Archive for the 'affordability' Category
Houston’s great competitive advantage
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesDifferent cities have different competitive advantages, from climate to geography to industry clusters to amenities, but Houston has one that stands apart from every other major city in the world: our free market in land use. Brian at the Live Oaks bl…
It’s late tonight, and I’ve been wanting to pass this along for a while: a really insightful little blog post on what makes Houston great, and a proposal for a new slogan: Keep Houston Houston. Great stuff. Enjoy:At any rate, we’ve all seen “keep…
A Pragmatic Approach to Houston’s Future (part 1 of 2)
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesLocal PBS has asked me to participate in a panel exploring Houston’s future - specifically regarding traffic, livability, and regional growth. The panel will be broadcast live at 7pm Thursday evening on local channel 8 PBS. They asked me to write an …
$50K In Houston Equals $123K in NYC, study finds
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesThis stat comes from a recent report from the Center for an Urban Future focused on the disappearing middle class in NYC. The Gothamist has a good blog post summarizing, including some nice graphs (#1 and #6 include Houston data). In the sixth graph,…
#1 in Everything, State of the County, MetroRail budgets
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesJudge Emmett gave a good State of the County address at a GHP luncheon today (Chronicle coverage, Examiner coverage). Some highlights:The county is financially in good shape, certainly far better than most governments across the country”71 percent of …
Houston accolades, criticism, and a crisis
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesA whole ‘nother bunch of smaller items:Following up on the Center for Houston’s Future symposium I mentioned a couple weeks ago (but was unable to attend at the last minute), they released this report on the state of air quality, parks and trails, and …
Five ways regulators think wrong (+ the impact on land use/zoning)
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesThe Wall Street Journal had a fascinating article recently on “Studying the Biases of Bureaucrats” - essentially applying behavioral economics to examine how government bureaucrats systematically make mistakes in their judgement. The key excerpt …
Prop 1, TX vs. NYC, #1 shopping, JFK+Rice, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesI had a tough time deciding this week between discussing the Geoffrey West/”A Physicist Solves the City” NYT story or another group of small misc items. Since I figure this is a holiday week when people might have more time to follow links and re…
Fast metro growth predicts lower incomes, and why that’s a good thing
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesHouston Tomorrow recently featured a story about a study claiming that faster urban growth leads to lower incomes and higher poverty and unemployment. I find the whole assertion deeply flawed, as does UH professor Peter Bishop in his comment.Here…
City culture vs. innovation, affordability ranking, the ‘Houston way’ of development, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesThe list of smaller misc items has been building so rapidly the last few weeks I’ll need to split them across a couple of posts:The Urbanophile has a very insightful piece titled “Chicago: The Cost of Clout”, making the case that “the Chicago way” of c…