Archive for the 'quality of place' Category
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 …
Trees for Houston vs. the Upper Kirby District TIRZ
Closed Published by Tory Gattis September 10th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesA battle is brewing between some quality-of-life nonprofits in Houston. It all starts with flood control. The city is in the middle of a long-term project to connect Buffalo Bayou to Braes Bayou with a very large storm sewer line underneath Kirby Dri…
Whose “quality of place”?, transportation history, and Houston mixed-use
Closed Published by Tory Gattis September 3rd, 2007 on Houston StrategiesThree miscellaneous pass-alongs today:A blog post comparing creative class rankings with domestic migration census data, finding an inverse relationship: a higher CC ranking tends to have lower, or reverse, migration. By far the most migration is to o…
Home affordability in real-life context, top rankings, tunnel costs, a Portlander disagrees, renewable energy in Houston
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesThe small items are piling up faster than ever this year:The 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey 2008 - Ratings for Major Urban Markets has been released, and Houston again scores extremely well, with a median house price …
The Center For Houston’s Future convened a panel of national Urban Land Institute experts this week to look at Houston’s current situation and coming growth; and, surprisingly, they recommend we do more of what the Center For Houston’s Future does (vis…
More on the Houston ULI panel
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesContinuing from my last post on the CHF-ULI panel on Houston’s future, I’d like to cover some more details from the presentation. I’m going to avoid repeating a lot of the detail in their Powerpoint presentation, such as how the visioning process shou…
Intro from the land-use regulation forum
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesJust got back from the land-use forum at the GRB downtown. Overall I think it went pretty well. Good turnout too. Maybe 500+? I have a lot of notes I’ll try to boil down into my next post, along with links to the presentations when they put them up…
Transportation conference, zoning debate, and tourism stories
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesBefore I get to some smaller misc items, I’d like to first remind everybody that Texas Lyceum is having a public conference on state transportation issues at the Reliant Center this Wednesday, December 3rd. It looks like a pretty interesting agenda wit…
Comprehensively addressing graffiti
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesThe City Council Quality of Life committee met today and talked about, among other things, graffiti abatement. You may remember Councilmember Sue Lovell’s graffiti op-ed a couple weeks back in the Chronicle (why oh why, chron.com, can’t you have real …
Houston vs. how Americans want to live
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesDavid Brooks had an extremely insightful column last week in the NY Times on what Americans are looking for in their ideal living environment. I liked the opening in particular: You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and hav…