The best posts from the first 20 years and 2.3 million pageviews
Today is the 20th (!) birthday of Houston Strategies with our 1,412th post. It's hard to believe that two decades have passed since I started this blog, and it's been an incredible journey. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating 1.5 million pageviews at the 15-year mark. Obviously things have slowed down a bit in recent years (this is my first post of 2025, lol). In honor of this milestone, I've decided to update my best posts from the first 15 years - which is now five years out-of-date - by pulling from my annual highlights posts. As you skim this list, I hope you find some of interest that you missed, forgot, or may have been posted before you discovered Houston Strategies. Enjoy.
For those of you a little put off by the old-style webpage design, I should take this opportunity to mention again that it 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. One of the penalties for being an early blogger, lol. Hope you don't mind the old format. I'm kinda assuming the content matters more to my readers than a slick modern design ;-)
Reflections and Looking Ahead
Reaching 20 years and 2.3 million pageviews is a significant milestone for Houston Strategies. It's a testament to the power of ideas and the importance of ongoing dialogue about how we shape Houston. As I reflect on the past two decades, I'm filled with gratitude for the readers who have joined me on this journey. Your engagement, feedback, and support have been invaluable.
Houston Strategies will continue to explore the ever-evolving landscape of urban planning in the Opportunity City, seeking innovative solutions to the challenges facing Houston and advocating for policies that create a better and more vibrant city. Here's to the next chapter!
"I would be the first to argue that if an economist claims to know of a cure-all policy — a reliable way to relieve a long list of social ills in one fell swoop — common sense tells you to stop listening.
So it is awkward for me to declare that I know of something close to a panacea policy: one big reform that would raise living standards, reduce wealth inequality, increase productivity, raise social mobility, help struggling men without college degrees, clean the planet and raise birth rates. It’s a sweeping reform that Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives could all proudly support.
The panacea policy I have in mind is housing deregulation. Research confirms that there are large benefits in saying yes to tall buildings, yes to multifamily structures, yes to dense single-family development and yes to speedy permitting. The growing YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement already has high-profile wins in Minnesota, Oregon, California and beyond, but even YIMBY devotees rarely appreciate the scope of the merits of loosening rules on housing.
The economic argument for housing deregulation rests on basic supply and demand principles: allowing more construction leads to lower prices. This is evident in historical data, showing that housing prices were relatively stable before stricter regulations in the 1970s, while rising significantly afterwards.
Housing deregulation would directly improve the standard of living by significantly lowering housing costs, which currently represent a significant portion of the average American's budget.
The distributional effects of deregulation would be impactful in reducing wealth inequality, as rising home values have been a key driver of the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.
Deregulation would enhance social mobility by removing barriers to moving to higher-wage areas. Current strict regulations often make the cost of living in such regions outweigh any potential wage gains, discouraging relocation for many.
Deregulation would create numerous job opportunities in the construction sector, a large and well-paying industry, particularly benefiting men without college degrees, who have faced challenges in the job market.
Environmental protection is a common rationale for restricting construction, but deregulation can actually lead to more sustainable practices by encouraging denser housing in urban areas, resulting in lower carbon emissions.
While concerns exist about homeowner resistance, the bigger obstacle to deregulation is public misunderstanding of basic economic principles, with many believing that increased housing supply will not lead to lower prices.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have embraced housing deregulation yet. YIMBY activists lean left, but they are only one voice in the progressive coalition. Republican states usually have less housing regulation, but more from tradition than from principle. Yet, given housing deregulation’s many demonstrated benefits, this policy agenda deserves bipartisan support. Democrats should cheer the effects on equality, social mobility and the environment. Republicans should be delighted to see free markets spreading broad prosperity, creating new working-class opportunities and fostering family formation. In a rational world, the panacea policy of housing deregulation would be a done deal. Hopefully whoever wins the next election will agree."
Bill Reeves sent me a great link to a Marginal Revolution blog post by Tyler Cowen arguing that mobility has been more important than density in shaping American history and its future, which I 100% agree with. It highlights the historical importance of mobility in the US and challenges current urbanist trends favoring density. He makes some key points:
America's success is attributed more to advancements in transportation and infrastructure than to population density.
Historical examples range from horses and ships to modern aviation, showing a consistent focus on movement and connection.
Urban density is linked to lower fertility rates and the potential replication of undesirable political climates.
Mobility, on the other hand, is seen as fostering a stronger national defense and better immigrant assimilation.
Low-speed options like bicycles are viewed as impractical and even dangerous - "low-speed transport is a poor country thing"
The future lies in high-speed, affordable, and eco-friendly transportation solutions, such as self-driving vehicles and improved aviation.
Mobility is one of the secret sauces to Houston's success. In Jane Jacob's world, mobility was fixed and limited but density was variable. In today's world, density is fairly limited (by cars and higher living standards in terms of living space per person), but mobility is highly variable. My own thoughts on this:
The Economist on how America's car dependence makes the country fairer and more efficient
The Economist magazine has a fantastic article (no-paywall link) on the upside of America's focus on cars for mobility - and I would argue Houston is at the pinnacle in America for major metros. The whole thing is great, but here are the best excerpts (highlights mine):
In praise of America’s car addiction
How vehicle-dependence makes the country fairer and more efficient
...It seems a classic case of elite opinions (cars and suburbs are awful) diverging from mass preferences (people quite enjoy them). For many, the main attractions of suburbia are lower housing costs and greater safety. Yet recent research sheds light on how cars are a crucial part of the equation, making America’s suburbs both impressively efficient and equitable.
...
Start with convenience. It is well-known that American cities are configured for vehicles, a process that began in the 1920s with the Model T. Car-centric urban designs became dominant throughout the country, involving wide roads, ample access to expressways and parking galore. To varying degrees, other countries have copied that model. Yet America has come closest to perfecting it. In a paper released in August, supported by the World Bank, a group of economists examined road speeds in 152 countries. Unsurprisingly, wealthy countries outpace poor ones. And within the rich world, America is streets ahead: its traffic is about 27% faster than that of other members of the OECD club of mostly rich countries. Of the 20 fastest cities in the world, 19 are in America.
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Driving speed shrinks distance. One fashionable concept among urban planners these days is the “15-minute city”, the goal of building neighbourhoods that let people get to work, school and recreation within 15 minutes by foot or bike. Many Americans may simply fail to see the need for this innovation, for they already live in 15-minute cities, so long, that is, as they get around by car. Most of the essentials—groceries, school, restaurants, parks, doctors and more—are a quick drive away for suburbanites.
The car’s ubiquity has another rarely appreciated benefit. A recent study by Lucas Conwell of Yale University and colleagues examined urban regions in America and Europe. They calculated “accessibility zones”, defined as the area from which city centres can be readily reached. Although European cities have better public transport, American cities are on the whole more accessible. Consider the size of accessibility zones 15-30 minutes from city centres. If using public transport, the average is 34 square kilometres in America versus 63 square kilometres in Europe. If using private cars, the difference is much starker: 1,160 square kilometres in America versus 430 square kilometres in Europe.
...it is precisely such accessibility that has put larger homes and quieter streets within reach for a remarkably wide cross-section of the country. In his analysis of the census from 2020, William Frey of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, showed that suburbia has become far more diverse over the years. In 1990 roughly 20% of suburbanites were non-white. That rose to 30% in 2000 and 45% in 2020.
Not that cars are a panacea. Owning or renting one costs plenty of money, and is an especially big burden for the working poor. It is therefore common to hear laments in American cities about the sorry state of mass transit. Yet this general perception, though widespread, is not entirely accurate. Even if primarily built for private cars, roads are a shared resource and can be viewed as the “tracks” for buses. In their study Mr Conwell and his colleagues conclude that bus-based transportation in America is surprisingly effective: public-transit options between distant suburbia and city centres are roughly comparable in America and Europe. Although America could do more to improve its bus services within its urban cores, the crucial point is that cities designed for cars can also support mass transit.
Strong Towns is a weird urbanist cult + Tokyo's Houston-like minimal land use regulation
Strong Towns is a weird urbanist cult that can’t produce hard numbers to back up their assertions suburbia is financially unsustainable (how many suburban municipality bankruptcies have you heard of?). If you really think about it, every suburban home has a few tens of thousands of dollars of city infrastructure that go with it (some pavement and pipes), a very reasonable replacement burden from property taxes spread over 30+ years on a multi-$100k home (and most infrastructure will not need to be replaced that often).
“A municipality deep in decline, facing decaying infrastructure and accelerating poverty can hardly afford lengthy legal battles.”
The metro is booming. The City has challenges but is doing ok, especially vs. many other similar-sized municipalities. The accelerating poverty comment is flat-out wrong – immigrants move here, make a life, and move up and out to the suburbs to be replaced by a new wave of immigrants. And many parts of town are positively booming. Property values move up every year and the City laments the tax cap forcing them to cut the tax rate to keep overall revenue at inflation + population growth – does that sound like “accelerating poverty”? 🙄
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A couple of interesting pieces on Tokyo this week along with some excerpts I pulled.
"The median Japanese tenant spends about 20% of their disposable income on rent (in America it's 30%). Rent for a studio or one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo, which Americans are fawning over as "the new Paris," is a quarter of what it is in New York.
In September, when New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled his plan to build 100,000 new homes, he pointed enviously to Tokyo's ability to keep "housing costs down by increasing the supply of housing." "How are we allowing Tokyo to do things better than us?" he asked."
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"Most American consumers probably wouldn't want to live in the studio or one-bedroom apartments that Japanese people just sort of take for granted," Schuetz said. But, she added, we shouldn't have many of the minimum size regulations we have. Instead, we should let consumers decide what tradeoffs they're willing to make. "Allow the market to build stuff, and the market will figure out what people are willing to pay for," she says.
"As housing prices have soared in major cities across the United States and throughout much of the developed world, it has become normal for people to move away from the places with the strongest economies and best jobs because those places are unaffordable. Prosperous cities increasingly operate like private clubs, auctioning off a limited number of homes to the highest bidders.
Tokyo is different.
In the past half century, by investing in transit and allowing development, the city has added more housing units than the total number of units in New York City. It has remained affordable by becoming the world’s largest city. It has become the world’s largest city by remaining affordable.
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But the benefits are profound. Those who want to live in Tokyo generally can afford to do so. There is little homelessness here. The city remains economically diverse, preserving broad access to urban amenities and opportunities. And because rent consumes a smaller share of income, people have more money for other things — or they can get by on smaller salaries — which helps to preserve the city’s vibrant fabric of small restaurants, businesses and craft workshops. (sound familiar? ;-)
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In Tokyo, by contrast, there is little public or subsidized housing. Instead, the government has focused on making it easy for developers to build. A national zoning law, for example, sharply limits the ability of local governments to impede development. Instead of allowing the people who live in a neighborhood to prevent others from living there, Japan has shifted decision-making to the representatives of the entire population, allowing a better balance between the interests of current residents and of everyone who might live in that place. Small apartment buildings can be built almost anywhere, and larger structures are allowed on a vast majority of urban land. Even in areas designated for offices, homes are permitted (this is one of my easy recommendations for traditionally zoned cities). After Tokyo’s office market crashed in the 1990s, developers started building apartments on land they had purchased for office buildings.
“In progressive cities we are maybe too critical of private initiative,” said Christian Dimmer, an urban studies professor at Waseda University and a longtime Tokyo resident. “I don’t want to advocate a neoliberal perspective, but in Tokyo, good things have been created through private initiative.”
Problem, we have a Houston - Houstonians got a free $18k from min lot size reform, METRO 2nd worst for rail crime, The Economist loves Texas, HTX tops std of living, Houston sliding towards zoning? and more
Lots of good smaller items again this week:
Resources for Reformers: Houston’s minimum lot sizes - Problem, we have a Houston (clever twist!) "The lot size reform was equivalent to a one-time gift of $18,000 to every Houston household living in a single-family home. That adds up to about $8 billion."
The Economist: Why America is going to look more like Texas (archive link) - Lessons from the surge of the Lone Star State (followed by the more in-depth article "Texas’s latest boom is its biggest yet" - archive link). Key takeaways: Texas gets 1/3 of all net new US jobs(!), +500k people/year, #1 most Fortune 500 HQs, will pass CA for the #1 state in the 2040s, largest budget surplus ever at $33B (larger than the total budgets of 24 states) without needing an income tax to do it.
"Most of the nation’s major cities face a daunting future as middle-class taxpayers join an exodus to the suburbs, opting to work remotely as they exit downtowns marred by empty offices, vacant retail space and a deteriorating tax base."
"Firms like to open factories and offices in cities with plenty of skilled workers. When choosing between cities, they typically run an analysis to see how many potential employees live within a reasonable commute of a site. Poor traffic shrinks the radius, and by extension the labor pool, hurting a city’s chances of attracting companies."
"In fact, a primary reason Texas is growing so fast is that we tend to stick around as compared to natives of other states, meaning there’s less out-migration to offset the in-migration. About 82 percent of people born in Texas still live here, making it the so-called stickiest state in the country."
American Affairs Journal: Exurbia Rising by Joel Kotkin, packed with great stats. Here's the opening paragraph:
"Perhaps nowhere is the gap between America’s cognitive elite and its populace larger than in their preferred urban forms. For nearly a century—interrupted only by the Depression and the Second World War—Americans have been heading further from the urban core, seeking affordable and safe communities with good schools, parks, and a generally more tranquil lifestyle. We keep pushing out despite the contrary desires of planners, academic experts, and some real estate interests. In 1950, the core cities accounted for nearly 24 percent of the U.S. population; today, the share is under 15 percent, according to demographer Wendell Cox. Between 2010 and 2020, the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained 2.0 million net domestic migrants, while the urban core counties lost 2.7 million."
"Lessons from history and from the relative success stories of the present point to clear priorities for today’s cities:
Get the urban basics right: schools, safety, livability.
Strengthen local anchor institutions in higher education, health care, and other areas.
Invest aggressively in local quality-of-life amenities.
Rebuild and expand critical infrastructure.
Work toward openness, diversity, inclusion, and a welcoming approach to newcomers.
Ensure a high degree of economic freedom.
Emphasize housing affordability and work to build an opportunity-rich physical environment."
WSJ: People Are Going Out Again, but Not to the Office - Only a third of U.S. employees have returned to the office, as workers prefer remote and companies fear ordering them back. Companies that force employees to the office will have to pay more (including office costs) for inferior talent from a more limited local talent pool. Excerpts:
"Elected officials are imploring companies to send workers back to the office.
“Business leaders, tell everybody to come back,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, in remarks before a civic organization earlier this month. “Give them a bonus to burn the Zoom app and come on back to work.”
The gap between public enthusiasm for office return and other activities underscores the wide range of factors other than health considerations that are slowing the return to work. After close to two years of working from home, surveys suggest most employees simply prefer it to the office, which often requires lengthy commutes and gives workers less flexibility in how they spend their days.
Employers have also been reluctant to insist that workers return for fear of driving employees away during a labor shortage, corporate surveys show. Many managers feel remote work disrupts efforts to promote a corporate culture and collaboration, but they aren’t applying much pressure because studies have shown that many workers are as productive—or even more productive—when they work remotely.
“They feel like remote work isn’t perfect, but it’s working pretty OK,” said Brian Kropp, chief of human-resources research for the advisory and research firm Gartner. “There’s not a real urgency to change it.”
Houston #2 for tree cover among major metros (just behind Atlanta) with 30% tree canopy coverage in the metro. Technically it shows Austin as higher (34%), but their number is from the early 90s, and we all know how much development has happened in Austin since then!
"We’re not going to double urban densities, especially when the doing so will fail to eliminate driving anyway. As urban economist Edward Glaeser once wrote (as quoted by Bertaud), the 15-minute city “should be recognized as a dead-end which would stop cities from fulfilling their true rôle as engines of opportunity.”
Finally, I'd like to end with this video on why Pakistanis are moving to Houston (hat tip to George). Although I wish it didn’t have the politics. She has some fair points about parts of rural Texas, but it muddles the video. I also think it completely misses the impact of lack of zoning and development regs that allowed those ethnic suburbs and shopping areas to develop. A lot of more regulated and zoned cities would have subtly (and not so subtly) prevented that from happening.
Houston #1 for std of living, housing the root of many problems, solving homelessness, debunking the 15-min city, and more
Our featured item this week is this detailed Stanford study that backs up what I've been saying for years: Houston offers the highest standard of living in the country (discretionary income after costs), especially among growing cities. After opening the pdf, search the word 'Houston' and look at the Consumption column to see how much higher it is than most other cities for households in different income ranges. Hat tip to George.
"The struggle to solve homelessness is getting harder nearly everywhere. Yet recent years have still seen many more victories than defeats. And the biggest victory is in greater Houston, which over the last decade has cut homelessness by more than half.
Houston’s story holds lessons for Los Angeles. The chief one is that solving homelessness is less about economics than about strategic clarity and execution."
Alain Bertaud, formerly principal urban planner at the World Bank and now senior research scholar at New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management as well as the author of 'Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities', critiques the current urban planning fad, "the 15-minute city." Introduction and policy analysis paper.
'Even a prominent urban economist like professor Ed Glaeser has been sufficiently alarmed by the spread of the 15-minute mania that he felt obliged to comment on it. In a blog, he wrote that the 15-minutes city "should be recognized as a dead-end which would stop cities from fulfilling their true role as engines of opportunity."
NYT: Amid a Baby Boom, Texas Gains 1,000 Residents Every Day - A surge in births in Texas comes amid a declining birthrate nationwide. Fits my hypothesis: when housing is plentiful and affordable, fertility stays up. People want plenty of space to raise families. When housing is pricey and small, fertility drops - see Japan, Korea, China, Europe...
The housing theory of everything - Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates. A really long but comprehensive case. Conclusion:
"What matters is that housing shortages may be the biggest problem facing our era, and solving it needs to become everyone’s highest priority....
If we’re right about this, it means that fixing this one problem could make everyone’s lives much better than almost anyone realises – not just by making houses cheaper, but giving people better jobs, a better quality of life, more cohesive communities, bigger families and healthier lives. It could even give renewed reasons to be optimistic about the future of the West."
Finally, a fun item to conclude with: a cool map a friend of mine made with how to fly from Houston to every capital city in the world either nonstop (red) or connections (blue). Almost all can be reached with a single connection except for a few in the South Pacific (thru LAX+Fiji). We are a very well-connected city in the global economy. Click on it to see it larger.
A few weeks ago I interviewed Washington Post journalist David Byler on the drivers of Texas' growth, which resulted in an excellent piece he published last week with great analytics, map animations, graphs, and articulation of the drivers: Texas’s population and political power are growing. Here’s why. It concludes with this excerpt:
"Texas has found a simple formula for success — economic opportunity and a low cost of living — and stuck with it. People want simple things: good jobs, affordable housing and room for kids. And they’re willing to move to states that offer them."
For this post, I wanted to pass along the four growth drivers I shared:
Texas does not allow zoning/land use regulation in unincorporated counties on the edges of cities, so developers build large, affordable, amenity-rich master-planned communities that attract lots of people using Texas Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs), where a developer can float private bonds to build the infrastructure (streets, utilities) paid back by taxes in that community. It creates a thriving, competitive free market in housing development – much more than you’d see between incorporated cities. The Woodlands is one of the most famous of these, but there are hundreds (Bridgelands and Cinco Ranch as large examples). Here’s a giant one going up near DFW.
High standard of living, especially shared among immigrant networks: they know what kinds of houses their extended family members can afford all over the country, and they see the newest and biggest at the most affordable price in Texas (combined with job opportunities). They end up choosing Texas when they come to America. (and remember it’s more than just median house prices – it’s what you get for that price: that $635k in California gets a very old, small house – in Texas $278k gets you a larger, newer house)
Family-friendly: Declining fertility is a problem all over the developed world, most especially in places where housing has grown expensive. If families can’t afford more space, they shrink the family size to compensate. In Texas, it’s very affordable and common to get large 4, 5, even 6 bedroom homes in the suburbs with good school districts, which keeps the birth rate up here.
How a Biden presidency can boost Houston, plus the cause of our growth, how LA is like us, Montrose is dead, and a graffiti artist guide to visiting HTX video
A lot of people are probably thinking about a Biden presidency as a negative for the oil industry and Houston, but there are some potential silver linings here. A big one would be a massive federal infrastructure investment bill that could dramatically improve Houston's flood resilience, including the Ike Dike and Galveston Bay Park surge barriers (great overview video). Another would be reopening international migration, which has been a big booster for Houston in the past (and has been significantly suppressed since 2016).
But the biggest potential boost would be the oil industry giving him a viable alternative to the Green New Deal. Instead of banning fracking or federal drilling permits - which just imports more oil from the Middle East - how about a tariff on imported oil to boost local jobs while also reducing carbon emissions? (by keeping prices up) Could the industry give him cover to get it passed and popular with the public? How about channeling the industry into something it has the expertise, infrastructure, and capital to do very, very well: carbon sequestration? (i.e. injecting it into the ground) How about encouraging LNG exports to Europe to give them an alternative to coal and Russian natural gas? Or LNG exports to China to displace the massive coal plants they're building there? There are so many ways the oil industry could be part of the solution on carbon, if they would just engage in good faith.
Moving on to some smaller items this week:
Market Urbanist Scott Beyer at the Foundation for Economic Education: What's the Cause of Houston's Growth?For decades, Houston has been the nation’s leading example of an “opportunity city.”
"If America had a more market-oriented urban approach, those aspects of Houston—the density and affordability—would be the ones most likely replicated. For this reason, “getting a bunch of Houstons” should be an urbanist goal."
Los Angeles: a city that outgrew its masterplan. Thank God. In the first of our regular series of dispatches from around the world, this longtime LA resident argues that his city's endless variety should be a key part any new metropolis's design. Sounds a lot like Houston. Hat tip to George.
"The very lack of defined form and cultural tradition here, the statelessness of the city itself or those who live in it, allows for a distinctive type of vitality that I've felt nowhere else."
Finally, I'll end with a fun video: Houston by a Local - Travel Tips for Houston - A Day in Houston, Texas. Discover Houston with a local: Graffiti artist Gonzo 247 shows you highlights of his home town in the U.S. state of Texas. One of them is Space Center Houston. Hat tip to George.
Bloomberg's Case for Moving to Houston (but not a city for the soft), URI-COU 2020 year in review video, HTX youth, TX #1 growth, and more
Happy new year everyone. Hope you enjoyed the holidays and the recent amazing weather (while staying safe). A lot of you probably had out-of-town family and/or friends visiting. Next time nonlocal friends or family say Houston is too hot, floods too often, or gets too many hurricanes, here's my recommended reaction: politely agree with them that Houston is not a city for the soft or irresilient - they should probably choose somewhere like California. Texas welcomes the tough.
"Consider Phyllis Njoroge, who grew up in Massachusetts. After graduating from Tufts University in 2019 with a degree in cognitive and brain science, she started making spreadsheets of places in the U.S. that had a warm climate, were diverse, and had a reasonable cost of living.Houston won out, and she moved there in March"
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Having more remote workers means “wages in Texas are going up,” he says. So are housing prices. “You can’t have a $2 million, 2,000-square-foot house in San Francisco and a $200,000 house in Dallas that are basically the same for very long when there are airplanes and internet connections and Zoom.”
"I simply say, “no, please don’t be sorry. I love living in Houston. It’s a great place to live and I have a great life there. It’s actually not that place that you might imagine it to be. In fact, it’s one of the country’s most ethnically diverse and progressive cities. My children go to school with kids from all over the world. And the wine and food scene there is great, too.”
Antiplanner: High-Capacity Transit Deceptions. "Transit advocates routinely make deceptive claims about the advantages of transit over cars or rail transit over buses. Often those claims deal with the capacity of different modes of transportation to move people. This policy brief will scrutinize some of these claims."
The American Conservative: Did NIMBYs Save Cities? In many ways, slow-growing suburbs encased in regulatory amber function the way greenbelts or urban growth boundaries are supposed to. Houston is a counter-example to what he’s saying, since we have a pretty free market in both the suburbs and the city and we’re getting good growth in both. Hat tip to Judah.
Bloomberg: New Data Shows Just How Much Americans Moved Temporarily During Covid. 3 of the top 10 cities gaining new move-ins during the pandemic are Houston suburbs: Katy (#1), Richmond (#2), and Cypress (#7). I suspect they already planned to move but just took advantage of the pandemic downtime and low mortgage rates.
"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."
The best posts from the first 15 years and 1.5 million pageviews
Today is the 15th (!) birthday of Houston Strategies with our 1,280th post. Wow, time flies. It's hard to believe I've been doing this for 15 years. We're also up to more than 1.5 million pageviews, which is an amazing acceleration given that we just hit one million page views only three years ago at the 12th anniversary, and that's not counting views at the Chronicle, URI/COU, or the Google Group email distribution list. In honor of those milestones, I've decided to update my best posts from the first dozen years - which is now over three years out-of-date - by pulling from my annual highlights posts. Since 15 years is still a lot of highlight posts, I've created an even shorter list of my fifteen all-time favorite posts. As you skim this list, I hope you find some of interest that you missed, forgot, or may have been posted before you discovered Houston Strategies. Enjoy.
For those of you a little put off by the old-style webpage design, I should take this opportunity to mention again that it 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. One of the penalties for being an early blogger, lol. Hope you don't mind the old format. I'm kinda assuming the content matters more to my readers than a slick modern design ;-)
As always, thanks for your readership.
-Tory
Absolute all-time favorites: 15 posts from 15 years (out of 1,280)
Media coverage for eliminating Metro fares, HTX accolades, growth, and density revolution - and are we really gentrifying that fast?
The featured news this week is that I was interviewed on both local NPR/KUHF and KPRC about my proposal that Metro eliminate fares. Hopefully, we'll hear some positive news on it from Metro during their upcoming board meeting.
Moving on to other items this week:
Chronicle: Houston gentrifying faster than other Texas cities, Fed analysis finds. What I think this analysis misses is that Houston's lack of zoning allows densification much more easily than other cities, and we have created tens of thousands of new apartments, condos, and townhomes near downtown in recent years allowing higher-salaried newcomers without necessarily displacing existing residents. I'm not saying gentrification and displacement is not happening (I'm sure some is), but average incomes can certainly move up substantially by adding new residents to new density without displacing existing ones.
"When you choose a place to live, you have to strike a balance between what you want and what you need. Big cities have lots of amenities and job opportunities, but they're often extremely expensive. Smaller areas tend to be a lot more affordable, but you might not be able to come close to earning as much money as you want in order to achieve your financial goals.
But if you want the best of both worlds, there's one city among the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. that strikes the right balance. As research from The Ascent into salaries and costs of living discovered, the Texas city of Houston should be high up on your list if you want a major population center that won't strain your wallet.
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One reason Houston has been able to keep itself as affordable as it has is that it lacks the extensive land use regulation that many similarly sized communities have. In many cities, zoning laws make it difficult for real estate developers to build new projects to provide more housing for residents, and that can keep housing prices artificially high. That hasn't been the case in Houston, where ample land has allowed the city and its suburbs to expand outward and support a growing population.
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For those seeking a big-city experience but wanting to stick to a budget and even put some money in the bank, Houston offers an attractive balance. With everything a major metropolitan area can offer at a fraction of the price tag you'll find in many similarly sized cities, Houston's worth a closer look for those who want it all."
"Perhaps more impressive is how much Texas expanded from April 2010 (when the last official U.S. headcount was conducted) to July 2019. During that period, Texas added 3,849,790 residents, according to the Census Bureau. To put that into perspective, nearly 4 million people live in the entire state of Oklahoma. Texas' population jumped 15.3 percent from 2010 to 2019, the third highest growth rate behind the District of Columbia and Utah.
Experts cite economic and job growth — along with a low cost of living, a low cost of doing business, and low taxes compared with many other states — as drivers of Texas' population boom. Helping fuel the boom are substantial population spikes in the state's four largest metro areas: Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio."
Finally, I'd like to end this week's post with a video of one of our COU events. It's a bit long, but a good one to leave on in the background while working at your computer. SMU-Cox Folsom Institute for Real Estate, the SMU Economics Center, and the Center for Opportunity Urbanism presented a lively discussion on Cities, Suburbs, and the New America, and Minorities, Immigrants, and Millennials in America’s Favorite Geography. The event featured presentations from former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, author Joel Kotkin, and MIT Professor Alan Berger.
Promoting the Houston model in South Africa, Morocco, and California
I'm back! Apologies for the sporadic posts in October - it was quite the travel month for me: two smart cities workshops (Johannesburg, South Africa and Marrakesh, Morocco), another workshop on the California affordable housing crisis with this guy (Irvine, CA), work in Connecticut, and fill-in mini-vacations in Cape Town and Barcelona (and I highly recommend both!). Whew. Way too much time on airplanes. But now I'm back in H-town and ready to be settled at home for a while.
Some items of interest from the trips:
In Johannesburg, I presented the MetroNext 2040 plan and how it had evolved politically, especially from light rail to BRT. It got a ton of interest in the small group breakouts/Q&A. A lot of curiosity about BRT and MaX Lanes. Glad to see the plan passed strongly. Congrats, Metro. Now can we execute quickly on the plan while staying under budget? ;-)
In Marrakesh, I presented the Houston model of opportunity urbanism and no-zoning, which definitely sparked a spicy debate from the smart-growthers in the room! The workshop focus was Middle Eastern/North African cities, and I got the impression their representatives were much more receptive to a model that focuses on affordability and opportunity.
In California... well, to be frank, California is pretty screwed. Their housing is completely unaffordable and getting worse, as demand far outpaces new supply. Their CEQA environmental law makes it easy for any anonymous party to sue to stop any development anywhere, which has basically killed development. Both the environmental and labor movements - which essentially control the California government - acknowledge the flaws, but aren't willing to give up the leverage it gives them. My solution pitch was MaX Lanes to connect remote suburban housing markets to vibrant coastal job centers with high-speed autonomous buses.
Before I end with some pics below, a reminder that this blog is sponsored by My Best Plan for absolutely optimizing the lowest-cost electricity plan for you. I've known David over there for years (fellow Rice MBA), and his optimization algorithm is the best, bar none. And completely unbiased too, which can't be said for some of the other optimizers out there that have been uncovered as fronts for electricity marketing companies. Send him (or me) your latest electricity bill to get an estimate of your potential savings - it's free, and you have nothing to lose while potentially saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars (as he's saved me over the years).
Now finishing this post with a couple of pictures from the trip:
Meeting the Mayor in the Johannesburg city council chambers, which are quite impressive, but I can't imagine trying to run a city government with that many different representatives (at least a 100+). Glad Houston keeps it a more manageable number, even if our council chambers aren't as impressive.
The "Houston, we have a problem" meme has even made it to Barcelona bus shelters, lol 🙄 Well, at least we're known globally, right?
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.
