Archive for the 'smart growth' Category
MetroRail, Portland, energy, stimulus, and a race
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesSo Metro approved the contract for 4 of the 5 new light rail lines this week. Although there have been complaints about the 2012 plan delays, it looks like Metro used the time - and the intervening economic collapse - wisely to get the costs down to $…
Houston=Brooklyn? plus rankings, not-so-smart growth, anti-poverty incentives, mixed-use difficulties
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesClearing out some smaller items:In case you missed it, Randal O’Toole had a must-read Sunday Chronicle op-ed on how smart growth would not save Houston from future Ashby high-rises, and in fact would create more.New Geography: Smart Growth loses Housto…
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 …
Why Houston grows faster, rail vs. $, faith-based planning, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesContinuing last week’s list of smaller items:You probably saw this article in the Chronicle on how Fed funding for the Metro North and SE lines is at risk, as I predicted. If the funding does disappear, I hope Metro has the guts to go in a new di…
My TEDx Houston talk, mostly about Houston
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesSorry for the post delay this week - got back midweek from California and ran right into a giant pile of work. Back in June I had the opportunity to speak at TEDx Houston on the UH campus. It was a fantastic (and yet nerve-wracking) experience I really enjoyed. Well, the professionally edited video of my talk is finally available: “What is Social Systems Architecture and why does it matter?”
The Rise of Urban Romanticism
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesQuite a while back, someone sent me a link to an interesting white paper from New Zealand’s Center for Resource Management Studies titled “The Rise of Urban Romanticism (or The New Road to Serfdom)”. I finally got a chance to read it, and I think it h…
Rankings, Ike spirit, Dome, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesThe smaller misc items have been piling up since before the hurricane, and now are so many I’ll have to split them over a couple of posts this week. Before getting to them though, I wanted to throw out another plug for my solution to the national hous…
How the crash will - and won’t - reshape America
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesA couple months ago, Richard Florida (of Creative Class fame) published a major article in The Atlantic on ‘How the Crash Will Reshape America’ (hat tip to Deborah). A short summary of his thesis is here, and here are some cool interactive maps of pat…
TX Smart Growth and Houston Urbanism
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesIn case you missed it, Governor Perry vetoed a smart growth bill that came out of the recent legislature (Houston Tomorrow, Kuff, HRG). Setting aside all of the negative impacts that have come from smart growth plans elsewhere (the CA housing bubble, …
How Houston stacks up on income and cost of living
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesI recently came across this document from Atlanta with a lot of interesting data comparing 17 large and/or fast-growing American metros, including Houston (hat tip to ‘Rail Claimore’). Some observations:We’re one of only three cities that are both ver…