livincinco

There is a definite possibility, but I'm not convinced that we're truly seeing a paradigm shift. There's no question that demographically there is a larger percentage of the US population in the 18-37 age bracket than there has been historically.and that birth rates and marriages are happening later. In my opinion, a lot of the "paradigm" shift is a direct result of those demographics. There's a lot more young, single, childless people around and they are following the same patterns that young, single, childless people have followed historically. I also tend to think that longer projected lifespans for this generation have a lot to do with the deferring children/marriage. The biological constraints of child birth/raising have changed considerably in the last 50 years. The big question is whether this generation will follow historical patterns in terms of "settling down" in the future or whether there will be a significantly higher percentage that continues to stay in an urban lifestyle and, in my opinion, that is very much an open question. In short, I agree with you that mobility is changing, but I'm not so sure that we agree on how it is changing.

What does this conversation have to do with a supertall for the Galleria area?

Agreed on Buffalo, but population increased significantly in the other four cities referenced. Agreed. When given the choice, consumers opted to drive instead of ride mass transit. That has been clear and consistent across the US except in cases where driving becomes so onerous that mass transit becomes attractive by comparison. It's also clear that light rail didn't actively influence urbanization. All cities continued to sprawl since there wasn't active government intervention to drive urbanization.

Interesting analysis of 30 years of data on light rail systems built in the 1980's. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2014/04/have-us-light-rail-systems-been-worth-investment/8838/

Fair enough, but deep bore construction comes with a proportionately higher cost. New York is using deep bore and it's $2 billion/mile. Assume Houston could do it for half and the proposed Westheimer line is $16 billion if you went underground the whole way. I know that most people around here want to pretend that everything should get financed with no consideration of cost, but that's a staggering number.

Population growth is driven by international immigration and births. It has had negative domestic migration for a number of years.

Good thing that all of us Southern, hillbilly rednecks have smart urbanites like you to tell us what we should do. We really like that so many smart urbanites leave "world class cities" like New York and Chicago every year and move to hick southern towns like Houston, so that they can tell us everything that we're doing wrong. After all, the real reason that so many people are moving to Houston is because those kind hearted souls want to help fix all those things that are wrong with our little hick town!

That's an approx. 16 mile line at a conservative estimate of $500 million per mile. $8 billion in construction cost with major construction disruption down Westheimer for years. Not sure I would call that "a no brainer".

I think that number might be outdated, but the sample set is pretty limited because there's very little recent subway construction in the US. San Francisco's subway construction is currently tagged at about $850 million/mile.

Not necessarily. New York's 2nd Avenue line is projected to cost $2 billion/mile ($17 billion for 8.5 miles). Don't really expect that a subway line in Houston would cost that much, but the $500 million/mile number might be optimistic.

There's a lot of logistical problems with running a subway through downtown, specifically, there's the interaction with the tunnel system as Iron Tiger mentioned as well as impact to underground infrastructure. Also, from what I've read, there was pretty strong resistance to the longer timeline to build a subway and the length of the surface level disruption that it would have caused.

and lots of dollars. http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/691-amsterdam-north-south-metro

Six story tall fork?

Solar has been showing some pretty dramatic increases in efficiency and cost reduction over the last couple of years and it's getting pretty close to the point where it's just going to turn profitable for companies to do that on their own. ROI seems to be about 10-12 years right now. Another drop like we've seen in the last three years and companies will be doing it on their own. It will be interesting if that happens, because it will make larger footprint low rise buildings more energy efficient than high rises.

Fair enough and agree with your comments. However, it still has everything to do with market conditions and nothing to do with government regulation.

That assumes that there is demand for a more efficient use of the land that is being used for parking. Downtown has had a large amount of surface parking for years because the demand wasn't there. Government regulation had nothing to do with it.

Why not make the developers fund it then? The city is giving them a lot of money as incentives, I think that it would make a lot of sense for the city to then be able to dictate as part of that agreement that a certain amount of their advertising budget is spent in promoting a downtown lifestyle. Not sure if anything like that was written into the deals, but could be a win/win.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. - Oscar Wilde

Also a fair point. I'm a big fan of the residential incentives. They've been effective and I think that the cost will end up paying off long term, I'm not strongly opposed to an ad campaign, it's just that I always assume scarce dollars in these kind of discussions. In my opinion, the residential incentives should continue to get a lot of money and additional money should be devoted towards continued development of parks, which have had great ROI in the downtown area, and in enhancing "livability" by improving sidewalks, etc. I just see marketing expense as money that could have been devoted to those kind of things that, in my opinion, provide a better ROI. Your point about model homes is valid, but also recognize that's industry cost, not city cost. I would expect that all the residential development is going to create advertising which publicizes "downtown living" and a lot of news coverage as well. I'd much rather see the city contribute by continuing to increase the number of events downtown and generating publicity from those things. That potentially achieves the same goal and enhances the "livability" of downtown as well.

I'm not arguing with you that campaigns like the one that Spring Branch is doing aren't effective. It's more of a question whether they're necessary. General indication is that housing demand outweighs supply in the downtown area even with the significant amount of supply in the pipeline. Regarding promoting urbanization, I'm not sure I agree that the shift is coming from the suburbs or that it's even important to promote movement from the suburbs. It's not a zero sum game. The Houston area gained 138,000 people last year. We're talking about downtown adding housing capacity for maybe 5,000 people in the current state. The Houston metro is projected to gain approx. 2 - 2.5 million people over the next 15 years. Even if the area inside the loop stays at approx. 8% of the general population, and I do expect it will increase slightly, that means that at least an additional 150,000 - 200,000 people move inside the loop. All downtown has to do is attract a percentage of the new residents that are already predisposed to an urban environment to be successful.

I do question whether a marketing campaign is right for downtown, but I would also suggest that the timing is very much wrong right now. The vast majority of the residential units are currently under construction and are scheduled to come available over the next couple of years. Doing a "come live downtown" campaign now isn't going to help very much because there really aren't a lot of places to live at the moment. Additionally, you'd expect that the different builders are going to market their properties when they are complete, so I'd expect that there's going to be a significant amount of advertising dollars promoting downtown properties by late next year regardless of whether downtown does anything on its own.

That seems high. Houston is expected to grow fast but the projections that I've seen have been closer to 2.5 million additional in the next 15 years. Your numbers add up to about 3.7 in 11 years. It is interesting that projection calls for 200k of the increased 3.7 million inside the loop. That would increase population inside the loop by about 40% and would still account for only about 6% of the new residents.

To quote George Carlin "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." I will now return you to your regularly scheduled topic...

Agreed. We're much closer to LA than we are to Chicago. There's no part of Houston that will ever have the kind of density that Chicago has along the lakefront.

According to the official MLB stats, the roof was open at MMP for only 14 of 81 games last year so the whole question of being able to see the game seems to be rhetorical. I agree though, that you probably won't be able to see enough from the top of the building anyway. Pretty hard to argue that this isn't a nice net win for the area...