[ think ] 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 [...]
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.