The Great Hizzy!

They've definitely started work on the park, no question about it. One Park Place, eh... Might as well go ahead and call the new park "Central Park".

Oh, cut the crap. Statistics can be skewed in a variety of ways. That's obvious. No one's arguing that. Why don't you ask the FBI to release a report that compares the number of people shot and killed in parking lots compared to other cities? This crapola can go on for days. Of course the data included in the report fails to cover all the specific scenarios with regard to crime in large municipalities. But that's no major point and certainly not reason to go on some long diatribe about a general report that the AP put out. The tone of Aceplace's post went beyond the bare facts in an attempt to mitigate what is statisticaly true based on the data supplied to the federal government. But then, and here's the pathetic part, he went on some odd rant placing blame for the offering of these statistics on a group of "malicious" people in other cities that are seeking to defame Dallas' good name. Don't you think that's over the top? Don't you think that reeks of boosterism that's run amok and that's to the point of being flat out goofy? No. What you instead decided to do in an attempt to defend the nonsensical rationalization by your boy Aceplace was assume that I have some bias or some nonobjective reason to make the comments that I made, assuming (in an impressive moment of clairvoyance, at that). The ridiculousness in tone of that posts speaks for itself. The man is way to caught up in the supposed virtues of what his hometown is or isn't, to the point that he's absolutely, mind blowingly goofy. Period.

Humor and irony.

How do you know I didn't read objectively? What bias(es) do you believe I have? This is bordering on fascinating.

I agree with this. Allowing specific communities the opportunity to alter certain city ordinances in this regard could be beneficial. Though, I think it needs to be looked at in greater detail so that certain criteria for change can be established. The market dictates this. You either can accept this for what it is or be frustrated the majority of the time. People HAVE been looking at this for decades now. The overwhelming majority of Americans don't care. Houston's not immune to this. Though, I do agree that the market that does have an interest in this should be allowed a viable opportunity to create such a landscape. The notion that Houston is "slower than most" in this regard is a fallacy at the worse or inconclusive at best. It's a statement that seems to made out of frustration. We have no real data, however, to prove this. It's a subjective offering.

Those graphics make me think of Buzz Lightyear, especially the first one.

^^^ LOL @ 'Coog. It's been about 25 years. I agree. Anyway, congrats, 2112. Good news, for sure.

Thanks. I wasn't sure how the city has responded to this. This, as much as anything, seems to be a source of concern with regard to violent crime. There was a special report on KTRK news about a particular complex in SE Houston where both residents and HPD felt the management of the complex was lax in not only providing security but alerting police of ongoing criminal behavior that was in full view of anyone on the grounds (drug deals, prostitution, gang initiations, etc). As for improving morale, that's a touchy one. Is it more money? Less overtime? Lieutenants and captains who are more supportive? Better equipment? All of the above? Police work is stressful and even with the most supportive administrations, it's hard to turn down a full pension after 22 or so years if it's available. I think the problem here is that the potential for mass retirements (in lieu of the mid-Eighties hiring boom) was never properly addressed by previous administrations. Further, in an era in which Houston's population has gone from 1,594,000 in 1990 to it's current (post-Katrina) estimate of 2,146,000, there seems to have been years of not pushing the growth of the force's # of officers. A city our size probably should have a force between 6,500 and 7,000 instead of our current estimate of 4,900. I have heard that a handful of New Orleans police officers have left the NOPD for other agencies in Louisiana, Texas and Georgia, which includes a handful in Houston. Not that that's helpful in a real terrms.

I'm also tired of the "Katrina people" response to crime in Houston. Yes, I agree that with 100K to 150K people coming all at one into the city, a percentage will include those who will commit the most heinous crimes. However, after a year, and after seeing that there's a very good chance that the majority of these 150K people will remain in Houston, it's time to start looking at their issues as OUR issues, because they'll effect the city for years, both in the positive and the negative. So, at this point, in my mind, these are Houstonians (who happened to have relocated here due to Katrina) committing these crimes. We have to deal with it. We have to deal with our 500+ officer shortage. We have to stop making broad blanket "the police sucks" or "Harold Hurtt" sucks statements and actually make an effort to fix the problem with solutions. Meaningful ones. Questions: How do we make inroads in not only making up for the 500+ officer shortage? Furthermore, how do we THEN come up with the monies to hire even more officers because even with 500+ officers, our officer to civilian ratio is subpar. How do we hold apartment complex owners responsible for reporting and patroling crime in their complex? If reported crimes are high at particular complex and there is no identifiable effort provided by the owners to increase patrol there, do we then charge the complex the amount of money per day it would take to have an officer patroling the grounds of this complex? Just a couple of questions to consider. I don't have a fullproof plan of attack but I would love to see meaningful suggestions.

This might be the most hilarious and embarrassing post I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot. From Aceplace at Dallas Metropolis. This is awesome: Absolutely correct. Creating arbitrary and irrelevant categories such as "cities over 1 million" makes for meaningless numbers... and nonsensical conclusions. For example, let's say we want to compare the crime rate of all towns and cities with names that begin with the letters "da". And on that basis we conclude that Dallas is somehow a cesspool of violent danger. Most of us would consider that nonsense. Likewise, the category of "cities over 1 million" is also irrelevant. Especially when "cities" turns out to mean "municipal governments". Even more than that, why draw the line at exactly 1 million? Is there a good reason to not compare Dallas to Washington DC or Detroit, both of them smaller municipal governments, but representing the center of similarly sized metro areas? What about comparing the likelihood of a tourist being mugged in central Dallas to the likelihood of being mugged in Atlanta? These are realistic questions. Using crime numbers for municipalities also gives false conclusions, since municipalities of similar sizes have a different mix of good neighborhoods and high crime ghettos. For example, Philadelphia. Its high crime area has been segregated into a separate municipality, Camden, across the river in New Jersey, thus artificially biasing the numbers for municipal Philadelphia. Dallas could also artificially improve its numbers by separately incorporating parts of Oak Cliff... and merging the Park Cities into municipal Dallas... but that would not change the level of danger in Uptown. One more fallacy... the number for a single municipality obscures the fact that there are extreme variations in danger between one part of a municipality and another. Do you think that people in Turtle Creek or in Preston Hollow have a realistic chance of being killed in a drive-by shooting? Two things hapening. Some malicious people in Houston and other places are trying to attack Dallas' morale by using misrepresenting stats... and some foolish people in Dallas are believing them. LOL!!

I agree with WG. Retail in urban developments won't be effective if the market it intends to serve is over saturated. Clearly, the developers for this project don't see enough in the way of longterm development to justify bringing retail into their development. Maybe in ten years they'd feel differently--or maybe not.

Cost of living's an issue; the poorest of the poor in New York had been struggling to such outrageous degrees that they've moved on and can't hack it anymore. When poverty starts to abate so does crime. Officers per capita is another (and maybe more significant) reason, and maybe their tactics, given the landscape of New York is working extremely well. The city, as I understand it, greatly increased the sie of its police force during the mid-to-late nineties. Couple that with a large influx of yuppies moving into Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, and the dynamics of the city has changed. Remember, New York used to be one of the nation's ten most violent cities during the 70s and 80s.

Burger King isn't as nationally accepted as McDonald's or Wendy's just like Whataburger and JITB aren't as nationally accepted. BK has to be careful not to expand too fast or too freely, lest they oversaturate the market. They typically don't build new locations unless the area has been established and is fairly dense. This is NOT the case in Florida or Georgia or most of the SE, where BK has a greater market share and doesn't compete with JTIB or Whataburger. And while Sonic is plentiful here in Texas, it's not quite the case in other places like SoFla, where you'd be harder pressed to find one nearby.

So while we're on the "Houston Sucks" train once again, I'd like to know, for example, how the Buffalo Bayou plan hasn't been put into motion? I'm awfully anxious to see the myriad reasons.

Not too crazy about the exterior. It's the window designs that really bother me.

LOL @ Septic. And Hillsborough County's (Tampa) transit system is known as the Hartline or HART (Hillsbourgh Area Regional Transit). http://www.hartline.org/

Huh?

^^^ Someone had to do it! Baylor needs a home, too.

Another drawback on suburban walking is that it can be treacherous, especially once you get on the main drag where all the stores/services are. This is especially so in Houston, which has a high percentage of its suburbs lying in unincorporated areas. No sidewalks. Little in the way of buffer zones between the street and the path the pedestrian might try to brave their way along from point A to point B. Not all of the walks are a drag--walking through residential neighborhoods can actually be very peaceful, depending on your tastes--but it's a sure-fire risk to try to walk down a busy street when there are no sidewalks.

Are you kidding? Even at $2.29 a gallon, that's a near 30% increase in fuel costs from just two years ago. Considering that METRO was already woefully behind other major transit properties in terms of the amount charged for a single direction local route trip, that's debilitating. Your operating costs go even further through the roof. Also, fare increase have a short term negative on ridership but eventually tapers off because whether people realize this or not, the majority of METRO's users are transit dependent. I don't remember the exact percentage, but indeed it's a sizable majority. I believe it's well over 70%.

150 N. Dairy-Ashford... so this will be south of the Katy Freeway, near Tully Stadium.

Who cares? It's not Midtown or what have you. [/sarcasm]

I do agree that the array of passes offered is pretty convoluted. There's seemingly a category for everything short of "people who have recently been paroled."

LOL!

I can't say if some of his customers said this or not but if they did, it does come across as fairly wimpy. It's not like you have to detour down to Galveston and then hike it back. It's a simple matter of figuring out how to cross the rail line from the East or South.