Author Archive
A different take on the economies of cities
A team of researchers from the Santa Fe Institute are looking to change the way we measure the economic performance of cities. They suggest that gross and per-capita economic numbers fail to take the inherent advantages that larger populations create. Most data, therefore, simply confirms that large cities outperform small ones. A better measure would be to establish the ‘normal’ performance of a city of any given population size, and then compare the real performance of actual cities against this norm. We can then see whether cities are actually over or under-performing their size. They ranked 363 cities in their study, read the whole article to see how Houston did!
An open letter to Kevin Whited
Kevin, For someone who is such a critic of poor journalism, you should look in the mirror once in a while. You described my recent letter to City Council as: “The view from twentysomething Houtopian Planner Fantasyland, where millions of dollars to develop property the “right” way magically appear as if one had a cheat [...]
Re: Koehler St. Development
I’ve had a number of people ask me to share this, and it’s beginning to circulate around the web, so I thought it would be best to put the original text of my letter to City Council here where I can keep an eye on it. Here is what I wrote to the City concerning [...]
Traffic Calming via Mirage
A group in Canada has come up with a traffic calming solution they think will decrease the number of children hit by cars in school zones. They’ve created an optical illusion, a painting on the street which – as you approach – takes on the appearance of a little girl chasing a ball into the [...]
You must watch this video
A look at How San Francisco is letting the Free-Market solve it’s parking problems. From SFpark on Vimeo.
No room in the middle
In a new report from the Brookings Institution, MIT ‘s David Autor thoroughly examines economic trends over the past generation and finds a troubling trend: “…the structure of job opportunities in the United States has sharply polarized over the past two decades, with expanding job opportunities in both high-skill, high-wage occupations and low-skill, low- wage [...]
China’s idea of the future
China is dreaming up some pretty radically innovative ideas for the future of it’s cities. The latest idea is this “bridge bus,” which I’m not even sure exactly how to describe. Here’s an attempt: Basically you take a bus and make it 15′ high or so – just a hair shorter than whatever the standard [...]
Major Kudos to HEB
This is the right way to do the right thing. Regarding the new HEB planned for West Alabama and Dunlavy: A promising scheme by architect Robert Morris allows for a “rainwater harvesting” pond with two fountains, a waterfall and footbridges, a “family meadow” on the southeast side and a “performance meadow” on the southwest side, [...]
neoHOUSTON Update
Just to let everyone know, we’re going to have some scheduled downtime from this evening through tomorrow morning. We’re moving neoHOUSTON from one server to another, and we’re going to be adding some stuff behind the scenes while we do that. Hopefully everything will go smoothly, and we’ll be back tomorrow with some fun new [...]
E Pluribus Unum
In response to President Obama’s speech today I spent some time thinking about our immigration policy. This isn’t within my normal area of expertise, but it is something that I think everyone should spend some time thinking about. The truth of the matter is, politicians have been screwing this up for generations, and I don’t [...]