Tag: houston

• Is sprawl to blame (at least partially) for the flooding in Houston?

  What’s happening in Houston right now is devastating. Ian Bogost of The Atlantic is calling the flood a “disaster of biblical proportions.” Harvey has unloaded 9 trillion gallons of water.

  It is once again reminding us of the importance of resiliency when it comes to our cities.

  One emerging argument is that this is an almost inevitable outcome for Houston, brought on by the multiplicative effects of climate change, unfettered urban sprawl, and poor design decisions.

  The barriers to development are famously low in Houston, which allows the city to quickly add housing and people. There are many benefits to this. 

  But it also means that there has been, among other things, a dramatic increase in the amount of impervious surface.

  This matters because impervious surface creates runoff.

  According to The Texas Tribune, impervious surface in Harris County (third most populous county in the U.S.) increased by 25% between 1996 and 2011. 

  And it replaced things like the below prairie grass (switchgrass), which are highly absorbent as a result of their deep root system. 

  

  But much like climate change, not everyone believes this is to be blamed. 

  For more on this, check out The Texas Tribune’s full interactive piece. It’s called “Boomtown, Flood Town” and it’s worth a read.

  Image from The Texas Tribune

  2017.08.30

• International and domestic migration in the US

  In response to President Trump’s proposed immigration bill, Brookings recently analyzed census data from earlier this year to demonstrate the importance of immigration for growth within much of the United States. 

  I’d like to share three tables from their analysis.

  The first two look at international migration grains and domestic migration gains over the last 3 decades (the last decade isn’t quite a decade).

  

  Here you can see that New York, Los Angeles, and Miami (all port cities) have dominated international migration to the US since 1990. But at the same time, international migration has become less geographically concentrated. From 1990-2000 the top 5 cities received almost half of all immigrants moving to the US. More recently, that number has dropped to 34%.

  Domestic migration is different in that it’s a zero sum game. When one US city gains, another US city loses. Here there is a very clear migration trend toward cities in the southwest – arguably because of weather, job growth, cheaper housing, and probably a bunch of other factors.

  If we look at actual international and domestic migration numbers over the last 6 years, the 12 largest metropolitan areas look like this:

  

  The key takeaways here are that 8 of these cities are losing people to domestic migration and only 7 of these cities have a positive net migration number – meaning their population is actually growing.

  What is clear is that the international migration column is a pretty important one if you believe that growth is valuable. 

  If you’re Dallas, Houston or Atlanta, maybe you care a little less about that column. But for most of the other cities, international migration is either the only way you’re growing (look at Miami go) or keeping your population losses in check (see Philadelphia).

  2017.08.06

• We’re still on road pricing

  

  The New York Times recently argued that self-driving cars can’t cure traffic, but that economics can. Here is the key soundbite:

  “Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only thing that really drives down travel times is pricing.”

  The argument here is that capacity expansions – such as additional lanes – never solve the problem of gridlock. Yes lane widening projects increase capacity, but the latent demand is so strong that the problem never gets solved. Even in places like Houston.

  We talked a lot about this phenomenon on the blog a few years ago when Toronto was embroiled in debate over the Gardiner Expressway East. But it’s interesting to think about self-driving cars as simply another incremental capacity expansion.

  I have no doubt that this technology will make more efficient use of our roads. Carpooling will be a lot easier – as is already the case. Cars will be able to drive closer together. We’ll be able to stop abrupt breaking and swift land changes, which actually create systemic traffic problems for everybody else.  And the list goes on.

  But there will still be limits to how many people can be efficiently moved on a particular strip of road. Exactly how there are limits to how many people can be efficiently moved via a particular subway tunnel, streetcar line, and so on.

  So if latent demand continues to outstrip available capacity, which has historically been the case, then we are once again back to the politically unpopular idea of pricing away congestion. As much as people criticize it as regressive, I believe that’s where we’re headed.

  2017.03.11

• Population growth across North American cities

  The Centre for Urban Research and Land Development at Ryerson University recently published the following chart on their blog:

  

  It’s a look at population growth across a few North American cities, broken down according to natural increases, net internal migration from other parts of the respective country, and net immigration from outside of the respective country.

  When you sum up the pluses and minuses shown above, you get to population growth numbers that look like this:

  

  Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta are monsters in terms of population growth. They’re obviously smaller than New York and Los Angeles, and so on a percentage basis they are really adding a lot of people. Much of this has to do with the ease in which housing can be added in those cities and their relative affordability.

  Toronto is competitive with New York and Los Angeles in terms of an absolute number, but again our base is smaller so on a percentage basis we are growing faster. The big story with Toronto is our dependence on immigration to grow.

  The one city on this list that might surprise some of you is Chicago. Toronto and Chicago share many similarities and are often compared. But when you look at how the Chicago metropolitan area is shedding people, you see that, at least in this regard, it’s in structural decline.

  2016.04.17

• How urban density affects how you get around

  Yesterday I wrote about urban-suburban divides within cities. And I argued that built form will largely dictate the kinds of transportation choices that people will ultimately make.

  As a follow-up to that, here is a chart based on the findings of a research report completed by Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy way back in 1989. On the x-axis is urban density (i.e. built form) and on the y-axis is per capita transport related energy consumption.

  

  What this chart shows is that as cities become more dense, “automobile dependence” is reduced in favor of, other, more sustainable forms of transport. 

  Here we have Houston at the top left (meaning it has the highest transport-related energy consumption per capita) and Hong Kong all the way on the bottom right. Hong Kong has by far the highest density among the cities looked at in this study, but Moscow seems to have the lowest per capita energy consumption. Still, the trend appears clear.

  Some people think of “density” as a dirty word. But there are lots of benefits to dense urban centers. And density does not necessarily have to mean tall buildings.

  Chart: Globalization Studies in an Urban World (Penn)

  2015.07.06

• Gardiner East vote shows that Toronto is not yet ready to be an urban leader

  

  Today is very sad day for Toronto. 

  After 2 days of debate, City Council voted this afternoon, 24-21, in favor of rebuilding the elevated Gardiner Expressway East (”hybrid” option) that runs along the city’s eastern waterfront.

  And once again, Toronto is largely divided. See above image prepared by Joel Eastwood and William Davis.

  It’s the old city of Toronto (who uniformly wanted the elevated highway replaced with a boulevard) versus the rest of the city (who for the most part voted for the hybrid).

  I can’t begin to tell you how deeply disappointed I am by not only the outcome, but also by how it happened and why it may have happened. For all of our talk about being a progressive global city, today we are clearly not that. 

  Because more than a vote on what to do with the Gardiner East, today was a vote on how we believe we should be building this city for the future. 

  When the Gardiner East was first built, the vision was one of fluid private mobility, where it would be possible to quickly circle around and across the city on an endless sea of highways. Detroit was doing it. Baltimore was doing it. Everybody was doing it.

  In other words, we were building our environment around the car. And our primary – some would say singular – focus was to ensure that the car could move unencumbered around the city. That’s why Toronto is now home to the busiest and one of the widest highways in the world.

  But despite all this, Toronto remains crippled by gridlock. And so does every other big city city in the world that has bet on cars as the solution. Why is that?

  Because that model doesn’t work.

  The I-10 Katy Freeway in Houston is 26 lanes at its widest point. It is the largest highway in the world by number of lanes. But from 2011 to 2014, commute times in some sections increased by as much as 51%. Is that because they haven’t built enough highway? How much is enough?

  By comparison let’s look at a city that has bet on transit as the solution: Tokyo. 

  The metropolitan area of Tokyo is approximately 37.8 million people. That’s more than the entire population of Canada and by most accounts is the largest urban region in the world. But despite its size, Tokyo is consistently ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world and also one of the most efficiently run.

  Interesting.

  So when I heard Councillors going on today about how a vote for the “hybrid” is a vote not to increase congestion and gridlock, it became abundantly clear that many – apparently most – people in this city still do not appreciate what it is going to take to get us efficiently moving as this region approaches 10 million people by 2041.

  This should not have been a debate about 3 minutes. That, as I’ve said before, is a red herring.

  Of course, there was lots of lip service to transit. Many seemed to agree that transit is the future. And some even went so far as to say that removing the Gardiner East and replacing it with a boulevard is the right thing to do, but that we simply can’t do it now because we haven’t made the requisite investments in transit. 

  If transit is truly what we want, then we why don’t we take the boulevard savings and put it directly into transit?

  To me it’s like saying: I really want to be homeowner, but I can’t afford it right now. So instead, I’m going spend more on rent so that I can burn through more money and make it even more difficult for myself to eventually become a homeowner.

  Because that is what happened today. 

  We voted to overspend on a stretch of elevated highway that is used by a small sliver of downtown commuters (~3%), instead of replacing it with a cost-effective surface boulevard (with similar road capacities) and then prioritizing the proven solution to urban congestion: transit.

  At the same time, we also made a number of other things clear in today’s vote. 

  We made it clear that cars matter more than our city’s public realm; that cars matter more than our waterfront revitalization plans; that cars matter more than our environment and our “efforts” to reduce GHG emissions; and, frankly, that cars matter more than our overall quality of urban life.

  I believe that cars will always be a part of our cities, but I don’t believe in putting them ahead of you and I. I guess old habits die hard. That my friends, really sucks.

  2015.06.12

• The value of cheap housing

  

  Houston Sunrise by Cliff Baise on 500px

  Urbanists generally don’t like to talk about cities like Houston. It sprawls. It’s car oriented. It’s over air-conditioned. In other words, it’s the antithesis of the dense and walkable cities that urbanists today like to tout as being exemplary. 

  But despite all this, Houston is one of, if not the, fastest growing city in America. According to The Economist, the population of the Houston metro area grew faster than any other city in America between 2000 and 2010. And between 2009 and 2013, its real GDP grew by 22%.

  So why is that? Here’s a snippet from that same Economist article (“Life in the sprawl”):

  Paradoxically, perhaps the city’s biggest strength is its sprawl. Unlike most other big cities in America, Houston has no zoning code, so it is quick to respond to demand for housing and office space. Last year authorities in the Houston metropolitan area, with a population of 6.2m, issued permits to build 64,000 homes. The entire state of California, with a population of 39m, issued just 83,000. Houston’s reliance on the car and air-conditioning is environmentally destructive and unattractive to well-off singletons. But for families on moderate incomes, it is a place to live well cheaply.

  So while Houston may not check off all of Jane Jacobs’ boxes, it does provide one important thing: cheap housing. And that’s clearly valuable for a huge number of people.

  But the other interesting thing about the snippet above, is that it starts to illustrate how frequently supply constrained markets operate with housing deficits. 

  The fact that the entire state of California issued only about 30% more building permits than the Houston metro – which you could easily argue is closer to a “perfect market” – tells me that there’s probably a lot of people bidding for the same housing in California.

  That’s less so the case in Houston.

  2015.03.15

• The most segregated cities in North America

  The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto just released a new research study called Segregated City: The Geography of Economic Segregation in America’s Metros. 

  The report looks at the physical sorting and separation of advantaged and disadvantaged groups within cities. And it did so across 70,000+ Census tracts in the US and in terms of 3 different dimensions: income, education, and occupation.

  Here are the most segregated “large metros” in the US:

  

  Table Source: MPI

  And here are some of their broader findings – taken verbatim from page 9 of the study (click here for the full report):

  Economic segregation is positively associated with population size and density. It is also positively correlated to two other sets of factors that follow from metro size and density: how people commute to work and the breakdown of liberal versus conservative voters.

  Economic segregation tends to be more intensive in high-tech, knowledge-based metros. It is positively correlated with high-tech industry, the creative class share of the workforce, and the share of college grads. In addition, it is associated with two key indicators of diversity, the share of the population that is gay or foreign-born, which tend to coincide with larger, denser and more knowledge-based metros.

  Economic segregation is connected to the overall affluence of metros, with positive correlations to average metro wages, income, and economic output per capita.

  Race factors in as well. Economic segregation is positively associated with the share of population that is black, Latino, or Asian, and negatively associated with the share that is white.

  Economic segregation is associated with income inequality and even more so than with wage inequality. Its effects appear to compound those of economic inequality and may well be more socially and economically deleterious than inequality alone.

  The research team also looked at how Canada’s 3 largest metros – Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver – compare to those in the US in terms of segregation. 

  The finding was that Canadian cities are overall less segregated than US cities, but that it should still be considered an area of concern. The most segregated of Canada’s 3 largest metros was found to be Montreal.

  

  Image Source: MPI

  My view is that our economy is going through a profound shift right now. We’re transitioning from the industrial age to the information age. And in its wake, we’re seeing a number of disruptions, one of which appears to be rising inequality and segregation. 

  That’s not to say that I think this transition is a bad thing (I don’t think it is), but I do think we should be carefully considering and designing our future.

  2015.02.25

• Necessary city

  I’ve spoken about global cities, such as New York and London, many times before on Architect This City. I’ve also talked about the rise of consumer cities. That is, cities with a high “urban amenity premium”, which could be great outdoor amenities or great restaurants, theatre and so on. These are places of consumption.

  Sometimes global cities and consumer cities are one and the same. But there are also cities–such as Vancouver–where I view the urban amenity premium as outweighing their status as a global city. Vancouver, quite simply, is an awesome place to live and enjoy life. I almost went to UBC for grad school because of Whistler Blackcomb and the city itself.

  Today, I’d like to introduce another type of city into the discussion mix: the necessary city. I heard about it here and, although it seems somewhat intuitive, I think it’s an important reminder that, even though a city may not be an alpha global city, it may be fulfilling a specific function for a particular industry or aspect of the global economy. It may still be a necessary city for your corporate headquarters.

  For example, Houston is the city for energy companies. If that’s your business, you likely need a presence there. For fashion and luxury, it’s Paris. And if you’re in the auto industry:

  The major global equipment manufacturers are widely dispersed, but when you look at leading global parts suppliers, they virtually all have their North American headquarters in Detroit – including the German, Japanese and Korean ones. Among them are companies like Robert Bosch, Denso, Yazaki and Hyundai Mobis. If you’re in the auto industry in America, you have to deal with Detroit. Unsurprisingly, Detroit boasts several nonstop flights to key Asian destinations.

  In essence, we’re talking about cities making themselves necessary by becoming niche experts. And what I think is interesting about this concept is that it’s likely much more attainable for a lot of cities. Most cities will never become New York. And most cities will never be able to transform themselves into the next Silicon Valley.

  But maybe those are the wrong economic development goals. It’s not about becoming the next, whatever; it’s about finding and owning a particular niche and making yourself absolutely necessary to the global economy.

  2014.05.03