Archive for the 'demographics' Category
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…
Kotkin’s ‘Opportunity Urbanism’ unveiled
Closed Published by Tory Gattis June 6th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesThe Kotkin project I’ve been involved with for almost two years now finally got formally released to the public at a Greater Houston Partnership luncheon yesterday. The goal was to understand cities as engines of upward social and economic mobility, w…
Houston and The Realignment of America
Closed Published by Tory Gattis May 8th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesThe Wall Street Journal had a quite long and comprehensive op-ed this morning titled “The Realignment of America” on demographic shifts since 2000 (free 7-day link, subscriber link). While getting the link, I also noted it has been one of the most pop…
Vietnamese-Americans flocking from SoCal to Houston
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesOver the holidays, the LA Times ran an interesting piece on the mass migration of Vietnamese-Americans from southern California to Houston (hat tip to Joel). Lots of good excerpts in here. Bold highlights mine.Vietnamese Americans are lured to the Te…
Battery tech, baby boom 2, rail vs. ridership (and stadium), energy trading, and Texas job growth
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesAn assortment of smaller items today:Stanford researchers claim they can get a 10x improvement in lithium ion batteries. If the improvement can be manufactured affordably and reliably, it would certainly be a great improvement for laptops and cell pho…
Texas schools are better than you think (but still have a long way to go)
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesFor a while I’ve been wanting to do a post on this McKinsey report titled “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools” (main report, supporting charts).First, the (very) bad news:This report examines the dimensions of four distinct…
Five steps to save the Obama presidency
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesI usually try to avoid politics on this blog, but this Forbes op-ed from Joel Kotkin on saving the Obama presidency not only resonated with me, but also touches on some of the subjects I coverhere. Describing the administration as “Moveon.org run by th…
Houston vs. Chicago, Seattle, Portland - plus stagnant stadiums, giving thanks, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesSome smaller items for your weekend reading pleasure:The Wall Street Journal recently had an op-ed titled “What Oprah’s Departure Means for the Windy City,” which serves as a warning to Houston and other cities:”Chicago is a city of magnificent parks a…
Commute costs, census, rankings, cool maps, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesSome smaller items this week for your holiday reading (how many of you are really working at the office this week?), but first a paragraph on one of my pet peeves.Another report came out recently claiming Texas has some of the worst and most expensive …
Selling trees, LA traffic tech, best performing city, diversity shifts, and the best USA map ever
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesIt’s another week of smaller items:Could somebody explain to me why the Forest Service can sell their dead trees and get them removed for free (or actually a profit), but Harris County has to pay taxpayer funds to do the same thing? Is it a volume issue? The type of trees involved? Has Harris County even explored a similar option? Maybe a private company would remove them for free and resell