Archive for February, 2009
Tour De Houston Preview and a teaser…
Last post for the work week, I decided to preview some information about the upcoming Tour De Houston.
The Tour is a significant cycling event, with routes of 20, 40, and 70 miles covering significant chunks of central Houston. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and I’m pretty sure I’m going [...]
The Urban Corridors Debate
Yesterday I attended the Livable Houston lunch meeting put together by the Houston Tomorrow foundation. The topic was Houston’s Urban Corridors program, and the discussion was pretty good.
Here’s an overview:
The city’s current development codes make truly urban, pedestrian-oriented development extremely difficult outside of the CBD. Meanwhile, METRO is building a massive new light-rail system(PDF) which [...]
Hidalgo Street
Following up on some of the comments received in my earlier post about Multiways in Houston, I took a trip over to Hidalgo street yesterday to see what it was like. Keep Houston Houston tipped me off that this street already had some of the design features I was talking about, and it turns out [...]
ULI-Houston Mayoral Candidate Forum
Today I had the chance to attend the ULI-Houston Mayoral Candidate Forum. Since this was a members-only event for ULI, most of Houston didn’t get to be there (which is a shame, really, because it was a great event!). So, knowing my readers would probably have appreciated knowing what was discussed, I took the best [...]
Houston Non-Profits and Guidestar.org
A friend of mine who works as a Director of Development at a private elementary school in Houston told me about an interesting site for researching non-profit organizations in the United States called Guidestar.org, and I thought it was worth sharing here. Guidestar.org is basically a website that indexes non-profit organizations through their annual IRS Form 990 filing. The IRS form 990 is basically a document that describes the financial state of a tax-exempt organization every year, and they are all made available to the public at some point after being processed by the IRS.
Anyways, after learning a little about form 990, I decided to research a couple of notable Houston non-profits to see what kind of relative scale they operate at, and of course, how much the top guys are raking in. This list is in no particular order, and if you think of any other good ones to add, feel free to write in the comments (you’ll have to register for a free account at guidestar.org in order to get access to the search function).
Houston and the Free Market
Tory Gattis had a great post on Monday in which he reviewed some news from late ‘08. Two major highlights:
1. A comprehensive study by the Brookings Institution found that congestion pricing of freeways “would reduce housing costs and sprawl. It eliminates the subsidy for living farther out, which drives up demand and density in the [...]
This is called Capitalism.
Forbes had a great story from January that I just found, and I thought it was worth sharing: Where US Home Sales are Rising. The key quote comes right at the beginning.
Something funny’s happening in Las Vegas. Home sale prices from last year are down 28%, but home sales are up 15%.
The reason? Motivated sellers–those [...]
Around the World
This isn’t good news: Pakistan makes a truce with the Taliban. Not surprisingly, the Taliban is using its presence there to blackmail Pakistanis living in the US, threatening to kill their families if they don’t send the Taliban money.
I’m afraid President Obama is about to have a particularly nasty escalation of the war in Afghanistan [...]
Exercising in Houston – Boot Camp
Over the last 5-10 years, boot camps have popped up in cities all over the world and created some kind of website to promote their programs (I’m sure people have been doing this for hundreds of years but had no way to promote them other than word of mouth). Houston certainly has its fair share of boot camp classes, and a simple google search will turn up quite a few results all over the city. I have been attending one called Houston Adventure Boot Camp in Hermann Park off and on for the last 8 months or so, and I’ve been really happy with the results.
Newswire: February 16, 2009
No more car czar, says the Obama administration. GM and Chrysler will be supervised by Geithner. Doesn’t he have enough on his plate?
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States and cities scramble for stimulus dollars. Except South Carolina?
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Metro ‘in final negotiations‘ for most of the LRT expansion. Maryland Transit bureaucrat tells us that [...]
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