Author Archive for Tory Gattis
IAH, deconstructing rail, planning probs, Kotkin, NYC car boom
Closed Published by Tory Gattis November 8th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesThe second half of this week’s list of smaller miscellaneous items:Joel Kotkin in, of all places, Details magazine, “Is it time to move to the suburbs?” - “Homogeneous cities are making the cul de sac the new downtown. PLUS: Our guide to the hippest  
Metro stats, school choice, Rice #1, NYT Texas, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis November 5th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesI’ve let my list of smaller miscellaneous items get so long, I’ll have to break it into two posts this week. Here’s the first half:Christof does a good job analyzing H-GAC stats on Metro’s HOV system and the Main St. rail, which is “carrying more peop…
A backup plan for the Astrodome
Closed Published by Tory Gattis November 1st, 2007 on Houston StrategiesMost of you probably caught the story yesterday about the Texans and Rodeo coming out against the Astrodome redevelopment plan into a convention mega-hotel. The key problem is that they have veto power, so I’m sure they strung the whole process along …
Texas Triangle a Top 10 Global Mega-Region
Closed Published by Tory Gattis October 29th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesCaught this Richard Florida blog post on the rise of global mega-regions - essentially continuous urban areas like the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC corridor. In that post he links to a recent paper he collaborated on identifying the top 40 mega-regions in the…
WSJ on the Ashby tower and Houston development
Closed Published by Tory Gattis October 25th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesLast week the Wall Street Journal had an article specifically discussing the controversial high-rise residential tower proposed for Ashby at Bissonnet (details and FAQ), but also broadly talking about the lack of zoning in Houston. Unfortunately, the …
Houston becoming an “Emerging Global Portal”
Closed Published by Tory Gattis October 22nd, 2007 on Houston StrategiesMichael Boyd is an aviation expert and consultant who is frequently quoted in articles on the airline industry. He posted today on emerging trends from his recent Boyd Group Aviation Forecast Conference:International-generated traffic is now the #1 mo…
The Metro board met today to make some big decisions on the rail plan (Chronicle story). The bombshell is that all the lines they thought were going to start as bus rapid transit (BRT) are being upgraded to full light rail (LRT). Evidently the numbe…
I actually got this idea a while back in April when Thomas Friedman wrote a long article in the NY Times Magazine on “The Power of Green” (also a good short video summary there), arguing that America could build a great export industry around green tec…
Red vs. Blue State Real Estate
Closed Published by Tory Gattis October 11th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesVirginia Postrel has an excellent new article in The Atlantic Monthly on how regulation spikes up housing costs and affects the red-blue state divide (her blog has some excerpts if the free link has expired). It starts as a story of two different tow…
Evidence for Opportunity Urbanism
Closed Published by Tory Gattis October 8th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesDigging through some of my older stuff looking for some good blog material, I came across this Demographia analysis of Sydney vs. DFW. Their main point is that Sydney’s extremely tight land use restrictions drive up housing costs, which are three time…