: Mike Snyder (Chronicle) on Patricia Knudson Joiner's opinion (you're welcome, Mike), and here's my comment response:

Certainly infrastructure needs to be planned (with adaptations when circumstances change), but cities need to be thought of more like the market economy or a natural ecosystem than an architect'ed building: they're not planned - they evolve.

Labels: deed restrictions, density, development, land-use regulation, mixed-use, planning, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 6:24 PM 9 comments

More on the land-use forum

OK, I've finally got some time to pass along some of my notes and thoughts on the Tuesday night land-use forum. I already covered my introduction speech in the previous post. Unfortunately, the Powerpoint presentations do not seem to be posted yet, but should show up at some point here and/or here. The Houston Politics blog at the Chronicle had some coverage here and here.

Dr. Nelson

• Titled his talk "Have our cake and eat it too," meaning we can have both new development and neighborhood protection.
• Not for zoning, but for "stakeholder-based negotiated planning" and "sector and corridor form-based plans"
• 2/3 of all the built environment in 2030 will be built between now and then (including replacements of existing structures). By 2040, 600K new housing units built inside the city of Houston (not metro), totaling around $500B.
  
• Moving towards 75% of our adulthood without children. 88% of growth in households will be without children. This shifts the attractiveness from suburban to urban environments.
• He thinks the solution is to redevelop arterial shopping centers with large parking lots into 4-5 story mixed-use developments - still with plenty of parking spread among streets, garages, and underground.
• In Q&A, he noted that most of the suburban cities around Atlanta essentially ban attached structures (apts, condos, townhomes, etc.), which is very exclusionary. Good that we don't.
• Also in the Q&A, he was asked if the free market was building density anyway, why was a form-based code necessary? Answer: to make it compatible with the neighborhood.
  

I understand the appeal of mixed-use to residents. It's first-floor retail that's the problem. They need to have convenient parking, or people will just drive down the street to a competitor that does. And the residents themselves are usually not enough to support most retail (except for very basic services, like convenience stores, dry cleaning, maybe a deli, etc.) - it must be able to draw driving customers. Joel tells me that in many places mandating mixed-use in LA, the residential fills right up, but block after block has empty retail space - which means those residents are still pretty much driving everywhere.

Wendell Cox

• Basically devastated smart growth approaches, which predicted price decreases because of lower projected infrastructure costs, but have actually created spectacular price increases and unaffordability everywhere it's been applied.
• Showed that the American Dream of suburban homeownership is actually a global aspiration, including all over Europe and Asia.
• Showed a high correlation between high land-use regulation and low job growth.
• A person can save $1 to $1.5 million moving from CA to Houston (house price plus financing costs). I've certainly seen many more CA license plates lately.
• Transit is downtown-centric, which is now <10%>
• Notes all the unsubsidized density being built by the market in Houston, vs. the large subsidies required to get density built in Portland.
  
• Advocates responsive instead of prescriptive planning. Let the market choose how it wants to live, don't force it.
  
• In Q&A, he said that planning/regs like DFW and Atlanta would have an unpredictable impact on the dynamic environment in Houston, including the potential of much more unaffordability than has been created in either of those metros (something I've also argued before on this blog).
  

David Crossley

• Does not advocate zoning or growth boundaries, but believes we do need a plan.
  
• Carbon and climate change argument for reducing driving. As I've said before, I think the personal vehicle is here to stay, regardless of what energy technology it runs on. And I think that technology will evolve much faster than we could ever rework our cities into dense, transit-focused ones. Plug-in hybrids that use almost no gas are already on their way.
  
• He disputes that Houston was built around the car. He is technically correct about the very core of the city built in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the vast bulk of the city, built since WW2, was definitely built around the car.
• Notes that we do have plenty of regulations already, especially Chapter 42 that divides the city into urban (inside the loop) and suburban (outside 610), and that many of these regs don't make much sense these days. We need to allow the choice of dense living without requiring variances. Agreed.
  
• Showed a map with 55 transit-oriented neighborhoods around the light rail stops.
• Pointed out that our strong mayor is essentially the "chief planner" for the city as it currently stands.
  

Mayor Bob Lanier

• Pointed out that our infrastructure, including highways, is some of the most fully utilized in the state (i.e. operating closer to capacity).
• Transit usage in Houston has been flat for decades, stuck at around 5% of commuter trips and 1% of all trips. He believes many people have unrealistic expectations of it growing much beyond that.
• Warned against planning out too far, beyond our knowledge of how markets and preferences will shift. He said if you compare the old zoning plans that voters rejected way back with the city today, you'd laugh at how far off those plans were.
  
• Equated "real quality-of-life" with the basics he worked on like police to reduce crime and basic infrastructure like sidewalks ("neighborhoods to standard" program).
• Government can't effectively tell people what to develop. Government planners are not creative or innovative - a "no mistakes" mentality. Free market = affordability.
• Believes Ashby is a negative outlier in the free market, but that there would be just as many - if not more - issues and problems under a centrally controlled system.
• Believes people are pushing "backdoor zoning" right now, and he is opposed to the "horrible" traffic and curb cut ordinances.
• "People like sprawl."
  

Overall, it was very cordial, with a lot more agreement than I expected. I like the idea of an alternative to Chapter 42 for areas around the rail stops (mixed-use up against the sidewalk, with less and hidden parking - but I don't think a full-blow form-based code is needed). But I'm not sure it should be required around those stops - certainly not at all 55 of them. Make it a developer option (no variance required), and see what they build that the market can support. Maybe it could be required at a handful of stops with the most potential, but then we have to monitor how they develop. If those required regs freeze the development market around those stops, then they'll need an overhaul. On the other had, if those stops thrive because of the "increased predictability" for developers and residents, then the requirement could be spread to others relatively quickly. The goal is to create attractive density that doesn't generate as many new car trips. I don't know if that's really possible, but it couldn't hurt to try in a few well-targeted places. Meanwhile, keep letting the rest of the city redevelop as it has been. For the most part, it's been very good, and let's hope it continues despite this national slump.

Update: David's post, including links to two of the presentations. He doesn't like my characterization. I'll admit I just took notes on the points that jumped out at me over 2 hours, so they're certainly not comprehensive - but I tried to be as fair and accurate as possible in my recollections.

Labels: density, development, growth, home affordability, infrastructure, land-use regulation, mixed-use, perspectives, planning, rail, transit, transit-oriented development, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 3:48 PM 5 comments

New Urbanism comes to Galveston

Tonight I want to pass-along a Wall Street Journal article on the wave of new urbanist projects coming to the Gulf Coast, especially Galveston (7-day nonsubscriber link, permalink).

Beachtown, as Mr. Sherazi's project is called, is part of a wave of New Urbanism on the Texas coast, from Galveston to South Padre Island. A planning movement that advocates walking over driving and borrows heavily from the design of traditional neighborhoods, New Urbanism has been largely overlooked on the Texas coast, even as it has flourished in Florida and beyond.

While the movement offers something of a counterpoint to subdivisions, malls and office parks, it is attacked by critics as nostalgic and unimaginative for its reliance on 19th-century architecture. While New Urbanist communities such as Seaside often are pitched as real towns, critics say they tend to become little more than playgrounds for the rich.
...

The projects reflect a broader push to develop the Texas coast, while subprime woes have cooled markets in Florida and elsewhere. On the Third Coast, as some call Texas, the ocean tends to be murkier, the sand darker and the scenery arguably less impressive than on the East and West coasts. But beachfront property still is plentiful, and prices are considerably less expensive than the two coasts.

James Gaines, an economist at Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center, said beachfront property in Texas costs about a fifth of the price of similar property in California, in part because of its geography. Except for Galveston and a few coastal areas near Houston, none of Texas beachfront property is near a major urban center.

Check out the article to read the details of all the projects.

If I get some time this weekend, I'm hoping to dig into the TTI traffic congestion numbers that came out this week and post my analysis and thoughts next week.

Update: Tom has more of the WSJ article.

Labels: development, mixed-use

posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:34 PM 2 comments