luciaphile

Given our American penchant for focusing on whatever is most meaningless I can only imagine the furor, the righteous outrage, had Alice Walton charged the people of rural Arkansas to visit her museum. The Walmart PR people are not that tone-deaf. They may sometimes find it hard to control the message, though: http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/02/news/companies/walmart-china-meat/ I will feel cheated - really cheated! - if globalization does not bring 5-spice assburger - tainted or not, with the DNA of small predators - to the shelves of my local Walmart before I die.

Just for the record, so that it will accurately reflect that Texas is a place where people have chosen blight, those protections have been overruled where there was the political will to do so.

I can't speak to the perceived need for the Grand Parkway or its probable future expansion, but my impression as a non-flier who has driven all over the state: in most Texas counties, the "only impossible scenario" for widening a road is because it was needed, or "successful." TxDOT is a fairy godmother who confers importance on the local panjandrums.

I heard someone say the other day that the Walton family - not, I think, a very large family - now controls as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of Americans. I googled the claim and found this: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/17/534591/walmart-heirs-wealth-combined/# Don't know anything about the Economic Policy Institute. But if true, I find this quite astonishing, though for all I know some other famous family - the Carnegies or the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers - once did the same. I present this neutrally - I'm not interested in demonizing the wealthy; in fact, I believe that, traditionally and sometimes still, what is good in the world has most often been done by people of means, even if the Waltons seem unlikely candidates. Well, mostly neutrally. I am ignorant of whether this means anything, whether it is a positiive sign, or whether it even matters (considered completely apart from the business they're engaged in, I mean).

Peak oil, no - peak cheap oil, certainly. Can't say anyone seems to feel it, though - as people seem as keen as ever to idle their SUVs while parked for an hour. Perhaps that's connected to "standard of living," somehow ...? Such nuances are not my strong suit.

Race is no doubt an endlessly interesting lens, but for some of us the takeaway on this subject is, how very different an instrument a mortgage once was, and vastly less consequential; and how wholly artificial this supposed American "triumph of the city." As usual, thanks, FDR.

It did all start there: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmpowell/4115239247/

Yes! It is all the scenery many city-dwellers will ever see.

Indeed, I would only add that following the overturning of the Endangered Species Act and successful court challenges to conservation tools, amid populist hostility to environmentalism, deftly exploited by libertarian-leaning Republicans ... those parts of the Katy Prairie protected by conservation easement were developed, although some of it was turned into ball fields by the county.

When would there be a compelling economic reason to pump water from East Texas hundreds of miles and, oh, 2300 feet in elevation, to West Texas? Not for household use - that doesn't require water in great quantity - but for irrigation or to fill up their steadily-evaporating "lakes"? Um, never. Which, certainly, in Texas, doesn't disqualify it from being subsidized - I would never suggest such a heresy. But we have plenty of existing reservoirs adequate to the purpose should we ever pursue that folly.Better idea? Look, they're already working on it (What? Without a State Water Plan?! But I thought we were going to thirst to death without that?): Some cities close to salty aquifers are looking toward desalination; Odessa is aggressively pursuing this, although the process is expensive. The concept of water reuse is also catching on quickly in West Texas, including the prospect of turning human sewage into drinking water. A $12 million water reuse plant is scheduled to begin operating in February in Big Spring, pumping well-scrubbed sewage into the drinking-water systems of Midland, Odessa and Big Spring. Brownwood, about 130 miles southwest of Fort Worth, is also beginning to pursue a similar reuse plant, with help from a state grant. And San Angelo is in the early stages of contemplating such a plant, according to Will Wilde, the city’s water utilities director. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/time-for-west-texas-to-face-long-term-water-needs.html?pagewanted=2 Yes, poopwater! Go to town, trolls!

Choose Your Own Response: (1) Actually, yes. Or at the very least, it is not the crisis it has been made out to be. For starters, people tend to "need" whatever amount of water is available to them. Take the reservoir I mentioned above. I can't force you to grasp that North and East Texas is replete with reservoirs already, that there is no water storage problem (except - what they never mention - the tendency of some reservoirs to silt up and become saline over time, whoops ...). That building further reservoirs will just be a political play by the people who benefit from the building of them (a not-small industry, made up of both private and public entities), having manipulated a few local poobahs into believing that another bass-stocked lake will be an economic boon worth wiping out farms and timberland. That East Texas has already been crapped on enough. But please understand that Dallas doesn't need that water in the slightest. That is a fiction. I will try to make this hard on myself by taking Austin as an example. Austin, you will agree, is a good bit drier than Dallas. Total annual water use in Austin was lower in 2010 than any other year since 1997. Despite the fact that it's been in a terrible drought much of that time. Despite the fact that it has added hundreds of thousands of water users. And no, it will never be feasible to pipe water from far northeast Texas to somewhere that is really short of water, Midland, say. The answer to Midland's problem is not to be found in Prop. 6. The projects Proposition 6 prioritizes are not based in science, they are wasteful water politics as it has traditionally been practiced in Texas. And just to be clear: dams don't make water, as you might have noticed if you've flown over the Highland Lakes lately. (2) No, of course not, vote for Prop. 6 as you've been told to and please don't trouble yourself about it further. That would not be a fruitful use of your time. It will surely pass, as it was designed to.

The usual suspects support it because there is a great deal of money to be made - or I should say, public money to be captured - and rural East Texas has very little clout in Austin. Sometimes it really is that simple. That said, Prop.6's $2 billion starter pot is not very big in the scheme of things. For this reason, some environmental groups have chosen to swallow the bitter pill of the worst infrastructure aspects of the water plan, typically the sort of dubious projects water hustlers know how to play politics for, in hopes they won't get built; in return for winning some water conservation/reuse provisions, and because there are loans promised to smaller communities that may not have a very good credit rating. Voting for Prop. 6 does not mean Marvin Nichols, for instance, will be built next year, but it certainly gives it a boost. Voting against Prop. 6 does not mean we will run out of water, or not thinking seriously about water. Far from it. This is an easy one for me - not like that Hidalgo County hospital district amendment ... oh, the glorious Texas Constitution.

They aren't creating new water. Prop. 6 would fund implementation of the Texas Water Plan, kickstarting projects like the $3.3 billion Marvin Nichols reservoir in northeast Texas, which the water hustlers have been pushing for about twenty years against the wishes of landowners. It would drown more than 70,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and farms in the Sulphur River basin to supply D/FW, and is not needed. http://harmanonearth.com/2013/10/29/lone-star-green-texas-prop-6-would-waste-billions-getting-the-water-equation-right/ I've observed that many HAIF-ers become quite incensed over what they perceive as violations of property rights. Not to suggest that urban issues are trivial, precisely, but ... if you become incensed over what sort of addition you can make to your craftsman home, or whether a developer is given static for inserting a tower among single-family homes - then perhaps you may be sympathetic to folks who have lived for decades with the threat of having their home and livelihoods drowned. Italics mine, from an interview with Max Shumake (http://keranews.org/post/kera-thirsty-series-battle-over-marvin-nichols-reservoir): Shumake pulls up at a grassy clearing on the banks of the Sulphur River. "I guess this is the next thing to heaven right here on earth, you know," he said. "The land on down the river here a ways has been in the family since 1840-1841, something like that. I'm sixth generation, and I've got grandkids. That makes them eighth generation." In rural East Texas land is sacred, which is why the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir is a call to arms for Shumake. Shumake's family owns some 800 acres of ranch and timber land that will disappear underwater if North Texas utilities are allowed to dam the Sulphur River and flood the area. "Number one, I oppose it because it takes private property away from long-time Texans," he said. "Number two, I oppose it because it's going to ruin the economy of Northeast Texas. What we have in the timber industry, the cattle industry, farmers and ranchers, that's our big thing." Marvin Nichols is, by far, the biggest proposed reservoir in the Dallas Fort Worth area's Region C water plan. The reservoir alone would submerge some 72,000 acres of mostly private property. That's an area more than three times the size of Lake Ray Hubbard near Dallas. The federal government would condemn up to 10 times as many additional acres for what it calls "mitigation" - to make up for the loss of displaced wildlife and submerged habitat. "This is socioeconomic genocide," Shumake said. "It's going to do away with a whole culture of people when this happens." Hundreds of East Texas landowners feel the same way. At Tucker's Feed Store, near Omaha, Tommy Tucker says Marvin Nichols would put him out of business. Tucker: It'll ruin our businesses as far as timber and me selling feed. It'll do away with the cattle people. Tucker knows what it's like to lose property to a reservoir. The Army Corps of Engineers condemned 700 acres he owned when it built nearby Cooper Lake. "I had land that I had never cut any timber off of, that I had saved for myself and my kids to have, and the money that I got out of the property, I probably got a third of what it was worth," he said. Some 5,000 people have signed a petition to fight the dam. Opponents include an unlikely coalition of landowners, timber employees, environmentalists and the official East Texas water planning group known as Region D. Squaring off against them are North Texas's Region C water planners, and a group of East Texas civic leaders who believe the reservoir would bring growth to rural communities. I'm told that one person who no longer supports the reservoir is Marvin Nichols. And it is by no means the only reservoir proposed for East Texas, already full of them: http://www.tcatexas.org/?portfolio=reservoirs-proposed Isn't that a wonderful picture of the Neches?

I guess this still has a degree of unreality to most of us - otherwise I'm a little surprised the subject here or elsewhere has brought forth no Boomer nostalgia for driving, from when teenage car culture was at its height, nor any paranoia about the seeming boon to authoritarian control this could be. Mostly I've heard people - perhaps those bedeviled by check engine lights - express concern about computer failure. Besides relieving congestion, the possible conservation aspect is compelling: As originally pointed out by climate and energy scientist Amory Lovins, only about one percent of the energy in a gallon of gasoline goes to moving the driver forward. About 75 percent of the energy leaves the tailpipe as heat and almost all the rest is needed to move a 4,000-pound car. But the bulk of that 4,000 pounds is only there to keep the driver and passengers safe in the relatively unlikely event of a major crash. If that risk was reduced dramatically, 4,000 pounds might come down closer to 750 to 1,000 pounds. - See more at: http://www.driverlesscarhq.com/category/environment/#sthash.sHduP0TZ.dpuf Okay, confession: I just wanted to plug Amory Lovins. He would be energy secretary in a better world.I guess. I haven't a clue who the energy secretary is.

The website states very clearly that welfare services being mainly designed for families, not single young men, that was the focus of their analysis; so I apologize for carelessly replacing the phrase "households with children" with the word "population" in my second post on the subject. That was indeed unconscionable, though my main point, which I think related to my continual cognitive dissonance with the story told in the media about Texas, was ignored in any case. Your larger point, and I apologize again if there was not one, remains elusive to me though. Since the percentage of documented immigrants (which 40 to 50% of illegal immigrants start out as) living with children is higher, and the percentage of undocumented immigrants living with children much higher, to begin with than that for native adults, the data is kinder - if you are an anti-welfare-type, as many on the forum seem to be - to the native population. Of course the distinction between immigrant and native-born population impacts obviously is becoming meaningless anyway and so hopefully will be abandoned. So can we afford, in 2013, to lose the sturdy myth that the typical immigrant remains a "single young man sending money home to his family"? The progressive, surely pro-unlimited immigration public radio entity "Marketplace" thinks so: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/who-are-11-million-undocumented-immigrants

Back when Rick Perry was running for president, somebody noticed that much of the "Texas miracle" was owing to public-sector jobs ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/perry-criticizes-government-while-texas-job-growth-benefits-from-it/2011/08/18/gIQAPPZQSJ_story.html ... and that job growth had not kept pace with population growth. Come to think, that does sound kind of like the future!

This sounds right. Wasn't there somebody on HAIF one day helpfully alerting us to the power of πr2?Advocating for sprawl in the way that a Steve Forbes does has a certain brutal candor. He'll never live in it, he'll probably never see it, he doesn't care what it means for the country for it to be the environment in which the vast majority will live and die -- whether it is a good place for people to be "built."Advocating for sprawl in the belief that it will result in self-sufficient micro-cities, that will avoid the mistakes of the past, derives from a far less cynical attitude. Still, it reminds me of that kid who, when we were playing whatever game, would continually shout "do-over."

livincinco, let me preface this by saying I have no patience for the topic that seems to so engage those especially on swamplot, namely, categorizing people based on where they live, obsessing over hipsters and suburbanites and that mysterious third thing they always presume themselves to be (regular Joe? - it's unclear). It's about as fascinating, and revealing, as the difference between Presbyterians and Methodists. You've proposed the Argument From Design, and suggested that master-planned communities cannot contribute to sprawl because their developers have (more or less meticulously) planned for a variety of uses, down to the last square foot, and that these places throw the very meaning of the word sprawl into confusion. I think you're putting a bit of a fine point on it. Everything was planned badly or well by somebody, at some scale. But I tried to play the game: {OED:sprawl: the expansion of an urban or industrial area into the adjoining countryside in a way perceived to be disorganized and unattractive; OED American English, sprawl: the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas; Merriam-Webster, sprawl: a situation in which large stores, groups of houses, etc., are built in an area around a city that formerly had few people living in it; wikipedia, urban sprawl: a multifaceted concept centered on the expansion of auto-oriented, low-density development, ...}I know y'all can do this stuff all day, but my attention flagged. People have bloviated quite a bit on the word sprawl and its first appearances in print some 60 years before your "Arbury." I like the succinct "Urbanizing the Countryside," which is the name of a Chinese Communist party manual for doing just that. I hope you won't mind if in a similar spirit I express my confusion about "master-planned community." It sounds like a marketing term that was granted legitimacy at some point. (Would we detect the hand of the "master" if the developer's billboards didn't alert us to it?...). But does not all new construction purport to be master-planned? My impression of such places (which mainly reduces to the peculiar spacing of things), or whether they seem likely to hold up as well as the "un-master-planned" postwar single-family neighborhood I grew up in, is irrelevant. I am genuinely mystified, though, by your contention that the incorporation of new features and selling points disqualifies "master-planned" neighborhoods from being considered part of the city's outward spread. I have already said that I believe sprawl has been blessed and will be seen - by fiat - as a 20th century problem. The word itself can hardly be said to have been a dealbreaker so far, but if sprawl's new fans in the media feel it is overly pejorative toward the places where - let's face it - most Americans will be living, they will surely come up with a better neologism. I agree with this ... ,,, to the extent that, contra those who fetishize densifying urban single-family neighborhoods, condo towers built in the Museum district have no connection whatsoever with, uh, the Phenomenon Formerly Known as Sprawl. It is definitely its own dynamic.

I supplied the link in post #36, they explain their methodology at length, judge it as you wish.

These anecdotes are interesting, and no doubt contain home truths, but ... When 42% of the native population, 54% of the legal immigrant population, and 70% of the "undocumented" population of Texas must rely on some form of government assistance, and this population growth is, we're told, essential to keep the economic engine up and running, and this status quo is commendable, even, somewhat paradoxically, a sort of libertarian paradise in action, per Forbes magazine -- well, we're all welfare queens, are we not?

When you look into the topic of crime (property theft mainly, violent crime being way down) and the income gap, there seems to be general agreement that there's definitely a link; and that it's complex and "not well-understood." I have found the Center for Immigration Studies to be the entity that most regularly generates reports on the effects of immigration. That they have an agenda is, I would estimate, about equally balanced by the hostility they engender in the media. The result is that they seem to try very hard to prepare purely data-driven reports, in an effort to keep on topic. They know they are unwelcome at the table in any case. Here's a passage from "Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children: A Look at Cash, Medicaid, Housing, and Food Programs" (http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011): "One way to describe what happens in regard to welfare is to recognize that most immigrants come to America to work, and most find jobs. However, many of those who have children earn very low wages because of their education levels. As a result, many immigrants with children qualify for welfare programs, primarily food assistance and Medicaid. Put a different way, the nation’s welfare system is designed in part to assist low-income workers with children. A very large share of immigrants who have entered the country both legally and illegally are low-income workers with children. This has a predictable impact on the nation’s welfare system." They are thus at pains to stress what we can all see: it is not an unwillingness to work that brings people to America. The US Census obviously doesn't inquire about immigration status, but the CIS claims to use the methodology of the the Urban Institute, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the "former INS", the Pew Hispanic Center, and the Census Bureau itself for separating out legal immigrants from the overall foreign-born population. This table shows that in 2008/2009 54% of legal immigrants to Texas used some form of welfare: It might easily be argued that this data merely shows welfare working well, benefitting working people with children. A lot of smart people both right and left believe it is good policy, and a permanent economic and social boon for the country, to continually increase the number of low-wage earners in the population, and to depress wages. Barbara Jordan was a rare and notable exception. But a lot of the very same people believe equally strongly in, and deplore the conditions that create, this connection between relative incomes and crime. My only comment: it doesn't seem like you should get to hold both these opinions, unless you have an unreasoning faith that you "can have it all."

Just noticed your quote: “ I like Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, for all the reasons you may think you don’t. In this American moment, when walkable neighborhoods are vogue and historically grounded restaurants are au courant, Houston flouts conventions." - John Edge in Departures Magazine John Edge in Departures magazine! That is priceless. No idea what that bit about restaurants means, but because a vanishingly small percentage of Americans, drawn from the tiny sample aware of urban issues, are talking about walkable neighborhoods, the fact that Houston is continuing to do what it always has and no longer has any control over, somehow "flouts conventions." Having grown up in Houston sprawl, and having become convinced during that time -- on my own, tabula rasa as it were, never once having heard or read anything at all about the design of cities -- that sprawl is a quality of life issue, being told many years on that Houston's development pattern is now touted as bravely nonconformist, is to be transported to cloud cuckoo land. Except that I've heard it so many times now. A steady drumbeat. So much for "contrarianism." In fact, sprawl is enjoying its cultural moment, with pro-sprawl articles right and left. As with so many other things (everything, perhaps) I've noticed that when something initially frowned-upon becomes the norm, there is a suspension of judgment after awhile, or a tendency to celebrate it, co-opt or adopt it as our own, in a "we must have done this on purpose" sort of way. I haven't parsed all the reasons for this. Maybe just the desire of pundits to back a winner, maybe an American bias against "negativity," 'cuz we've got a show to put on,etc.! Or perhaps the simple fact that to say something really novel or uncomfortable is (rightly, as there should be some test) difficult and often lonely, and most people like to be affirmed by others. I will put this thesis on the line with a prediction. The last ten or fifteen years the subject of obesity has been much in the news. We are all sick even unto death with the topic, yes? I have read about efforts to engineer food to allow people to continue in their eating habits while not gaining as much weight. I expect this effort to fail, and then, I soothsay: the experts will redefine obesity, decide it is normal, not something to be concerned about as previously thought. Look for an "Atlantic" cover story to this effect circa 2020.

This neocon says the solution to crime/income inequality is something called "Summer Opportunity Scholarships" and restitution by offenders:http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/346995/multigenerational-poverty-crime-control-and-civil-society Could there be a structural problem inherent in having a constantly-replenishing supply of immigrants accumulating like a sedimentary layer on top of the urban black underclass? Nah.

I agree in preferring a use for the dome that would have respected its place in some people's hearts, but that would have reckoned with the mostly gaping hole in the city's fabric that it created even when it was an active sports stadium. Houston has already enticed the Super Bowl. I hope I'm not shrewishly anti-football, but tying the facility to hopes of being noticed again by the NFL seems well short of visionary. In any case, it seems possible that football is facing the sort of crisis baseball did in the nineties. {No need to get indignant - no, I don't know anything about football, so just ignore the previous statement if it was outlandish.} I thought the predominant sentiment amongst HAIF-ers was that Houston should focus on its residents, not on trying to lure out-of-towners and tourist dollars you have the great good fortune not to need. No doubt some of you would enjoy attending a Really Major Sports Event once in a great while. I understand that. But as an ousider the one thing I have observed to unite the disparate voices on this forum is your shared approval for the Discovery Green, a place I found ... well, nevermind that. To each his own. The point is you really like it, and it can't help but prompt the thought that y'all are missing an opportunity to have a Discovery Green-type thing on a bigger scale, something that might please the most people, more of the time. ETA: maybe it's the wrong place for it - I readily concede my ignorance there, and of course my built-in bias that there can be no wrong place for open space.

So if the architect is at the (no doubt well-earned) tossing-off stage of his career, that may "do justice to Houston's haste"? You have hedged your bets, strickn. Interpret us, for us: that sounds like more than Steve Holl is paid to do. But as a native and layperson I am casually curious to know how this might be done. However, if all the marinating produced only nods to the heat and the usual stuff about boomtowns and youthful energy, unbeholden to the past, etc. -- I would just as soon admire Holl's building in absolute isolation, with no accompanying text.