Houston Strategies blog

[H-Town Man]

How many of you read Tory Gattis's Houston Strategies blog?

houstonstrategies.blogspot.com

It's a good source for sensible discussion on issues affecting Houston, especially as regards planning issues, traffic, economy, and how Houston stacks up to other cities in various areas.

What annoys me about this site is the constant paranoia about zoning or any form of planning ("We'll end up like San Francisco!"), and the sunny gleefulness about the free market and how much it has done for our city. I am usually a free market partisan myself, but this guy and his cohort of frequent posters (most of whom seem to care more about the sanctity of the free market than about Houston) are starting to push me the other way. There is no acknowledgment of any negative effects of townhome incursions or insensitive developments in older neighborhoods, nor does there seem to be any sense of aesthetics or quality of life issues (terms which get ridiculed quite a bit there), but rather just a continual cheering of how cheap things are in Houston compared to other cities, and how we have avoided those cities' oppressive bureaucratic regimes, tyranny of the majority, economic stagnation, etc. (all of which are the inevitable consequence of any form of planning, we're told)

I'd be interested in comparing thoughts with anyone else who reads this site.

Edited March 5, 2007 by H-Town Man

[musicman]

tory's a good guy in person. like any issue, there are always good and bad aspects. voice your concerns on his site and he'll definitely have a response for you.

because we do lack zoning, houston has been a developer's dream in many ways but for you it might be a nightmare.

Edited March 5, 2007 by musicman

[Houston19514]

I read his site regularly. He has a lot of good stuff. If you want to balance his anti-zoning, pro-market views, just keep spending time here at HAIF, you'll get plenty of the pro-zoning point of view ;-)

[mojeaux131]

His blog is pretty good, but it's true that he's pretty anti-zoning/planning. However, I enjoy reading it, and he does seem very gracious with his responses to comments. I also really like Christof Spieler's Intermodality, although it's a lot more technical and focused. I would say my own ideas are more in line with those of Spieler, but I do like the Gattis blog as well.

[woolie]

Gattis' blog is OK. But he's so pro-automobile I stopped reading, "The American Way Of Life." Doesn't understand or acknowledge that the hydrocarbon powered car is unsustainable and will be the iceberg that takes us down.

I'm very free market, pro development, anti zoning, etc. But I think that our cities need to be dramatically restructured to be more transit oriented. I'm conflicted between the free market failing to provide a solution and the enormity of the problem.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Ian Rees

[musicman]

Gattis' blog is OK. But he's so pro-automobile I stopped reading, "The American Way Of Life." Doesn't understand or acknowledge that the hydrocarbon powered car is unsustainable and will be the iceberg that takes us down.

don't you and your wife drive hydrocarbon powered cars?

[RedScare]

I like Tory and his blog, as his topics tend to be interesting and somewhat well researched. He does tend toward boosterism sometimes, and if you tread onto one of his absolutes, such as freeways or free market, his well-reasoned opinions tend to become less well reasoned. I used to post on their a bit...now, not so much.

[woolie]

don't you and your wife drive hydrocarbon powered cars?

I oppose building the entire city around car based transport... that everyone needs a half acre lot on a cul de sac, 40 miles from downtown. This is what is unsustainable. It's not necessarily the cars that are bad, I think a car might be OK if it's used in a reasonable, limited manner, as a supplemental mode of transportation in addition to well developed transit, bike routes, etc. But it's the design of our cities that requires 1+ hour commute each way... this distance is only practical with a hydrocarbon powered car. If the car is reduced to a supplemental mode of transport in the city, the distances become shorter, and EV cars become more and more practical. I have nothing against EV cars, it's just they don't necessarily fit well with far-suburban/exurb style development due to the limited energy densities attainable with existing battery technology.

We've shared a single, reasonable car for the past 5 years. We didn't drive much at our old place, and I always took the bus, biked, or walked to work... we moved out to stay with family in the suburbs about a year ago (this is a complex topic), and I have really been unhappy with the amount of driving that has been necessary. Hence our search for a new place; as I said, one of my main goals is to be automobile independent again, at least for one of us.

Yes, my end goal is to be completely car free, but my immediate goal is minimal use until the transit infrastructure catches up.

(actually we're not married yet, though will be in the future.)

Edited April 13, 2007 by Ian Rees

[musicman]

I oppose building the entire city around car based transport... that everyone needs a half acre lot on a cul de sac, 40 miles from downtown. This is what is unsustainable. It's not necessarily the cars that are bad, I think a car might be OK if it's used in a reasonable, limited manner, as a supplemental mode of transportation in addition to well developed transit, bike routes, etc. But it's the design of our cities that requires 1+ hour commute each way... this distance is only practical with a hydrocarbon powered car. If the car is reduced to a supplemental mode of transport in the city, the distances become shorter, and EV cars become more and more practical. I have nothing against EV cars, it's just they don't necessarily fit well with far-suburban/exurb style development due to the limited energy densities attainable with existing battery technology.

We've shared a single, reasonable car for the past 5 years. We didn't drive much at our old place, and I always took the bus, biked, or walked to work... we moved out to stay with family in the suburbs about a year ago (this is a complex topic), and I have really been unhappy with the amount of driving that has been necessary. Hence our search for a new place; as I said, one of my main goals is to be automobile independent again, at least for one of us.

Yes, my end goal is to be completely car free, but my immediate goal is minimal use until the transit infrastructure catches up.

So are you also against building 3000 sq ft townhomes for 1 or 2 persons? is that sustainable? many here want what is bigger/better/newer without consideration for what is already there. to be honest, 10 years ago, i don't think i would have ever found myself in a 1250 sq ft house, in an "old" neighborhood. Maybe i've grown up, i'm not sure, but my personal priorities have changed so as to live a simpler life. There's no need to keep up with the TJones. But many want to and continue to fuel the market.

I don't know whether it is the design of the cities or peoples' choices that makes their commutes over 1+ hr each way. People choose to live where they want to. I work in Clr lake and live inside the loop. i can make it to work in 25-30 mins. It takes people in league city the same amount of time from what i'm told due to traffic conditions. if my drive was longer, then most likely i would move farther out 45. Did you choose to move out to the burbs?

Edited April 13, 2007 by musicman

[MidtownCoog]

I oppose building the entire city around car based transport... that everyone needs a half acre lot on a cul de sac, 40 miles from downtown.

I hate to break it to you, but the city is already built.

And you are operating under the assumption that everyone needs to go downtown.

That's just not the case anymore.

[woolie]

I hate to break it to you, but the city is already built.

And you are operating under the assumption that everyone needs to go downtown.

I know it's been built -- but I have hope in the future it can be rebuilt. Cities and land use are more malleable than people like to think; neighborhoods and districts change. And by downtown I mean a core urban area, not just the CBD proper.

I grew up in Houston, and I'm currently here for school, work, and family. As long as I'm stuck here, I might as well advocate change if I can't simply move to a place preconfigured to fit my ideas about what a city should be.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Ian Rees

[musicman]

I know it's been built -- but I have hope in the future it can be rebuilt. Cities and land use are more malleable than people like to think; neighborhoods and districts change. And by downtown I mean a core urban area, not just the CBD proper.

I grew up in Houston, and I'm currently here for school, work, and family. As long as I'm stuck here, I might as well advocate change if I can't simply move to a place preconfigured to fit my ideas about what a city should be.

Remember if YOU don't like it, some others may.

[woolie]

So are you also against building 3000 sq ft townhomes for 1 or 2 persons? is that sustainable? many here want what is bigger/better/newer without consideration for what is already there. to be honest, 10 years ago, i don't think i would have ever found myself in a 1250 sq ft house, in an "old" neighborhood. Maybe i've grown up, i'm not sure, but my personal priorities have changed so as to live a simpler life. There's no need to keep up with the TJones. But many want to and continue to fuel the market.

I think 1200-1500sf is a good rule for a couple or couple with a single child, larger for a larger family. We'd be satisfied in that range, depending on the floorplan. I have alot of affinity for 1920's bungalows personally, but that housing type isn't for everyone, and the land use isn't particularly efficient. But as others have said, land use per person has increased for a long time now, to accommodate all the things the 'modern way of life' requires. Lifestyles change, people today work from home much more and like home offices, etc. I'm not writing carte blanche or excusing McMansions, but I don't think even 1800sf is necessarily outrageous for 2-3 people.

I don't know whether it is the design of the cities or peoples' choices that makes their commutes over 1+ hr each way. People choose to live where they want to. I work in Clr lake and live inside the loop. i can make it to work in 25-30 mins. It takes people in league city the same amount of time from what i'm told due to traffic conditions. if my drive was longer, then most likely i would move farther out 45. Did you choose to move out to the burbs?

We moved out for alot of complex reasons dealing mostly with family issues and the condition of the place we were living. Our income was only 1/3rd-1/4th what it is now because she was still in school. We're moving back now that we can afford a decent place on our own.

[woolie]

Remember if YOU don't like it, some others may.

Houston as it existed pre-freeway and with a population of a couple hundred thousand is remarkably close to what I'd consider a good, sustainable urban form for this region. I like alot of much higher density as well, the kind that has never existed in Houston and unlikely ever will, but I think that Houston in the 20's is a good model for how it can exist again in the future. Bungalows on relatively small lots, an extensive street car system, an adequate downtown, interurban rail, etc. I think this is a much more sustainable model, even if it consists mostly of detached single family homes on lots. I don't think the far suburban, freeway centric model will be sustainable when rapid increases in gasoline prices inevitably arrive. And that's just in terms of transportation and energy requirements... I also think it fails on other grounds as well, but those are more matter of taste I suppose.

I think some of the Canadian cities (Toronto) provide a good model of the compromise that can exist between traditional, high density urban forms and Houston-style single family neighborhoods.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Ian Rees

[musicman]

I think 1200-1500sf is a good rule for a couple or couple with a single child, larger for a larger family. We'd be satisfied in that range, depending on the floorplan. I have alot of affinity for 1920's bungalows personally, but that housing type isn't for everyone, and the land use isn't particularly efficient. But as others have said, land use per person has increased for a long time now, to accommodate all the things the 'modern way of life' requires. Lifestyles change, people today work from home much more and like home offices, etc. I'm not writing carte blanche or excusing McMansions, but I don't think even 1800sf is necessarily outrageous for 2-3 people.

1200-1500sf? you must really be against what is going on in midtown then.

The land use around a bungalow isn't particularly efficient? what would you do differently?

[woolie]

1200-1500sf? you must really be against what is going on in midtown then.

The land use around a bungalow isn't particularly efficient? what would you do differently?

Most of those townhomes are not particularly large; depending on the price range they're targeting, they seem to be in the 1500-1800sf range. Many of the entry level ones are 1200sf. There are larger ones in the 2000-3000sf range, but those are 300k+. Of course as land values ITL continue to increase, we'll be seeing fewer and fewer 2000+ homes, even at higher prices.

I like the bungalow, but blocked townhouses are 3-4x as dense as even this relatively dense form.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Ian Rees

[musicman]

I like the bungalow, but blocked townhouses are 3-4x as dense as even this relatively dense form.

and you would raise a child in a dense community? i'd personally have a hard time keeping a pet in a place like that.

[woolie]

and you would raise a child in a dense community? i'd personally have a hard time keeping a pet in a place like that.

The majority of the world soldiers on despite such inhospitable conditions....

[MidtownCoog]

Having worked extensively in one of the most dense cities in the world you just can't take the Texan out of me.

I like my space. Why should Texans have to live like a cat in a cage?

[musicman]

The majority of the world soldiers on despite such inhospitable conditions....

yep in the nice, sprawling cities.

[TheNiche]

I oppose building the entire city around car based transport... that everyone needs a half acre lot on a cul de sac, 40 miles from downtown. This is what is unsustainable. It's not necessarily the cars that are bad, I think a car might be OK if it's used in a reasonable, limited manner, as a supplemental mode of transportation in addition to well developed transit, bike routes, etc. But it's the design of our cities that requires 1+ hour commute each way... this distance is only practical with a hydrocarbon powered car. If the car is reduced to a supplemental mode of transport in the city, the distances become shorter, and EV cars become more and more practical. I have nothing against EV cars, it's just they don't necessarily fit well with far-suburban/exurb style development due to the limited energy densities attainable with existing battery technology.

We've shared a single, reasonable car for the past 5 years. We didn't drive much at our old place, and I always took the bus, biked, or walked to work... we moved out to stay with family in the suburbs about a year ago (this is a complex topic), and I have really been unhappy with the amount of driving that has been necessary. Hence our search for a new place; as I said, one of my main goals is to be automobile independent again, at least for one of us.

It doesn't matter necessarily that there is so much housing construction so far from downtown because only about 6% of employees in the Houston area are based there. So long as outlying office construction and absorption keeps up with new housing, as it certainly seems to be, commutes are actually pretty quick, with much less mileage spent in congested situations. I'm actually considering a move to the suburbs at this point because my 20-mile reverse commute is now taking me about 45 minutes each morning and about as much in the evenings. I'd be living in the suburbs, in a larger space, paying a low rent, be able to lease out my condo at a slight profit, have much more time to spare for personal use each day, be able to walk about 250 feet to work, and cut way back on gasoline consumption and vehicle depreciation.

I'd be further from my business interests in the East End, but that isn't a daily commute for me anyway, and is still in kind of an akward spot from where I presently live...soooo... if you're at all interested in a 588sf garden-style condo near shuttle service to the TMC for $600/mo., let me know. It isn't architecturally compelling or very spacious, but it is a good deal cash-wise.

[woolie]

I'd be further from my business interests in the East End, but that isn't a daily commute for me anyway, and is still in kind of an akward spot from where I presently live...soooo... if you're at all interested in a 588sf garden-style condo near shuttle service to the TMC for $600/mo., let me know. It isn't architecturally compelling or very spacious, but it is a good deal cash-wise.

Yes, I work in the TMC at BCM. Can you send me a pic or two?

[TheNiche]

Houston as it existed pre-freeway and with a population of a couple hundred thousand is remarkably close to what I'd consider a good, sustainable urban form for this region. I like alot of much higher density as well, the kind that has never existed in Houston and unlikely ever will, but I think that Houston in the 20's is a good model for how it can exist again in the future. Bungalows on relatively small lots, an extensive street car system, an adequate downtown, interurban rail, etc. I think this is a much more sustainable model, even if it consists mostly of detached single family homes on lots. I don't think the far suburban, freeway centric model will be sustainable when rapid increases in gasoline prices inevitably arrive. And that's just in terms of transportation and energy requirements... I also think it fails on other grounds as well, but those are more matter of taste I suppose.

I think some of the Canadian cities (Toronto) provide a good model of the compromise that can exist between traditional, high density urban forms and Houston-style single family neighborhoods.

Yeah, the 20's were probably a high-point of sorts for your preferred state of things, but by the 40's, busses had largely replaced streetcars as they were more flexible and less expensive to operate, and traffic congestion was getting outrageous. My grandfather used to tell me how traffic was basically gridlocked all the way up Telephone Road going into downtown and how the arrival of the Gulf Freeway was much appreciated. It didn't solve all the problems by any stretch of the imagination, but it went a good ways toward it. Basically, the only way to ensure that infrastructure could've been maintained in 1920's forms would've been to implement a growth boundary, and that could never have happened at the time. That it could happen today...in Texas...isn't exactly an optimistic thought.

I'd be curious to know what your opinion on the concept of sattelite cities is. Especially The Woodlands and Sugar Land. Once the fallacy of the monocentric city is broken, a lot of interesting things can result in suburban forms that aren't necessarily all that wasteful, all things considered.

[woolie]

I'd be curious to know what your opinion on the concept of sattelite cities is. Especially The Woodlands and Sugar Land. Once the fallacy of the monocentric city is broken, a lot of interesting things can result in suburban forms that aren't necessarily all that wasteful, all things considered.

I don't have issue with the concept of satellite cities -- the entire East and West coasts are just collections of satellite cities -- but I think the implementations in Sugarland, Kingwood, Pearland, etc., don't really fit the definition despite the efforts to shoehorn 'town centers' into them. Sugarland in particular, from what I've experienced of it, is just a jumble of independent 'master planned communities' of tract homes on cul de sacs. When I think of city -- regardless of the density, small towns are a valid city form -- I think mixed use of land, a grid-like street system with redundancy, less segregation of incomes (and by extension, race/religion) than exists in master planned communities, tree lined streets with working sidewalks, a retail and commercial center not dominated by a single landlord with homogenized, safe, franchised national tenants, etc. etc. Oh, and the absence of Walmart.

I grew up in a small town, Angleton, which really drives home the difference between the small town 'satellite city' and the master planned suburb. We lived two blocks from downtown in a walkable community (my dad walked to his office and the courthouse), and even some retail was still operational in the downtown (grocers, video store, restaurants, etc). Oh, and the library was 1 block away. Angleton has a regular street grid, no cul de sacs. It has a standard amount of tract homes, but they were built integrated into the rest of the community, and not as isolated megablocks with a single entry/exit and a gate. I went to a high school that was 40/30/30 anglo/black/hispanic, as well as income diversity. Most of the streets were mature and lined with trees. Most streets had usable sidewalks and enough shade to make walking a reasonable idea. The experience of living in that kind of town, which probably also has considerably higher (although still low) density than Sugarland... it doesn't compare.

The Woodlands and Clear Lake are somewhat better and at least pay lip service to the idea of functioning as independent entities with some provision for walking/biking. They are closer to the small town/satellite ideal.

Edited April 13, 2007 by Ian Rees

[TheNiche]

I don't have issue with the concept of satellite cities -- the entire East and West coasts are just collections of satellite cities -- but I think the implementations in Sugarland, Kingwood, Pearland, etc., don't really fit the definition despite the efforts to shoehorn 'town centers' into them. Sugarland in particular, from what I've experienced of it, is just a jumble of independent 'master planned communities' of tract homes on cul de sacs. When I think of city -- regardless of the density, small towns are a valid city form -- I think mixed use of land, a grid-like street system with redundancy, less segregation of incomes (and by extension, race/religion) than exists in master planned communities, tree lined streets with working sidewalks, a retail and commercial center not dominated by a single landlord with homogenized, safe, franchised national tenants, etc. etc. Oh, and the absence of Walmart.

I grew up in a small town, Angleton, which really drives home the difference between the small town 'satellite city' and the master planned suburb. We lived two blocks from downtown in a walkable community (my dad walked to his office and the courthouse), and even some retail was still operational in the downtown (grocers, video store, restaurants, etc). Oh, and the library was 1 block away. Angleton has a regular street grid, no cul de sacs. It has a standard amount of tract homes, but they were built integrated into the rest of the community, and not as isolated megablocks with a single entry/exit and a gate. I went to a high school that was 40/30/30 anglo/black/hispanic, as well as income diversity. Most of the streets were mature and lined with trees. Most streets had usable sidewalks and enough shade to make walking a reasonable idea. The experience of living in that kind of town, which probably also has considerably higher (although still low) density than Sugarland... it doesn't compare.

The Woodlands and Clear Lake are somewhat better and at least pay lip service to the idea of functioning as independent entities with some provision for walking/biking. They are closer to the small town/satellite ideal.

Angleton does seem to conform pretty well to your preferences, but I'd challenge the notion that it is any more dense in terms of population or employment than the suburbs of Houston. But like you said, there is a very stark difference between urban, satellite city, suburb, and Angleton. Once cities hit a certain threshold of growth, the scale of developments usually precludes any sense of community that extends further than the access gates. [Niche shrugs] Them's the breaks.

I like Wal-Mart less in small towns on account of that they are frequently a natural monopoly, but in urban and suburban areas that are large enough to sustain many retail choices Wal-Mart does a great service for the poor and middle class.