[ think ] archive
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 [...]
How Efficient Are We in Our Use of Oil?
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the continuing environmental catastrophe that has resulted got me thinking about domestic oil consumption in the United States. Clearly, this disaster is one consequence of our dependence on petroleum and the need to satisfy that dependence with offshore exploration in increasingly difficult and hostile environments. It [...]
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 [...]
What I’ve been up to…
In May I spoke at the Congress for the New Urbanism. I presented a project I’ve been working on for many years, which is now beginning to reach a stable point where it makes sense to open it up to the outside world. This project is called Net Attraction Framework, and it’s my attempt to [...]
Traveling Season
For regular readers, you may have noticed a sudden drop in posting activity over the past three weeks. I’ve been out of town on a variety of business and personal trips for about 15 of the last 30 days, and will still be traveling for most of the next two weeks as well. So you [...]
Learning from Glenwood Park
I recently found a great mini-documentary concerning Atlanta and an emerging New Urban neighborhood within the city. Notice the posted clip (read the complete article to see the video). This is a perfect example of a developer who understands the difference between the front and the back of a property – and correctly oriented the building to the street. Unfortunately, in Houston most buildings present their rear end to the public, and hide their face in the back yard.
Speaking Tonight on Property Value Theory
For those who are interested, I’ll be speaking tonight at 7PM at CNU-Houston’s April Professional Development meeting. The meeting will be held at “New Living,” which is a hardware store in the Rice Village area.
The talk will cover the connection between design decisions and property value impacts. I’ll apply these observations to Houston, and look at what the city should and should not do when it looks to invest in infrastructure and revitalize neighborhoods.
CPT Challenge Results and Editors Choice
Last week we held a quick design challenge, looking for people to showcase their ideas for cable-propelled transit systems in Houston. We were happy to receive five different entries, which I think is about what I’d hoped for given the short time frame and the requirement that entrants create an image of some kind to illustrate the idea. What exceeded my expectations was the quality of the entries! These are all thoughtful submissions, and picking and editor’s choice was harder than I expected. I did say I’d pick a winner, though… read the rest of the story to see who won!
Growing neoHOUSTON
Introducing neoHOUSTON’s newest contributing author – and the opportunity for additional contributors to join the site.
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