N Judah

I think the Repubs are doing with immigration what they do with abortoin -- they use it as a wedge issue to divide the country and make themselves look like the party of American values and all that. The fact is that the Repubs and the corporations that back them need immigration to fuel the economy. I think NAFTA, CAFTA, the FTAA and all that are all parts of a plan to ultimately create a free trade and labor zone in the western hemisphere (not that I'm pro or agains that - that's just wha tI think is happening). Wasn't it Reagan who gave amnesty to the illegals? And Democrats, on the other hand, all seem to get caught out on the issue when the fact is that they need to curtail immigration in order to make national health care feasible. It's pointless to create a nationalized health care system when it's just going to get overloaded by people moving here illegally for health care that's not available in the old country. That's why Hillary Clinton is the one who's got a hard line stance on illegal immigration and not the mainstream Republicans.

So what else will be at the NW Mall site besides a soccer stadium?

Huh. I wonder if they rip on Mark Cuban too.

Satellite radio is coming on pretty strong. The portable XM player will be to radio what the iPod is to the discman/CDs.

I also think this one looks a lot better than the old one. I've noticed that this building, the big flat one over by the galleria (the one that blocks out the sun), and a few others look like they came from the same template. There are other highrises (in Vancouver and the AzureLiving.com one going up in Dallas) that come from another template. Why does it seem like so many of the newer highrises seem to be done in the style of the Shamrock, and so few (or none at all) like the newer ones in Vancouver or the Azure? Does it have something to do with construction techniques, local preferences, or what? I'm just wondering, not criticizing. I happen to like most of the high rises in Houston.

I read somewhere that in Paris it's the exact opposite of the US -- their suburbs are where the immigrants and gangs are, and the inner cities are where all of the wealthy people want to be. So if they are in fact heading to their sprawling estates, it might be only because they couldn't afford something closer in.

Zoning's kind of an outdated technology anyway.

We should just stop giving people incentives to live in the suburbs. Or, at the very least, if we continue to give them incentives to live in the suburbs, we should give them equal incentive to live in the city. Which is what we're doing in Houston, to some extent.

Some of those Atlanta pictures are pretty decent. That kind of development wouldn't be so bad maybe along the soon-to-be-built northern extension of our light rail. I don't know why they have so few trees, though. It kind of looks pretty barren. And the very last picture is downright hideous, in my opinion. The funny thing about the whole suburban sprawl v. semi-dense urban-ness is that most people, given the choice, choose neither -- they want something inbetween, called a "garden city." I read about this in the Feb. (I think) issue of Harvard Design Magazine (or whatever it's called -- they have it at the Borders on Alabama). A bunch of people were shown pictures of different scenarios -- a suburban style shopping center, Paris, some nice part of D.C., and a few others -- and when people were asked which picture represented the area they would most like to live in, more people chose the "garden city" (a picture of some German town called Margarethoven or something) than any others. I'm just pointing out that a lot of people on this board seem to think that there's suburban sprawl, and then suddenly New York City. There is a third way, and it's actually what most people prefer, given the choice. So maybe that's what Houston could be. I mean, it's definitely possible.

Maybe the "design competition" I saw suggested in the Letters section of today's Chronicle can be for that Prada store you want.

And I bet some of the pro-zoning people who live in Houston look down on Sugarland's conformity.

The way I read it, TrophyProperty was talking about a hypothetical strip center, which means that there would, I'm guessing, probably need to be parking. 2/3 of the lot for parking seems about right for a strip center, based on strip centers I've seen around town. Wouldn't it be possible to build something profitably that wasn't an office building? Why not condos or rentable apartments? Without height limitations, it could be taller than usual, making up for the cost of buying original land. Isn't that what they're doing with the 'superblock' ? Basically I'm just wondering why $58 a square foot is so prohibitive to development, and why people are saying that an office building would be the best thing to put on a block so expensive.

That looks really, really nice. I saw on another thread that blocks in midtown are going for $58 per square foot. Does anyone want to take a guess about how much these units might rent for? (I'm assuming that the higher the cost of purchasing the original land, the more expensive the apartments.)

Right. That's exactly what I meant. You said it better than I could.

In some parts of the country a project like this could take half a decade to start construction.

I have a very hard time believing that right of way issues could *double* a project's cost. The article at the top chalks up $121 million of the overrun to purchasing ROW. That leaves about $1 billion for other things. Plus there's still the issue of the selective omission of certain costs. Not estimates gone wrong, mind you, but costs that were apparently left completely out.

But this information wasn't out there for everyone to see. That's what the auditor said, and Ric Williamson accepted the auditor's findings. They based their estimates on preliminary engineering, and upon further review found that it would be significantly more expensive. But since it wouldn't be politically feasible to reveal that to the public, they decided to hide the real expected costs and put the project on an accelerated schedule so that it would be halfway done before anyone found out. And, not only that, but the preliminary cost analysis failed to take into account things it *should* have -- things like the cost of securing the right of way, administrative costs, and the costs of moving water and sewer lines. I don't see how any of these things are risks, and even if they were I still think they should have still been included in some form or another. A friend mentioned something to me the other day about how whoever is building I-10 will probably get some pretty big bonuses for completing it so far ahead of time. This got me wondering how much these will be, and how much these will contribute to the total cost of the widening project. Anyone have any ideas?

Well, you'd think they would let us know what that risk factor would be like and at least be up front with us when selling us the project (not that it needed to be "sold" -- it's not like we had to vote on it to get it built, like with light rail). I understand what you're saying about risk but it seems like they disingenuously gave us a low estimate so that no one would raise hackles. Your last sentence almost makes it seem like we should be "thankful" that the freeway wasn't more expensive because a higher expense involves more risk -- risk which they neglected to tell us about. It's like saying sure, you just shot me in the back with a pistol, now let me shake your hand for doing me the "favor" of not shooting me in the back with a shotgun.

So if architecture is about preparing construction documents, and if (as Midtown 4.2 says) U of H prepares designers with little knowledge in creating construction documents, then do graduates of such schools just sort of pick it up on the fly once they get out into the job market? Or do most of them end up doing things not related to architecture once they graduate? Just wondering. Also, what do you guys know about European architecture schools? I'm told that they are very ideas and theory-oriented. If schools like Rice and U of H tend not to focus so much on the practical (which is the impression I've gotten from the posts on this thread as well as the schools' web sites) then European schools must be waaay out in left field.

Hey, how is U of H architecture for grad school? What are they known for?

Supposedly the SE line will go down Scott St, right past the University of Houston.

It might be that Katy Town Center (or whatever they're calling it now ) -- I read that it was going to break ground by the end of the month. So it could be that they started on it already.

My understanding - and this may be completely wrong - was that HCTRA wouldn't be the ones operating the toll lanes down the center of I 10. Rather, as they were not toll lanes but actually HOV lanes that just happened to charge a toll, they would be owned and operated by Metro. But I'm sure you know much more about this than I do -- I guess I'll just have to double check my sources on this one. Good points. I definitely see what you're saying. Anyway, at any rate, this new development is really win win. If rail doesn't come through there for a while, they still have attractive mixed use stuff for everyone to enjoy. But if/when rail comes through, at least they've got a head start. Then they can say that rail is justified by serving existing development, rather than basing the whole thing on the idea that it will spur develoment at some point in the future.

I agree, it's absolutely fantastic.

Funny how no one ever mentions freeways as the cause of sprawl. Without freeways, no one would want to live so far away. Anyone who's lived here for a decent amount of time has probably noticed that the freeways come first, and then the houses. The freeways aren't built to meet demand, but rather create it (ironically the very technique that the anti-rail reactionaries disingenuously accuse rail proponents of using). If Houston were truly an organic city, we wouldn't be so spread out, but we wouldn't be crowded like the pre-car cities.