Archive for the 'land-use regulation' Category
Family-friendly, Bill White, winning cities, NIMBYs, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis November 29th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesCatching up again on some smaller misc items:Joel Kotkin in the Wall Street Journal on the rise of family-friendly cities vs. “cool, hip” cities.”…an analysis of migration data by my colleagues at the Praxis Strategy Group shows that the strongest …
With the Ashby high-rise controversy and the scattered calls for zoning - whether traditional or form-based - Texas Monthly gives us a reminder from Dallas of one of the dark side-effects of strong government control of land-use:There are no winners in…
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  
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 …
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…
What really preserves a neighborhood’s character?
Closed Published by Tory Gattis August 27th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesI went to a workshop tonight put on by the City of Houston Planning Department on tools to protect neighborhoods, with a focus on deed restrictions. There was a lot of good material, but the most interesting to me was an impromptu debate that occurred…
Portland backlash against utopian visioning, transportation problems
Closed Published by Tory Gattis July 16th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesI really don’t mean to be a Portland-basher. It’s actually a very nice town. But because it’s held up as a model so often for its aggressive visioning, planning, and ’smart growth’, I feel it’s important to point out the downsides to move the discuss…
Thoughts on Brown and Crossley pieces
Closed Published by Tory Gattis July 2nd, 2007 on Houston StrategiesA couple different items I’d like to respond to today. The first, and largest, is Peter Brown’s op-ed yesterday on what he calls the urbanists vs. suburbanists debate, but what I’d call the government-planning-and-control vs. free-market land-use deba…
Joel Kotkin on Houston’s unique 21st century development pattern
Closed Published by Tory Gattis June 24th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesDouble posting today because I wanted to cover both congestion pricing and Joel’s op-ed in the Sunday Chronicle Outlook section today (sorry if you got a double email on congestion pricing - hit a snag with Blogger and had to repost it). I highly reco…