Houston

Organic Urbanism is the Cure for New Urbanism

Douglas Newby — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 20:19:31 -0400

New Urbanism is like a virus. For 50 years it keeps coming back in mutated forms. It needs a cure.

First, the only thing new in New Urbanism is the new construction that tears down the organic city. A form of New Urbanism has been around for 50 years. Like I said, it is a virus that keeps coming back in mutated forms. But the scheme, of more density, new mixed-use construction, and fixed rail transit, replacing existing homes remains constant. The desire of planners to determine where you live and where you work also remains constant. New urbanists increasingly do not like single family homes, which most Americans prefer.

There is a growing New Urbanism movement across the country that says single-family zoning is bad. There are some cities like Minneapolis that have banned single-family zoning that had made up over 50% of Minneapolis. Some states, like Oregon, are considering abolishing single-family zoning. Even the Dallas City Council unanimously voted to allow two-story backyard rental houses in single-family neighborhoods. Former Dallas City Councilperson, Philip Kingston, said that single-family neighborhoods like Preston Hollow are no longer relevant. If this trend continues, your grandchildren or great grandchildren might never have a chance to live in a single-family zoned neighborhood, with front or back yards to play in, streets to ride bikes on, or familiarity with longtime neighbors.

In contrast, what I call Organic Urbanism works with people’s preferences, particularly those of families. It protects, preserves, and nurtures the city, allowing the creativity of individuals and neighborhoods to shape the direction of the city. This includes the single-family homes as well as a diversity of housing types.

Organic urbanism supports what people want in their diverse neighborhoods. In contrast new urbanism, particularly their allies in the planning profession, oppose such housing and favor density to support public transit and claim they make homes more affordable.

In contrast, organic Urbanists think denser apartment development makes neighborhoods less walkable and less desirable. Organism Urbanism strives to preserve, protect, and rejuvenate the existing housing stock of diverse sizes, styles, and conditions that is conducive to a mix of incomes and lifestyles. Organic Urbanism also favors zoning for less than what is already built. Less dense zoning provides the incentive to preserve and revitalize the existing housing stock, or lose the privilege of higher density on a lot if an existing multi-family building is torn down. For example, if a duplex or apartment house is zoned single-family and it is torn down, it can only be replaced by a single-family home. This gives the owner incentive to maintain the existing duplex or apartment house or lose their privilege of multi-family.

Organic Urbanism approaches the city like a garden. There is an understanding that the evolution of buildings and uses should evolve rather than being plowed under and planted like an industrial farm. In a garden that is nurtured, one might plant a sapling with sun-loving plants around it. Once the tree grows, one might plant, shade-tolerant flowers under the tree. There is a natural ebb and flow of decay, rejuvenation, and new construction in an organic city. Neighborhoods fall in and out of favor, creating opportunities for those of all incomes.

New Urbanism has a goal of creating diversity by diluting good parts of the city. Organic Urbanism strives for diversity by improving out-of-favor neighborhoods.

I will describe eight key differences of New Urbanism and Organic Urbanism.

Density versus preservation

New Urbanism is in favor of more density replacing existing structures, even in a shrinking city.

Organic Urbanism is in favor of preserving and rejuvenating the existing buildings in addition to adding new construction.

Here is a historic duplex of two 500 sq.ft. apartments within three blocks of $2.5 million historic mansions that could have been renovated. Instead, because it is zoned multifamily, it will be torn down and the land added to the entire block of three-story new apartments being erected.

Vibrancy versus nature.

New Urbanism touts vibrancy as the key attraction to a city and thinks jamming people together will create vibrancy. Along the same lines, New Urbanism says the next generation is less interested in single-family homes and more interested in living in apartments.

Organic Urbanism think more along the lines of Yogi Berra –when a city gets too crowded no one wants to live there anymore. The Wall Street Journal tends to agree. It reported that census figures showed that cities with over a half a million people collectively lost 27,000 Millennials aged 25 to 39 last year in 2018. New York lost 38,000 Millennials. This was the fourth year in a row city lost Millennials led by those 35 to 39. Millennials are the most committed to the environment and they love living in nature surrounded by trees, gardens, and a pleasing environment. Organic Urbanists understand Millennials interest in nature, trumps vibrancy, especially when they begin raising families.

Income diversity in neighborhoods

New Urbanism is in favor of providing the rich with cultural amenities and the poor with services and subsidies, while ignoring the middle class.

Also, New Urbanism wants to create income diversity in neighborhoods by building moderate and expensive apartments and then having a percentage of those apartments subsidized for low-income residents.

In contrast, Organic Urbanism creates income diversity in neighborhoods by rejuvenating inexpensive single-family homes, protecting middle-class neighborhoods, and encouraging expensive neighborhoods for high-income homeowners.

This Organic Urbanism approach emphasizes emerging middle-class neighborhoods and protecting the middle-class residents that are disappearing in cities across the country.

Organic Urbanism recognizes that diverse sizes and conditions of older homes allow diverse incomes in older neighborhoods. Old East Dallas is a good example. In Mount Auburn, you will find $150,000 cottages, in Junius Heights $400,000 bungalows, in Munger Place $700,000 prairie style homes, and on Swiss Avenue $2 million historic mansions. All four of these neighborhoods are within six blocks of each other. I have had friends and clients that owned an 1100 square foot home, and then moved to a 2400 square foot home, and then to a 5000 square foot home, all which were within 4 blocks of each other and in three different historic districts.

This historic Prairie style home is part of a natural progression of home ownership in an organic urban neighborhood. The homeowner's first home was an 1,100 sq.ft. cottage in the Peak Suburban Historic District, then they purchased a 2,400 sq.ft. home in the Munger Place Historic District a few blocks away, and ultimately they purchased a 5,700 sq.ft. Swiss Avenue Prairie style home which is only four blocks away from their first two homes.

Mass Transit and Mobility

New Urbanism calls for fixed rail mass transit to be built where people don’t want it. Recently, New urbanist planner Christof Spieler, openly suggest at a D Magazine-sponsored New Dallas Summit said we need the political will to put fixed rail through the middle of neighborhoods where people didn’t want it, in order to gain ridership. Michael Morris, the Director of Transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said at another talk that they are lobbying the State Legislature to allow tax dollars that had been allocated for mass transit, to be diverted to subsidize new development next to fixed rail so more people will use the rail system.

Organic Urbanism instead acknowledges and applauds the incredibly diverse areas, fragile neighborhoods, and established buildings in Dallas where people live and work. It insists transit exist to serve people, not the other way around. Rather than tearing up neighborhoods for rail systems and forcing mass transit development, Organic Urbanists like 20th century forms of transportation like buses, and 21st century technology like Uber, autonomous vehicles, and air taxis to adapt to where people want to live and work.

Also, Organic Urbanism want to entice people to walk by creating a pleasing environment, not forcing people to walk.

Organic Urbanism recognizes that diverse sizes and conditions of older homes allow diverse incomes in older neighborhoods. Old East Dallas is a good example. In Mount Auburn, you will find $150,000 cottages, in Junius Heights $400,000 bungalows, in Munger Place $700,000 prairie style homes, and on Swiss Avenue $2 million historic mansions. All four of these neighborhoods are within six blocks of each other. I have had friends and clients that owned an 1100 square foot home, and then moved to a 2400 square foot home, and then to a 5000 square foot home, all which were within 4 blocks of each other and in three different historic districts.

Schools

Since busing did not work out, New Urbanists now want to extract people from low-income neighborhoods and place them in new subsidized housing in expensive neighborhoods so that they can live in these neighborhoods with better public schools.

Organic Urbanists instead cheer on private schools, charter schools, ISD Academies, and collaborate private/public schools that are emerging in lower income neighborhoods. These schools also attract middle- and high-income families to these lower income neighborhoods, creating a more positive and natural diversity.

Increase or diminish the value of single-family homes

New Urbanists Chris Leinberger, said at a D Magazine New Urbanism lecture, “Single-family zoning is good economically for the homeowner but is bad morally for the city.”

New Urbanists see a moral imperative to replace single family housing with multifamily structures.

Organic Urbanists see things much differently. They know the economic viability of the city is dependent on the sustained value of single-family homes and a prosperous middle class who tend to live in them. Organic Urbanists also understand the middle class is the strongest lobby for good schools, good police, fire departments, and parks.

Affordable Housing

Many are in favor of the city subsidizing developers to build affordable housing. New Urbanism is a great advocate of the city government subsidizing developers of affordable housing. But where do the developers find cheap land? Usually in the areas that would naturally appeal to low-income homebuyers.

New Urbanism also is in favor of giving a developer more height or density for a new building in exchange for the developer subsidizing the rent of a certain percentage of the apartments in the building that will be designated for affordable housing units. Let’s say a builder wants to get permission to build high-rise apartments that will lease for $2,000 a month, the developer might then have to set aside for 20 years, 10% of the apartments in the building, where the developer agrees to subsidize the rent. If a developer is required to subsidize the rent for each of these units at $1000 a month, a tenant in an affordable housing unit is only required to pay $1000 a month rent for their $2000 a month apartment. This raises the price for everyone else.

Organic Urbanists think a better solution than subsidizing rent would be for the city to require a developer to subsidize the interest on a home mortgage loan to help a low or moderate-income person to buy a home. This expands homeownership in the city.

For example, Organic Urbanists would prefer that a developer not spend $1000 a month subsidizing one expensive apartment for a low-income renter, but instead the developer spending that $1000-a-month subsidy to pay for interest-free mortgage loans to three families, so each family could afford to purchase a $100,000 home. Or instead of a $1000-a-month rent subsidy for one apartment, the developer could provide six interest-free mortgage loans on six $50,000 homes for six low-income homebuyers.

Organic Urbanists understand the greatest economic disparity between black and white families is wealth. Black families earn 70 cents on the dollar for what white families earn, but black families only have 4% of the comparative wealth of white families, because of the lower rate of home ownership and subsidizing rent on apartments does not create wealth for low-income families.

Organic Urbanists also are opposed to subsidizing developers for their purchase of inexpensive homes that these developers will tear down so they can build new affordable housing. Organic Urbanists are in favor of preserving the existing housing stock that allows low income families the opportunity to purchase a home.

Dilute good neighborhoods or improve bad neighborhoods

New Urbanists declare that there are not any affordable homes where people want to live. Their resulting strategy is to extract lower income people from their deteriorating neighborhoods and relocate them to new subsidized apartment units on very expensive lots in the more attractive expensive neighborhoods.

Organic Urbanists are in favor of improving low-income neighborhoods and making them more attractive for both low- and middle-income residents.

Organic Urbanists understand that if a lot in an expensive neighborhood cost $500,000 and a lot in a deteriorated neighborhood cost $50,000, the same number of affordable homes could be built on either priced lot. However, if the affordable homes were built on the inexpensive $50,000 lot, there would be $450,000 left over to spend on new sidewalks, curbs, parkway trees, attractive street lights, and internet connectivity, which would improve the desirability of the neighborhood and attract people who would now want to live in this neighborhood.

Maybe the best example of the difference between New Urbanism and Organic Urbanism is their respective position on granny flats.

The New Urbanism idea of granny flats is sweeping the country. The mantra used in Dallas is that granny flats provide more affordable housing and allow senior homeowners to remain in their homes. A few months ago, the Dallas Assistant Director of Housing made a presentation to the Dallas Architecture Forum. She repeated this economic justification for granny flats, that they will create more affordable housing and allow senior homeowners to remain in their homes. When asked what the projected square footage cost of a granny flat was, she said she had no idea as there had been no discussion of the cost of a granny flat and this question had never come up within the housing department or City Council.

Organic Urbanism, on the other hand, looks for the best economic ways for the city to evolve for senior citizens and those needing affordable homes. If a nonprofit in Dallas spent $300 a square foot to build the 400 square foot Crossroads cottages for the homeless, it becomes obvious to an Organic Urbanist that renovating existing houses is a more cost-effective means of providing affordable housing than building new granny flats. Using the homeless cottage cost figures, building a 600-square foot apartment over a garage might cost $200,000.

This does not make a one-bedroom granny flat apartment affordable or lower the cost for a senior homeowner.

In the meantime, a two-story granny flat removes a canopy of trees, looms over the neighbor’s property, lines the front curb with on-street parked cars, and creates more transience in the neighborhood.

Here on one side of the alley you see New Urbanism granny flats blocking the sun and breezes that replaced towering trees. On the other side of the alley you see the layered canopy of trees that include mature pecan trees, tall cedar trees, crepe myrtles, and understory Japanese maples in the backyards of single-family homes that are still dedicated to nature, not rentals.

Conclusion

New Urbanism wants to create a city where people are forced to walk, forced to take fixed rail, forced to live in buildings shared with subsidized renters, and forced to live jammed together in dense neighborhoods in the name of vibrancy.

Organic Urbanism represents an alternative to the top-down tyranny of the new urbanist mantra. We recognize that the cycles of deterioration and rejuvenation create environments that people desire and where they can afford to live and work. Organic Urbanists would rather nurture a city where people enjoy living and walking in a diverse neighborhood, a city that entices Millennials and the middle class to stay in the city and raise their families.

Organic Urbanism allows creativity and self-expression can be manifested. Embracing Organic Urbanism, every person can impact the significance and stewardship of their city, their neighborhood, and their home.

Hopefully, Organic Urbanism can eradicate New Urbanism in our lifetime and reintroduce the concept that cities are not for planners or trains, but people.

Douglas Newby is a real estate broker who initiated the largest the largest rezoning in Dallas - 2,000 properties primarily in use as multi family rental properties to single family zoning. In 1979, in Dallas he created the first Restoration House of the Year Award, and for the Dallas Chapter of the AIA organized a city wide survey of architect designed and Significant homes. His TEDx talk is Homes That Make Us Happy. His website is: ArchitecturallySignificantHomes.com. Blog is DallasArchitectureBlog.com

Of Niche Markets and Broad Markets: Commuting in the US

Wendell Cox — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 21:29:58 -0400

The six transit legacy cities - mostly urban cores that grew largely before the advent of the automobile - increased their concentration of transit work trips to 57.9% of the national transit commuting, according to the 2018 American Community Survey. At the same time, working at home strengthened its position as the nation’s third leading mode of work access, with transit falling to fourth. The transit commuting market share dropped from 5.0% in 2017 to 4.9% in 2018. Carpooling, after at least three decades of decline, has seen an increase in this decade.

Concentration of Transit Commuting Destinations in Legacy Cities

Based on transit work trip destinations (as opposed to residences of commuters) the cities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington increased their share of commuting by 4.8% (2.6% points) in just eight years (from 2010 to 2018). The legacy cities are home to the six largest downtown areas (central business districts) in the United States, the destination for most of their transit commuting.

This increased concentration occurred even as transit commuting has begun to trend downward, from the 2015, the peak ridership post-1960 year (Figure 1). The transit legacy cities accounted for 6.1% of the nation’s employment in 2018. Their 57.9 share of transit commuting is nearly 10 times their equivalent share of jobs. The more favorable performance of the legacy cities in this decade resulted in their garnering 79.7%% of the increased commuting, more than 13 times their share of jobs.

The intensity of the concentration is illustrated in Figure 2, which compares employment, transit commuting and transit commuting increase (2010 to 2018) shares for legacy cities and the balance of the nation. The work trip market share to the legacy cities is 47%. By comparison, in the rest of the nation, transit’s work trip share is a miniscule 2.1%. Only 19 of the nation’s 53 major metropolitan areas has a transit work trip share of 3.0% or more.

However, to get to jobs outside the legacy cities (in the same metropolitan areas), transit commuting is only 8.6% of the national total. Strikingly, in New York, nearly 51% percent of the jobs are outside the city of New York. Transit’s share to these jobs is only 4.4%, a fraction of the 58.0% who use transit to jobs in the city of New York (the urban core)(Figure 3). Large differences between transit commuting to downtown and the suburbs occurs in most major metropolitan areas, not just those with legacy cities.

New York continues to have by far the largest transit commute share, at 30.9% (Figure 4). The lowest transit commute shares are in Birmingham and Oklahoma City, at 0.6%. Transit work trip data is provided in the Table below by mode.

Working at Home: The Big Winner

The American Community Survey data reveals working at home continues to be the big winner among the most popular employment access modes. Between 2017 and 2018, working at home (which includes telecommuting) gained 258,000 workers nationally, rising from 8.00 to 8.25 million in total. This was a considerable accomplishment. Working at home increased disproportionately relative to driving alone. Having only 7% of the driving alone volume in 2017, working at home added more than 20% of the entire commuting increase over the last year.

Working at home strengthened its number three position, following driving alone and vehicle pools, and now exceeding transit by more than 600,000. In 44 of the 53 major metropolitan areas, working at home accounted for more employment access than transit. The nine exceptions, in which transit led working at home included the six metropolitan areas with “legacy cities” plus Seattle, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Overall, working at home has increased 2.3 million since 2010. It now has a market share of 5.3%, up from 4.3% in 2010.

Raleigh again had the highest work at home market share, at 9.1%, followed by Austin, Denver, Portland and San Francisco. The great advantage of working at home is that it reduces traffic, and does so without public subsidy (Figure 5). The work at home market shares exceeded that of transit in all but one of the ten top metropolitan areas (San Francisco, with its legacy city). Meanwhile, among the other nine strongest work at home metropolitan areas, seven have built expensive rail systems. Each of these has cost from hundreds of millions to billions of tax dollars. Yet, working at home, which is virtually unsubsidized has attracted substantially greater use.

Working at home exhibits little of the concentration observed in transit. All 53 of the major metropolitan areas have work at home shares of 2.5% or more. By contrast, 28 major metropolitan areas have transit commuting shares below 2.5%. Memphis had the lowest work at home share. Second lowest Buffalo, at 3.5% had a work at home market share larger than the transit market shares in 39 major metropolitan areas.

Carpool Resurgence

Carpools increased 300,000 between 2017 and 2018 and more than 600,000 since 2010. This follows decades of decline. This, however, was not enough to keep the mode from falling to 9.0% of the market in 2018 from 9.7% in 2017. There were 19.1 million carpools in 1980, the first year carpool data was collected and only 13.9 million now. The high market share was in Salt Lake City, at 12.0% (Figure 6), while the lowest was in New York, at 6.3%.

Ride Hailing

The data show a huge increase in taxicab use, which is probably due to recently initiated ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft. Taxicab commuting has increased more than 150%, from 150,000 to 360,000. The impact may be even greater. “Other” means of commuting increased almost 300,000, for a 25% increase. This was greater than that of all other modes of employment access, except for work and home and taxicab. It is not hard to imagine some respondents ticking “other” if they did not associate these new services with “taxicab.”

Work Access: Niche Markets and Mass Markets

While transit used to serve the largest share of motorized urban trips (probably about 90 years ago, but I have found no data), it has become a “niche” market among commuters who have a choice (have a car).Transit is about downtown and the urban core, with much of the share of transit commuting being destinations in these areas. Mind you, these are important markets, but they are small in the overall context of employment and transit’s access to metropolitan area jobs is miniscule.

The other three largest modes, cars, car pools and working at home serve broad markets. They can reach virtually any job in the metropolitan area, or in the case of working at home, many jobs around the world. That’s why those three modes hold a near monopoly on commuting, and represent most of its growth. With them, you can get from here to there.

EMPLOYMENT ACCESS BY MEANS OF ACCESS
US Major Metroopolitan Areas: 2018
	Drive Alone	Car Pool	Transit	Taxi	Motor-Cycle	Bicycle	Walk	Other	Home
Atlanta, GA	77.3%	8.9%	3.0%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%	1.3%	1.2%	7.6%
Austin, TX	76.9%	8.7%	1.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0.8%	1.9%	0.7%	8.7%
Baltimore, MD	77.0%	8.0%	6.0%	0.3%	0.0%	0.3%	2.4%	0.8%	5.3%
Birmingham, AL	84.8%	8.8%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.9%	0.6%	4.2%
Boston, MA-NH	66.1%	7.0%	13.2%	0.3%	0.0%	1.1%	5.6%	1.0%	5.5%
Buffalo, NY	82.1%	6.8%	3.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.4%	3.0%	0.8%	3.5%
Charlotte, NC-SC	79.2%	9.4%	1.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	1.4%	0.9%	7.3%
Chicago, IL-IN-WI	69.8%	8.0%	12.1%	0.3%	0.1%	0.7%	2.8%	0.9%	5.4%
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	81.6%	8.2%	1.7%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%	2.2%	0.8%	5.1%
Cleveland, OH	81.6%	7.9%	2.7%	0.1%	0.0%	0.4%	1.9%	0.8%	4.6%
Columbus, OH	81.3%	8.2%	1.7%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%	2.2%	0.7%	5.5%
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	80.8%	9.5%	1.3%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	1.3%	0.9%	5.8%
Denver, CO	75.0%	8.2%	3.8%	0.2%	0.1%	0.9%	2.4%	0.8%	8.7%
Detroit, MI	83.2%	8.6%	1.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	1.4%	0.7%	4.3%
Grand Rapids, MI	82.0%	9.1%	1.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.4%	2.2%	0.5%	4.2%
Hartford, CT	81.2%	7.7%	2.6%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%	1.8%	0.8%	5.7%
Houston, TX	81.0%	9.4%	2.0%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.9%	1.3%	4.9%
Indianapolis. IN	83.4%	8.0%	0.9%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	1.3%	1.0%	5.0%
Jacksonville, FL	80.3%	8.5%	0.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0.6%	1.6%	1.5%	6.4%
Kansas City, MO-KS	83.8%	7.8%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	1.2%	0.7%	5.2%
Las Vegas, NV	78.7%	9.8%	3.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	1.4%	2.1%	4.1%
Los Angeles, CA	75.0%	9.5%	4.8%	0.3%	0.3%	0.6%	2.5%	1.1%	5.9%
Louisville, KY-IN	82.2%	8.5%	1.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%	1.3%	1.0%	4.9%
Memphis, TN-MS-AR	86.1%	9.0%	0.7%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.9%	0.6%	2.5%
Miami, FL	77.7%	9.2%	3.1%	0.5%	0.2%	0.7%	1.4%	1.4%	5.7%
Milwaukee,WI	81.5%	7.5%	2.6%	0.2%	0.1%	0.5%	2.3%	0.3%	5.0%
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	77.4%	8.1%	4.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.8%	2.4%	0.6%	5.9%
Nashville, TN	80.9%	9.2%	0.8%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	1.5%	1.0%	6.2%
New Orleans. LA	78.6%	9.3%	2.6%	0.3%	0.1%	1.2%	2.5%	0.9%	4.5%
New York, NY-NJ-PA	50.3%	6.3%	30.9%	0.8%	0.0%	0.7%	5.5%	0.8%	4.7%
Oklahoma City, OK	82.9%	8.8%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	2.1%	1.0%	4.2%
Orlando, FL	80.3%	10.4%	1.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	1.1%	0.9%	5.0%
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	72.3%	7.2%	9.8%	0.3%	0.1%	0.6%	3.4%	0.8%	5.5%
Phoenix, AZ	75.8%	11.2%	1.8%	0.3%	0.3%	0.7%	1.3%	1.2%	7.4%
Pittsburgh, PA	76.6%	8.3%	5.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%	3.4%	0.5%	5.1%
Portland, OR-WA	70.4%	8.8%	6.1%	0.2%	0.2%	2.0%	3.4%	0.7%	8.1%
Providence, RI-MA	81.3%	8.5%	2.4%	0.2%	0.0%	0.2%	3.0%	0.6%	3.8%
Raleigh, NC	79.0%	8.9%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	1.3%	0.5%	9.1%
Richmond, VA	81.2%	8.7%	1.7%	0.3%	0.1%	0.7%	1.4%	0.9%	5.2%
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	79.8%	10.9%	1.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.2%	1.5%	1.0%	5.0%
Rochester, NY	80.9%	7.9%	2.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.5%	3.0%	0.4%	4.8%
Sacramento, CA	76.6%	9.2%	2.2%	0.2%	0.3%	1.3%	1.7%	0.8%	7.9%
St. Louis,, MO-IL	83.6%	6.9%	2.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	1.8%	0.6%	4.6%
Salt Lake City, UT	74.5%	12.0%	3.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.7%	2.2%	0.5%	6.7%
San Antonio, TX	79.2%	11.2%	1.8%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	1.8%	1.0%	4.6%
San Diego, CA	76.5%	8.8%	2.6%	0.2%	0.5%	0.4%	3.1%	1.2%	6.6%
San Francisco, CA	57.2%	9.6%	17.3%	0.7%	0.4%	1.9%	4.7%	1.2%	7.0%
San Jose, CA	75.3%	10.3%	4.0%	0.3%	0.3%	1.6%	2.2%	0.9%	5.0%
Seattle, WA	66.1%	10.0%	10.7%	0.3%	0.3%	1.1%	4.1%	0.7%	6.7%
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	78.9%	9.0%	1.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.5%	1.4%	1.1%	7.3%
Tucson, AZ	76.8%	10.0%	2.1%	0.2%	0.4%	1.5%	2.1%	1.3%	5.5%
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	81.2%	8.5%	1.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.4%	2.8%	1.0%	4.4%
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	65.8%	9.2%	13.0%	0.5%	0.1%	0.9%	3.3%	1.0%	6.1%
UNITED STATES	76.3%	9.0%	4.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.5%	2.6%	0.9%	5.3%
Derived from American Community Survey 2018.

Photograph: Interstate 5 in Orange County California, with elevated express lanes (by author)

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

On the Houston Chronicle's Editorial Crusade Against Fossil Fuels

Robert Bradley Jr. — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:29:58 -0400

“A recent Politico article on the bad messaging of Democrats on climate and energy, Democrats Bite on Burgers and Straws–and Republicans Feast, is fair warning. It is high time the hometown paper of the center of the oil and gas industry stop the blatant bias against the very energies that consumers naturally prefer.”

There is no representation for conservatives or libertarians on the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. So when it comes to energy, fossil fuels (because of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions) are seen as the enemy of the climate rather than a greening agent; protection against heat, cold, and precipitation; and a first responder after weather extremes.

Mineral energies in capitalist settings have much to do with the precipitous drop of climate-related deaths in the last century–and are essential to human betterment going forward. But the Chronicle is all-in against Trump energy policy and is Save Earth Malthusian otherwise.

A Bifurcation

While local and business reporters dutifully report the exciting news about the oil and gas boom that has propelled Texas and Houston, the paper’s editorial staff and news selectors report about every negative thing they can find about fossil fuels. The same decision-makers give regular voice to alarmists.

Even the letters-to-the-editor section routinely prints comments from members of the carbon-tax Citizens Climate Lobby, while rejecting critical letters from our side. I know this from my own (rejection) experience and that of Charles Batting, Allan Vogel, and others.

Bradley Sidelined

I have a long history of publishing op-ed’s with the Chronicle. [1] Never have I felt unwanted and subject to censure until the last several years. Sure, I can publish all I want on a sub-subject like offshore drilling, but a piece that challenges the climate narrative behind the Green New Deal? The energy-density problem that dooms wind power and on-grid solar? The moral case for fossil fuels? No, these worldview pieces are rejected.

The strategy is to reject editorials that question the whole enterprise of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation, instead accepting gentle articles from industry sources advocating particular policies. To wit, two articles by yours truly

Fossil Fuels: Still Winning (August 2019)
Businesses Should Avoid Global Warming Politics (July 2018)

have been rejected despite the facts that I am from Houston and happen to have founded an energy think tank whose Washington DC operations are (and have been) at the forefront of federal energy policy.

Sunday’s Edition (September 8, 2019)

Last Sunday’s Houston Chronicle was loaded with keep-it-in-the-ground, Green New Deal-type fare. Consider this:

Q&A interview with Bill McKibben, “Pioneering Environmentalist Talks Urgency on Climate Change” (A4). All softball questions surrounding McKibben’s general theme of “dramatically moving off of fossil fuels by 2030, and finishing the job by 2050.” (McKibbon is scheduled to speak in Houston next Sunday.)
“On Culpability, Energy Firms Keep Eye on Opioid Lawsuits” (B4), a reprint from the Washington Post, equating CO2 to life threatening pain killers.
“More Green Flowing to Power Clean-Energy Projects” (B4), a reprint from Bloomberg News. New investment in solar and wind, author William Mathis states, “gives credibility to an effort by world leaders to slash climate-damaging greenhouse gases.” (Really? How are their nations doing under the Paris climate accord?)

The bone thrown to the opposition came in a piece by Peria Trevizo, “Group Calls Out Natural Gas Omit” (A3), which features a complaint from the industry-group Texans for Natural Gas about being excluded from the City of Houston’s 16-page Climate Action Plan.

Natural gas is about as far as the Chronicle will go–so long as it replaces coal and eliminates methane emissions. Business writer Chris Tomlinson supports natural gas in general and LNG exports in this regard. He also faults pipeline obstructionism of keep-it-in-the-ground environmentalists who end up either hurting natural gas in its quest to substitute for coal or oil, or forcing oil into tank trucks and rail cars.

At the Houston Chronicle, Tomlinson is a “conservative” toward natural gas but a ‘liberal’ when it comes to oil and coal. He is quite pro-renewable (and incidentally is married to a renewables executive, Shalini Ramanathan).

Backdoor Realism

Fossil fuels win every second of every day with an 80 percent market share in the U.S. and 85 percent share of the global economy. Are consumers this wrong in their voluntary choices? Do they have a right to dependable, affordable energy? Have taxpayers subsidized uneconomic forms of energy (wind, solar, EVs) enough as it is? The Chronicle should check its premises and be intellectually fair, its anti-Trump politics aside.

Still, energy realism can come in through the Chronicle’s back door. At the end of a piece exploring the changing politics of Texas, “County GOP Plans 2020 Comeback,” Harris County Republican Party chairman Paul Simpson was quoted:

“They don’t want us to eat beef, drill for oil, or even use straws.” And the more Democrats highlight those positions, the more Republicans will gain ground, he said. “I can’t tell you we have an awful lot of enthusiasm that we haven’t had in years,” Simpson said.

Yes, a recent Politico article on the bad messaging of Democrats on climate and energy, “Democrats Bite on Burgers and Straws–and Republicans Feast,” is fair warning. It is high time the hometown paper of the center of the oil and gas industry stop the blatant bias against the very energies that consumers naturally prefer and leave the taxpayer alone. Just perhaps, perhaps, I can get a worldview op-ed accepted by my hometown paper in this regard.

—————-

[1] My Houston Chronicle op-ed’s under a prior editorial board include:

“ExxonMobil on Right Path” (June 14, 2009)
“Climate-Change Alarmism Runs into a Reality Check” (January 9, 2009)
“False Alarms and Climate Change” (March 30, 2008)
“Al Gore’s Telling Whoppers Again” (June 4, 2006)
“Shoppers: There is a Bright Side to Rising Gas Prices” (April 18, 2002)
“President is Correct to Ignore Climate Alarmists” (May 14, 2001)
“Fear Not: The Energy Malthusians Are Wrong” ( April 21, 2000)

This opinion piece first appeared on MasterResource.

Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research.

Midwest drilling rig photo by Bigstock.

Population Growth Slowing in Largest US Municipalities

Wendell Cox — Tue, 29 May 2018 01:33:38 -0400

The 2017 Census Bureau population estimates shows that population growth in the nation’s largest municipalities (incorporated cities and equivalent) has declined substantially relative to the healthier gains posted earlier in the decade. Among the 36 municipalities with more than 500,000 residents (including Honolulu, see below), the total population grew 0.63 percent between 2016 and 2017 (July 1), down more than one-third from the annual rate between the April 1, 2010 census and July 1, 2017. By comparison, the 2017 United States annual growth rate last year was 0.71 percent. The table below summarizes the results.

The United States has approximately 20,000 incorporated municipalities. These are distinguished from metropolitan areas, which are the labor and housing markets that have developed around the largest municipalities. Moreover, there are no national, or even state criteria that produce any sort of conformity in the size of municipalities, so that there can be huge differences in population. The largest municipalities in metropolitan areas can range from under 10 percent of the metropolitan population to more than 60 percent. In Atlanta, for example, the city of Atlanta has just 8.3 percent of the metropolitan area population, while in San Antonio, the city of San Antonio has 61.1 percent of the metropolitan area population.

Fastest Growing Municipalities

Seattle: The city of Seattle has emerged as the decade’s growth leader. Seattle has added 116,000 new residents since the 2010 Census and 17,000 since 2016. The resulting annual growth rates of 2.47 percent and 2.44 percent are the strongest among the municipalities with more than 500,000 population. Seattle accounted for 27 percent of the metropolitan area growth, more than its share of the population, which rose from 17.7 percent in 2010 to 18.7 percent in 2017.

Fort Worth: This second largest city in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex placed second in population growth between 2016 and 2017, with an increase rate of 2.18 percent. This is slightly below the 2.23 annual rate achieved since the 2010 Census, which was the fourth largest.

Charlotte: The third fastest growing city was Charlotte, which added 1.84 percent to its population in 2017. However, reflecting the overall rate, Charlotte’s most recent year gain was below its rate since 2010, which was 2.16 percent.

Columbus: The capital of Ohio is emerging as one of the nation’s growth leaders, as was already indicated in the metropolitan area data. Last year, Columbus ranked fourth in growth, at 1.79 percent.

San Antonio: San Antonio was the fifth fastest growing large municipality, adding 1.63 percent in 2017. This was slightly below its 1.81 percent rate since 2010. Reflecting the slower growth among the largest municipalities, this higher growth rate earned a lower ranking, at 7th.

Austin: Austin had been the national growth leader through 2016, but fell behind Seattle in 2017, due to a much slower growth rate. In 2017, Austin’s growth rate was 1.33 percent (ranked 12th), well below its 2.33 percent rate since the Census.

Denver: Denver experienced a trend similar to that of Austin. From 2010 to 2017, Denver added new residents at a rate of 2.25 percent annually. That rate dropped to 1.42 percent in 2017, as Denver was the 9th fastest growing large municipality.

The Largest Municipalities

New York: The nation’s largest municipality has seen its strong growth fizzle away. Between 2010 and 2017, New York added residents at a 0.74 percent annual rate, slightly higher than the national rate of 0.69 percent. In 2017, however, New York’s growth plummeted to 0.08 percent, about one-ninth of the national growth rate (0.71 percent). New York’s growth this decade peaked in 2011, when 99,000 residents were added. By 2017, the gain had dipped to 7,000. The four intensely dense urban boroughs experienced huge losses, the greatest in Brooklyn (Kings County), which had a growth rate of 0.77 percent since 2010, but lost population at a rate of 0.08 percent in 2017. The drop in growth rate also exceeded 75 percent in Manhattan (New York County) and 80 percent in The Bronx and Queens. Only Staten Island (Richmond County), with a population density less than that of Los Angeles, grew faster in 2017 than earlier in the decade (Figure 1).

Los Angeles: The second largest municipality has also experienced a substantial loss in growth rate, though not so precipitous as in New York. From the 2010 census to 2017, Los Angeles gained an average of 0.74 percent annually. In 2017, the gain was only 0.47 percent, over one-third less the average post-2010 rate. Further, despite multiple announcements of having reached 4,000,000 residents (see: “Elusive Population Growth in the City of Los Angeles”), the city still remains short (though by only 241). Los Angeles had the fifth largest population growth among the nation’s municipalities (19,000), a strong showing in a slowly growing area. By contrast, the balance of Los Angeles County, with 60 percent of the county population lost 6,000 residents while the metropolitan area’s other county (Orange) grew 13,000, 11,000 of it in the city of Irvine.

Chicago: Chicago, the third largest municipality extended its recent declines, after modest increases earlier in the decade.

Houston: The fourth largest municipality, Houston, also experienced modest growth, after strong growth earlier in the decade. These data are before the impact of Hurricane Harvey, the immediate population effect of which will be evident in next year’s estimates (Figure 2).

The Special Case of Honolulu

One municipality is missing from the Census Bureau’s list, Honolulu, Hawaii’s capital. Honolulu is an incorporated combined city-county with a population in 2017 of 989,000, the only incorporated general purpose government unit in Hawaii. As a combined city-county, Honolulu is similar to San Francisco, Baltimore, St. Louis, Nashville, Indianapolis, Denver and others. This population should result in Honolulu being ranked as the 10th largest city in the nation, between San Jose and Austin.

Yet, Honolulu is listed in the Census estimates tabulation with a population of 350,000 under the title “Urban Honolulu.” This is due to an agreement between the Census Bureau and the State of Hawaii. In fact, however, Honolulu is the 10th largest city in the United States.

Estimates are Only Estimates

Estimating population (rather than counting it in a Census) is anything but an exact science. This was proven again in 2010, when there were huge over-estimates of population. The population estimate for New York was 200,000 higher in 2009 than counted in the 2010 census. In Detroit, the over-estimate was nearly 200,000. Atlanta, however takes the prize, with an over-estimate of more than 120,000, which was an error of nearly 30 percent. On the whole, however, the population estimates were fairly accurate overall. It will be interesting to see how accurate this decade’s population estimates are in relation to the 2020 Census counts, and what it reveals about the changing fortunes of our largest cities.

MUNICIPALITIES OVER 500,000 POPULATION IN 2017

		Population (Millions)			Change
Rank	Municipality	2010 Census	2016	2017	2010-17	2016-17	% 2010-17	%2016-27
1	New York, New York	8,175	8,615	8,623	448	7	0.74%	0.08%
2	Los Angeles, California	3,793	3,981	4,000	207	19	0.74%	0.47%
3	Chicago, Illinois	2,696	2,720	2,716	21	(4)	0.11%	-0.14%
4	Houston, Texas	2,094	2,304	2,313	218	8	1.38%	0.36%
5	Phoenix, Arizona	1,447	1,602	1,626	179	24	1.62%	1.50%
6	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	1,526	1,575	1,581	55	6	0.49%	0.39%
7	San Antonio, Texas	1,327	1,488	1,512	185	24	1.81%	1.63%
8	San Diego, California	1,302	1,407	1,420	118	13	1.20%	0.91%
9	Dallas, Texas	1,198	1,322	1,341	143	19	1.57%	1.43%
(*10)	Honolulu, Hawaii	953	993	989	35	(4)	0.50%	-0.41%
10	San Jose, California	953	1,032	1,035	83	3	1.16%	0.33%
11	Austin, Texas	802	938	951	149	13	2.37%	1.33%
12	Jacksonville, Florida	822	881	892	70	11	1.14%	1.27%
13	San Francisco, California	805	876	884	79	8	1.30%	0.94%
14	Columbus, Ohio	789	864	879	90	15	1.51%	1.79%
15	Fort Worth, Texas	745	856	874	129	19	2.23%	2.18%
16	Indianapolis, Indiana	820	857	863	43	6	0.70%	0.65%
17	Charlotte, North Carolina	736	843	859	123	16	2.16%	1.84%
18	Seattle, Washington	609	707	725	116	17	2.44%	2.47%
19	Denver, Colorado	600	695	705	105	10	2.25%	1.42%
20	Washington, District of Columbia	602	684	694	92	10	1.99%	1.41%
21	Boston, Massachusetts	618	678	685	67	7	1.44%	0.98%
22	El Paso, Texas	648	681	684	35	3	0.73%	0.41%
23	Detroit, Michigan	714	675	673	(41)	(2)	-0.81%	-0.35%
24	Nashville, Tennessee	603	665	668	64	3	1.40%	0.42%
25	Memphis, Tennessee	652	653	652	0	(1)	0.01%	-0.17%
26	Portland, Oregon	584	641	648	64	6	1.45%	0.98%
27	Oklahoma City, Oklahoma	580	639	644	63	4	1.44%	0.70%
28	Las Vegas, Nevada	585	632	642	57	10	1.29%	1.58%
29	Louisville, Kentucky	596	618	621	25	3	0.57%	0.54%
30	Baltimore, Maryland	621	617	612	(9)	(5)	-0.21%	-0.86%
31	Milwaukee, Wisconsin	595	598	595	1	(2)	0.01%	-0.36%
32	Albuquerque, New Mexico	546	558	559	12	1	0.31%	0.19%
33	Tucson, Arizona	523	532	536	12	4	0.32%	0.78%
34	Fresno, California	497	523	527	30	5	0.82%	0.89%
35	Sacramento, California	466	495	502	36	7	1.02%	1.42%
	Total (Including Honolulu)	41,622	44,446	44,728	3,106	282	1.00%	0.63%

(*) See note in text on Honolulu

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

Photograph: Honolulu: 10th largest city in the United States (by author)

Doing Houston Wrong

Joel Kotkin and Tory Gattis — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:33:38 -0500

Last August, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, causing massive flooding in the Houston area and likely becoming one of the most expensive disasters (current estimate: $81.5 billion) in U.S. history. In the aftermath, Houstonians rallied to rebuild and look after one another, but they did so with the echoes of a persistent chorus of criticism ringing in their ears: Houston, critics said, was partially to blame for what had happened.

Though some of the New York Times’s coverage, notably by Emily Badger, was fair-minded, much of it was full of selective reporting and bias. According to Michael Kimmelman, Houston struggled because it is not properly zoned and because it lacks the planning that one associates with cities like New York. “The very forces that pushed the city forward are threatening its way of life,” Kimmelman wrote. Kimmelman blames Houston’s notorious “sprawl,” underwritten, as one urbanist historian tells him, by “decentralization and anti-statism.”

The Times has a selective memory. New York is certainly zoned and planned, but it suffered $19 billion in damage from Superstorm Sandy, which dropped only a half-inch of rain. But Sandy’s storm surge flooded 51 square miles of New York and inundated 300,000 homes and 23,400 businesses—estimates that exclude the much-larger impacted area in the suburbs of New York City. “‘Smart growth’ plans didn’t prevent that,” noted the Wall Street Journal.

Higher density and zoning don’t guarantee a resilient infrastructure. New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina was both dense and zoned, but this did not protect the city from devastation. In September, Hurricane Irma did considerable damage around residential towers and in downtown Miami. As Houston mayor Sylvester Turner put it: “Zoning wouldn’t have changed anything. We would have been a city with zoning that flooded.”

The real point of Kimmelman’s story, like much Times coverage of almost any natural disaster, is that the effects of climate change are already here, and to avoid them, cities must adopt a specific view of urban development and an accompanying planning agenda. “Texas after Harvey is no different, and perhaps even less prepared to change” than New Orleans, Kimmelman maintains. But Houston responded to disastrous flooding many times before climate change became an issue, including after the 1900 hurricane that essentially destroyed Galveston, and another that deluged downtown Houston in 1935. Yet Kimmelman and other commentators blame Houston for purportedly ignoring nature and inviting disaster. “No city could have withstood Harvey without serious harm, but Houston made itself more vulnerable than necessary,” intoned Bloomberg. “Paving over the saw-grass prairie reduced the ground’s capacity to absorb rainfall. Flood-control reservoirs were too small. Building codes were inadequate. Roads became rivers.”

Hysteria about climate change and finger-wagging about zoning do not address the real issue: boosting resilience. Houston has already shown that it can learn from the past. Previous storms, such as Hurricane Ike (2008) and Hurricane Allison (2001), led to regulations requiring “detention ponds,” which temporarily capture storm water, for all new developments more than 10,000 square feet in land area. These detention basins require no net increase in runoff from new developments. Electricity can’t be turned on for a development until it passes detention inspections, which reoccur annually.

Overall, the Harris County Flood Control District has spent over $4 billion on infrastructure, and spends another $100 million each year—a far cry from doing “nothing,” as critics imply. The Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical complex, suffered significant flooding damage during Allison, but it made improvements afterward—installing warning systems, pumps, elevated electrical equipment, and floodgates and doors that prevented flooding damage during Harvey. The media devoted much attention to Houston’s flooded streets but rarely noted that the city designed those streets as last-resort water-detention ponds. Though 30 percent of Harris County was underwater at some point during Harvey, less than 7 percent of homes were damaged. The enhanced regulations helped the region withstand a disaster that would have humbled New York, and which still afflicts New Orleans. In less than two weeks, Houston was largely back in operation.

The notion that setting aside more open space would have contained Harvey is dubious at best. As Charles Marohn notes at Strongtowns, critics lack a “proper sense of scale.” Between 1992 and 2010, according to research by Texas A&M, nearly 25,000 acres of wetlands were lost to development around Houston; they would have stored nearly 4 billion gallons of stormwater. That sounds like a lot, but Harvey dropped an estimated 19 trillion gallons of rain on Texas. The lost stormwater-storage capacity amounts to 0.2 percent of the water that fell during the storm. And too high a greenspace requirement would have led to even more sprawl, pushing developers further out, as has occurred in cities around the world, such as Toronto and London.

Much of what critics think they know about Houston is simply untrue.

“Lack of zoning in Houston has contributed to people building anything, anywhere,” a city planner told Marketplace—but Greater Houston imposes substantial permitting regulations and zones many areas. Sugarland, Pearland, The Woodlands, Cinco Ranch, and Lake Jackson—areas of much recent growth—are zoned. Other outlying areas, like Pasadena and Conroe, are not.

The city is not as “sprawling” as critics insist; the Houston region ranked as the 18th densest among 41 metro areas with more than 1,000,000 people—scoring higher than Boston, Austin, and Philadelphia. Houston’s density is approximately equal to that of Seattle and only 18 percent less dense than Portland, a smart-growth mecca. Houston is far denser than some other large urban areas: 66 percent denser than Hartford, 74 percent denser than Atlanta, and 77 percent denser than Charlotte.

Nor is the city the paved-over disaster so often evoked in the media. Houston has more acres of parkland and greenspace than any other large city in America, and it ranks third behind San Diego and Dallas in park acreage per capita. The city has substantially fewer impervious surfaces covered by buildings, roads, and parking lots (39.2 percent) and substantially more absorbent surfaces with trees, grasses, and soils (60.6 percent) than similarly populated American cities. “If Harvey happened in 1850 instead of today,” explains historian Phil Magness, “the results would be nearly identical in terms of land flooded . . . No zoning law or ban on parking lot construction would ever have ‘fixed’ anything about that.”

The standard suggestion from the experts is that Houston should sharply constrain development in the prairie outside the city, where the vast majority of growth has taken place. Yet Houston’s development model remains attractive enough that, even after Harvey, the region is among the leaders in new housing starts. (Moody’s forecasts a drop in metro Houston’s employment and gross regional product in fourth quarter 2017, but an increase, above pre-Harvey levels, by first quarter of 2018.) Few planners or critics appreciate that Houston’s liberal land-use regulations have led to some of the most affordable housing in the U.S., as measured by price-to-income ratios. Coupled with its strong economy, this has made Houston among the best cities in the world in terms of standard of living—well above New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other planning paragons. Over the last 10 years, Houston’s “median multiple”—the median house price, divided by median household income—has averaged 3.2, roughly a third of that in coastal California.

Perhaps the solution to flooding lies not in undermining Houston’s regulatory model but in strengthening it. Houston’s dispersed, multipolar form, notes MIT’s Alan Berger, may have helped it respond more effectively to Harvey; the city has no central point, like Manhattan in New York City, whose closure damages the entire region. If we accept that more Harvey-like events are possible, even probable, then the most important issue is not zoning but flood control, which requires resilient systems. Bolstering resiliency is an issue not just for Houston but also for many communities in the vulnerable coastal areas where a growing number of Americans live.

Should Houston abandon growth to defend itself against projected climate change? Great cities don’t surrender; they build themselves around resiliency. The Netherlands has been addressing, with great success, a rise in sea levels for several hundred years. The prosperity of drought-plagued California depends on massive water transfers from its mountain ranges. Even in impoverished Bangladesh, better drainage and preparedness has reduced deaths and damage from flooding. After the devastation of Harvey, Houston must address its longstanding vulnerability to flood—but with a focus on boosting resiliency, not abandoning its growth model.

Houston has the history and the resources to plan for potential disaster. Often overlooked is the region’s remarkable grassroots culture. Houstonians, residents of America’s most diverse large metropolitan area, reacted to disaster with remarkable aplomb—showing the “Houston spirit,” as Mayor Turner called it. People volunteered to help their neighbors in such numbers that many were turned away.

Such grassroots efforts may not be a complete solution to nature’s fury, but they do represent a critical element, along with strong government action, in building urban resiliency. American cities, particularly coastal cities, will likely face more disasters like Harvey. They can surrender to urbanist orthodoxy, thus assuring the loss of social mobility already so evident in many high-regulation cities, or they can come up with adaptive strategies that protect residents while nurturing urban opportunity.

This piece first appeared in City Journal.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

Tory Gattis is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, and co-authored the original Opportunity Urbanism studies. Tory writes the popular Houston Strategies blog and its twin blog at the Houston Chronicle, Opportunity Urbanist, where he discusses strategies for making Houston a better city. He is the founder of Coached Schooling, a startup to create a high-tech network of affordable private schools ($10/day) combining the best elements of eLearning, home and traditional schooling to reinvent the one-room schoolhouse for the 21st century. Tory is a McKinsey consulting alum, TEDx speaker, and holds both an MBA and BSEE from Rice University.

Photo: Rich Johnstone, via Flickr, using CC License.

Houston Market HOUSTON HOUSING 3Q17: Impact of Harvey Strongest in the Resale Market; New Home Sales Should Surge in 2018

Lawrence Dean — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 01:23:00 -0500

• Houston’s new home market and general economic conditions cannot be discussed without touching on the impacts of Hurricane Harvey, which damaged 167,000 single family homes throughout the Greater Houston Area.

• By and large Harvey was a resale market phenomenon due to the locations of most flooding impacts. In general, Metrostudy does not anticipate any significant increase in new home sales demand generated by Harvey victims until 1Q18.

• Despite the impact of the hurricane, Houston remains the second highest volume new home market in the country, with just Dallas/ Fort Worth achieving a greater number of starts over the 3Q17 trailing twelve months.

• The sweet spot of the market in Houston continues to be in the $200k – $400k price bands. Starts and closings volume of homes base priced above $400k continue to show YoY declines, which are most pronounced in the $600k and above bands.

Metrostudy’s 3Q17 survey of the Houston housing market shows that Houston has maintained its number two position behind Dallas / Fort Worth in terms of annual new home starts. Houston achieved 27,713 starts, representing a growth rate of 6.4% year over year. Metrostudy anticipates a total year over year 5% to 6% increase in Houston single family starts at the conclusion of 2017 followed by a more modest 2% to 3% increase at the end of 2018. This differs from Metrostudy’s previous 2017-2018 projections: strong starts volume in 2Q and 3Q 2017 combined with current lack of focused growth direction in the energy industry has resulted in Metrostudy projecting a stronger starts rebound in 2017 with a slower continued growth trajectory for 2018.

“Houston’s new home market and general economic conditions cannot be discussed without touching on the impacts of Hurricane Harvey,” said Lawrence Dean, Regional Director of Metrostudy’s Houston market. “In general, Metrostudy does not anticipate any significant increase in new home sales demand generated by Harvey victims until 1Q18. These potential future buyers are simply focused on managing their damaged homes, temporary housing, insurance claims, and FEMA assistance to be able to move forward on purchasing new homes until this timeframe.”

Below are key statistics focused on Harvey’s impact on Houston:

•Harvey dumped one year’s typical rainfall on the Houston region in five days (49”).

• Moody’s Analytics estimates total economic losses to the Texas Gulf Coast (including Houston) of $97B, $87B of which is property losses.

• Upstream Energy, Health Care, and Aerospace, the three pillars of Houston’s economic base saw relatively minimal impact from Harvey.

• Downstream energy saw greater impact as more than ¼ of the nation’s refining capacity was offline on August 30th due to Harvey. As of September 7th 16% of capacity was offline, and this number continues to improve.

• Only 40 of the region’s 1,200 office buildings received damage.

• Apartment Data Services found that 9,662 apartment units in 177 properties, or 1.6% of the overall market inventory, were damaged. Apartment occupancies have improved slightly….but for how long?

• The Houston region is anticipated to lose approximately 300,000 vehicles with a total value of $2.4B.

• 167,000 single family homes were damaged throughout the Greater Houston Area.

• Most of the top thirty builders reported flood damage to between 0% and 4% of their homes under construction or in inventory. By and large Harvey was a resale market phenomenon due to the locations of most flooding impacts.

Starts surpassed closings in the third quarter, for the second quarter in a row. Builders closed 7,540 homes in 3Q17, 113 more than in 3Q16. Builders have generally expressed being pleased with their overall sales volume in 2017 but saw more consistent strong sales volume in the first quarter of the year than they did in the 2Q. Houston continues to experience a very competitive new home sales environment although builders have been succeeding at selling through previously built up spec home inventory.

Annual new home starts volume continues to be greatest in the $200,000 to $299,999 price band. Sales volume in the $300,000 to $399,999 price band has also continued to grow year over year. The sweet spot of the market in Houston continues to be in the $200,000 – $400,000 base price bands. Starts and closings volume of homes base priced above $400,000 continue to show year over year declines. These declines are most pronounced in the $600,000 and above base price bands.

Quarterly lot deliveries were nearly identical to quarterly new home starts in 3Q 2017, with 8,006 new lots being delivered while 8,008 new home starts occurred. On an annual basis growth in new lots delivered remains very tight and similar in volume to lots absorbed. Over the last twelve months 27,798 new lots were delivered while 27,713 lots were absorbed by new home starts. Market-wide inventory of vacant developed lots (VDL) remains constant at 44,460 (down five from the previous quarter), or 19.3 Months of Supply.

Inventory of resale single family homes market wide has grown by 9.3% year over year. Currently there is an inventory of 20,487 true resale listings which is consistent with inventory levels seen one year ago. This reflects 3.7 months of supply which is the lowest level seen in twelve months.

This piece originally appeared on Metrostudy.com.

Photo: D.L., via Flickr, using CC License.

A Layman's Guide To Houston After Harvey: Don't Throw The Opportunity Baby Out With The Stormwater

Wendell Cox and Tory Gattis — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 01:33:38 -0400

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and the disastrous flooding, Houston has come under extreme scrutiny. Some in the global, national as well as local media assaulted the area's flood control system and its development model, criticisms that were echoed by some in the local area.

Much of the current debate starts from a firm misunderstanding of the region’s realities. This could lead to policies that ultimately undermine the keys that have propelled the region’s success. Below is a primer to inform future discussions of Houston’s future trajectory.

Click here to read more or download the full paper.

Photo: Michael Coppens, via Flickr, using CC License.

Hurricanes Don't Kill Cities - People Do

Joel Kotkin — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 01:33:38 -0400

Cities that believe in themselves are hard to kill. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey many pundits have urged Houston to abandon many of the traits that have made it a dynamic, growing metropolis, including key elements of its light-handed, pro-business regulatory regime.

Houston, we are told, should retrench and reduce its sprawl; Slate recommends New Orleans’ post-Katrina shrinkage as a model. This goes against the best of urban tradition. Great cities generally do not shrink themselves.

Many cities have rebounded and even improved after far more lethal devastation, including London, Berlin, Tokyo and New York. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city ultimately constructed a downtown that may well be the world’s most beautiful. San Francisco famously rebuilt itself after the 1906 earthquake and fire into “a new and improved city” that has evolved into an integral part of the world’s dominant tech hub.

In contrast cities that destroy themselves from within, like Detroit after the 1968 riots, and New Orleans before Katrina, can decline for decades.

Urban resiliency requires two things: an ability to learn from experience and, per Northeastern University’s resiliency expert Daniel Aldrich, a commitment on the part of its residents to improve their city.

Should Houston downsize?

Unlike New York or New Orleans, Houston is not celebrated by the mainstream press or intellectuals; its residents have been portrayed as hypocritical religious fanatics and even neo-Nazis, despite living in what may well be America’s most diverse city.

To many pundits, Houston’s problems are due to a lack of zoning and too much unregulated growth. Days after Hurricane Harvey hit, Quartz opined that "Houston’s flooding shows what happens when you ignore science and let developers run rampant.” The Guardian’s climate columnist George Monbiot even portrayed the event as a kind of payback for being the world capital of planet-destroying climate change.

Few Houstonians are likely to embrace this interpretation of natural forces, or their own culpability. Longtime residents know that the Bayou City always has been prone to serious hurricanes and flooding due to its location along the Gulf, and Houston has shown an ability to deal with it.

A 1935 flood caused proportionally much more severe damage on a much smaller city. Tropical storm Allison in 2001 led to significant hardening of infrastructure. Unlike New Orleans at the time of Katrina, many services in Houston, including police and fire, were ready for Harvey. Flood control, although clearly not up to the standards required by such a huge weather event, has been much improved. New developments are required to show how they can make up for the absorption lost, often with sophisticated drainage and storage techniques.

Much blame for Harvey has been linked to development on the fringe, a major component of the region’s growth. Over an 18-year period, Houston lost about 25,000 acres of wetlands, which took away about 4 billion gallons of storm water detention capacity. In contrast Harvey dumped about 1 trillion gallons, meaning those wetlands could have only absorbed about 0.4% of Harvey’s deluge. Many flooded roads were consciously designed to hold storm water temporarily when there is nowhere for it to drain.

To succeed, Houston, like any city, must adapt and bolster its defenses, particularly if such events become more common. This does not mean, as many suggest, that the region abandon its development-friendly policies. In contrast to claims of “wild west” regulation, many developments after Allison are required have better systems to handle downpours than older areas closer to the center. One friend notes that his 10 suburban shopping centers employed the most advanced methods for handling excess water and survived.

Most of his projects' first line of defense is made up of catch basins and stormwater lines in the parking lot which flow to a retention pond. The second line of defense is the retention pond. In the event the pond reaches capacity, the third line of defense is storm water backing up into storm drainage lines and ultimately ponding in the parking lot. These three defenses are very typical in newer developments, and many withstood the biblical flooding intact.

Many others, either not up to code or built well before the new regulations, did not do so well. But on the whole, rather than prove the inadequacy of Houston model, as the New York Times Bret Stephens correctly noted, the region managed to survive a crisis with minimal, albeit tragic losses, that in other places would have cost thousands of lives.

In the coming years, Houston surely will have to find ways to grow with less peril. But as both MIT’s Alan Berger and Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Tuner have noted, Harvey did not “punish” Houston for lax development. Houston has a planning system that is not the “wild west” but simply less bureaucratic and politicized. Its suburbs, notes the planning blog Strong towns, “are largely indistinguishable from the suburbs of any American city.” As Mayor Sylvester rejoined, if Houston had zoning, he would be presiding instead over a “flooded zoned city.”

The zoning argument is, simply put, bogus. Cities in the area that were heavily zoned, like West University, or intensely planned like Sugarland, got hit as hard as more haphazard areas. Harvey, it turns out, was an equal opportunity devastator. Similarly, Sandy dropped barely one-third the rain from Harvey, yet overwhelmed a dense and very zoned area. New Orleans before Katrina was dense and zoned; a lot of good it did them.

Nor, as many commentators suggest, can Houston’s supposedly enormous “sprawl” be the prime culprit. As demographer Wendell Cox points out the Houston urban area density at 3,000 per square mile, is 20 percent above metropolitan Boston (2,200), and Philadelphia (2,700) and not much less dense than that mecca of smart growth, Portland. Overall Houston ranks 18th in urban population density among the 53 metropolitan areas with more than a million residents, according to Census date.

In contrast to its image as a paved over dystopia, Houston has more parkland and green space than most any other large city in America and ranks third overall to San Diego and Dallas in park acreage per capita. Rather than focus on urban form, Berger, himself a landscape architect who is co-director MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism, says this region really needs better and stricter building codes, such as the ones that saved my friend’s shopping centers. Others, like Rich Campanella at Tulane, suggests the best strategy for the Gulf cities should be to focus on building barrier islands along the coast, and improving often aged drainage systems.

In the end, it’s the civic culture

As we know from experience, storms, violent conquest and, in the case of Hiroshima, even nuclear weapons, cannot kill a city -- only residents can do that. I saw this in Los Angeles, which in the early 1990s suffered a Pharaonic series of disasters -- riots, fires, floods and a huge earthquake in 1994. The city rebuilt smartly after all of them, but only one, the 1992 riots, left a residual toll on the civic spirit, or led to an exodus of residents. Los Angeles may look spiffier than it did before the riots, but its enterprising spirit, and its allure to newcomers, never recovered fully.

Internal collapse, the lack of a civic spirit, occurs most often when a city’s elite and its population no longer see a common future. Detroit’s 1967 riots created a morass that devastated the city for the next half century. Earlier on conflict between Boston Brahmins and the Irish under Mayor James Curley ushered in a period of stagnation that went from the 1920s to the late 1950s.

More recently, Katrina revealed how a collapsed civic culture can make a disaster worse. Corrupt politicians, an ineffective business community and poor emergency services turned a Harvey-like natural disaster into a massive human one, with much greater loss of life. Some blame the city’s entrenched, often multi-generational lower-income population but perhaps more critical to failure was the city’s often elegantly appointed and comfortable upper echelon.

In the decades before Katrina, as southern cities like Houston and Atlanta were burgeoning, New Orleans stagnated. Joel Garreau in his Nine Nations of North America described the Crescent City as a “marvelous collection of sleaziness and peeling paint.” The aristocracy enjoyed the city’s unparalleled culture while many ambitious people from its neighborhoods migrated elsewhere. Without a strong, engaged business community and middle class, there was little attempt to fix the infrastructure. This weak civic culture has left a city with huge economic challenges that a regenerated local business community is now gamely trying to address.

Houston performed very differently during Harvey. Mayor Turner and the Harris County Judge, Ed Emmett, epitomized level-headed leadership. Gov. Abbot, unlike Louisiana’s dithering Gov. Kathleen Blanco, swung immediately to action. Local volunteers pitched in, so much so, notes Houston-based analyst Tory Gattis, that many found themselves unable to participate because each Facebook call for help spurred more volunteers than could be accommodated. Houston can also count on something New Orleans lacked: a strong, and philanthropically inclined business establishment who are pouring millions into recovery efforts.

Houston will come back, albeit with some modifications, not because it’s a charity case, but because its people want to stay and rebuild their neighborhoods. They have been putting their shoulders to the wheel personally, with special emphasis on those most in need; rather than rugged individualists they are, in the words of one prominent Houston businessperson “rugged communitarians.”

In the coming months, Houstonians will seek aid from Washington, as all hard-hit areas do, but most understand that the challenge is basically for them to solve, whether through mutual self-help, or new infrastructure; their city is an engineering marvel that needs a new upgrade.

Ultimately, the power of human agency at the grassroots level remains the “secret sauce” overcoming almost any disaster, whether it’s London, New York or Houston. Great cities are not about buildings but great people. By that standard, Houston will likely come back better than before, a testament to the greatness of the urban ideal.

This piece originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

Photo: Jill Carlson (jillcarlson.org) from Roman Forest, Texas, USA (Hurricane Harvey Flooding and Damage) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Spotlight on Infrastructure After Harvey

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 01:33:38 -0400

The recent tragic events in Houston and across the Gulf Coast once again demonstrated the woeful inadequacy of our infrastructure. Hopefully, some good will come of Hurricane Harvey. Hopefully, it will jump-start the long-awaited Trump initiative on infrastructure, which may be the one issue that could unite this country.

Northeastern University’s post-disaster resiliency expert Daniel Aldrich notes the need for better storm water drainage systems and for fortifying existing infrastructure -- and not just in Houston. Helping promote such investments represents perhaps the last best chance for creating a significant Trump legacy.

Once a leader in world infrastructure, the United States now ranks 11th in the overall quality of its infrastructure, according to the latest World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index. This decline has consequences. In California, for example, the lack of investment in water storage both worsened the recent drought and reduced the state’s ability to take advantage of heavy rains when they arrived.

A concerted effort to restore our nation’s bridges, roads, harbors and other critical infrastructure would also mark a significant break from the Obama era stimulus which focused more on propping up renewable energy and often underused mass transit systems. Meanwhile, our overall infrastructure continued to deteriorate during the Great Recession, even with the stimulus, with spending in decline from over $300 billion in 2008 to under $250 billion in 2013.

Spending Smartly

“Efficiency is doing things right,” legendary management guru Peter F. Drucker once proclaimed. “Effectiveness is doing the right things.” In the context of infrastructure, being effective means placing our bets on things that are really needed, and could reward our society with greater productivity, wealth and new employment.

At Newgeography.com, where I serve as executive editor, we recently carried a report from the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism, "Doing the Right Things Right,” which lays out what an infrastructure strategy would look like given current budget constraints. The United States faces a national debt of $20 trillion, while the federal government deficit was projected to reach $693 billion for fiscal year 2017.

A strong U.S. transportation infrastructure system facilitates economic growth, job creation, a better standard of living and less poverty by minimizing travel times and improving labor market efficiency. Yet, as "Doing the Right Things Right" makes clear, not all investments are the same, or should receive federal subsidies, whether for direct expenditures or to issue infrastructure bonds to support private investment. There have been too many examples of spending on lower priority infrastructure because politicians were more interested in securing pork, or votes, than accelerating economic growth or reducing constituents’ travel times.

To be sure, America's infrastructure has performed well enough to provide the highest standard of living for the largest number of people in the world. The legacy of earlier infrastructure decisions, such as the completion of the interstate highway system, is still evident. Overall, the amount of time America's commuters spend in peak period traffic congestion is generally better than that of international competitors.

Yet traffic problems are increasing in the nation's largest metropolitan areas. A recent study found that traffic congestion imposed $132 billion in excess fuel and time costs for automobile drivers and $28 billion in freight costs annually -- all ultimately absorbed by consumers.

The key question is how we meet these challenges. One proposed solution is to increase spending on traditional mass transit. This works well largely in “legacy cities” such as Washington, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York. The city of New York alone represents a remarkable 36 percent of all U.S. transit commuting, yet has only 3 percent of the jobs. Outside of these cities, the new transit projects, principally rail lines, have done little or nothing, as a recent report on transit from Chapman University demonstrates, to slow congestion or attract significant ridership.

Among 19 metropolitan areas that added high-capacity transit systems since 1980, both bus and rail, transit's market share has fallen from 4.7 to 4.6 percent compared to the last data before the systems opened. Transit has not, on balance, reduced solo driving, which increased from an average of 73.0 percent to 76.6 percent.

The cities with rail systems opening after the 1990 Census experienced a modest decline in transit work trip market share, from 3.8 percent in 1990 to 3.7 percent in 2013.

Take the absurd example of Los Angeles, which has spent over $15 billion trying to become what some mass transit enthusiasts call the “next great transit city.” Yet, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority system ridership stands at least 15 percent below 1985 levels, when there was only bus service, at a time when the population of Los Angeles County was 20 percent lower. Since 1990, transit’s work trip market share in the Los Angeles metropolitan area has dropped from 5.6 percent to 5.1 percent. No surprise, then, that according to a recent USC study, the new lines have done little or nothing to lessen congestion.

Doing Your Homework

The irony is that billions are being spent on these ineffective systems, when the places that depend on transit, like New York and Washington, are seeing their systems become less reliable and even dangerous. We are dumping money in some locations that don't work all that well, but can’t find funds to fix systems that remain essential to “legacy cities” with large downtowns ideal for transit ridership.

With the expense and ineffectiveness of new rail systems, it seems that the time has arrived for transit services that focus on less expensive bus systems, including those run by private companies, which can carry so many more riders for so much less in taxpayer subsidies. There are also opportunities to make lightly used but highly subsidized services more cost-effective by adding ride-hailing systems, like Uber and Lyft, cited as a factor in recent ridership declines in Los Angeles and even New York. In suburban San Francisco, a local transit operator has established a pilot program to extend service through ride-hailing and cancelled a lightly patronized bus route, reducing costs while providing quicker door-to-door service.

One of the most promising alternatives, virtually ignored by transit advocates, is to encourage options for working at home. In many metropolitan areas, more people already telecommute than take transit. Since 1980, the number of people working at home has grown three times that of transit riders. All this, at virtually no cost to taxpayers.

In the future, rapidly evolving autonomous technologies could make our present transit systems archaic in most cities. Under any circumstance, these advances seem likely to further weaken conventional transit. Given these trends, why base our transit policy on 19^th century technologies when we are about to enter the third decade of the 21^st?

Back to the Gulf: Resiliency, not Hysteria

“Smart growth” advocates have been quick to argue that Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented damage can be traced to Houston’s freewheeling, free-market approach to real estate development. Sure, the area got 50 inches of rain, but it fell both on communities that eschew strict zoning and those which embrace it. They somehow forget that a lesser storm, Hurricane Sandy, devastated the highly planned communities of greater New York just a few years ago, causing $19 billion in damage in the city alone – and with far less rain.

Rather than imitate Portland or San Francisco, Houston and other Gulf communities need to maintain policies that have allowed it to avoid the kind of insane price hikes one sees on the West Coast and some Northeastern housing markets. To force Houston to act like San Francisco would kill its economy. If Texas real estate prices approach California’s, people will simply move elsewhere, where prices are lower.

Some changes may be necessary, including “coastal restoration” efforts that limit the impact of storms like Harvey. Major engineering challenges, like building more water storage facilities and improved drainage, need to be imposed, as well.

What Houston needs, and would naturally adopt, is a kind of enlightened free market approach. After the devastation of Galveston in 1900 hurricane, Houston famously built a ship channel while Galveston built an elaborate sea wall; Houston is no less a creation of private innovation and government than New York or Los Angeles. Like America itself, Houston thrives by combining good public investment with a maximum of economic flexibility.

The more these decisions are made locally, by people who are directly impacted, the better. My colleague Tory Gattis, based in Houston, suggests that new developments and older ones “should be required to have adequate rainwater retention, either with ponds, tanks, or permeable surfaces.” There are already examples of some of this kind of planning, particularly in exurban communities such as the Woodlands. This may mitigate the ill effects of such storms, but not likely to prevent disasters like Harvey from inflicting huge damage.

These policies could mean, over time, that Houston and other Gulf communities might build an infrastructure more reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, scattered communities with ample open land around them. But the vision must be a localized one, not drawn from example of generally slower-growing, older regions facing very different natural challenges. The benefits to customizing local infrastructure is go beyond economic reality and even disaster mitigation. With enough focus on local needs, we need not wait for natural disasters to witness the heartwarming sights of multi-cultural first responders – and ordinary citizens – all pulling together. “Social networks and cohesion are an important part of recovery and survival,” professor Aldrich suggests. “Houston should be investing in bringing neighborhoods together.”

This is the real secret sauce for resiliency, as Houston has been showing throughout this crisis. The more that people who are impacted control the till, whether repairing levees, imposing regulations or planning transit systems, the better. Rather than let Leviathan rule and impose conformity, we should let regions -- whether in Texas or elsewhere -- figure out how to meet infrastructure challenges that effect every community differently.

This piece originally appeared on Real Clear Politics.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

Photo: Hurricane Harvey flooding by Jill Carlson, via Flickr, using CC License.

Hurricane Harvey: A View from a Rugged Communitarian

Leo Linbeck III — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 01:33:38 -0400

Narratives are not necessarily built on facts; they’re built on stories, pictures, graphics, and videos. Ideally, we want our narratives to be aligned with the facts; but that doesn’t always happen.

Here is a synthesis of some of the predictable narratives being spun in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey from such places as The Washington Post, Slate, The Guardian, Newsweek and NPR:

Hurricane Harvey was a catastrophe of epic proportions. Floodwater is everywhere; people can only move around the city using boats and helicopters. Local officials failed to order evacuations, so Houstonians have been forced from their homes as flood waters rose, and the death toll is horrific and rising.

But Houston had it coming. It is a miserably hot swamp where no one really wants to live. It embraced a “wild west” approach to growth, paved over wetlands, and refused to implement zoning, which would have lessened the impact of Harvey by requiring developers to mitigate the impacts of new projects. Moreover, it is the global center of the energy business, which is the biggest driver of climate change – one impact of which is the increased frequency and severity of hurricanes like Harvey.

Look at these pictures of flooded streets; families in boats, or shopping carts, or floating on inflatable mattresses; bridges that are totally submerged, and littered with abandoned cars. Check out these graphics showing how Houston has paved over much of the land, destroying wetlands and creating impermeable barriers and exacerbating the impact of major rainstorms. Read these interviews with experts who bemoan Houston’s lack of centralized planning, and who implore the city leaders in Houston to use their power to address the many failures that became evident during Hurricane Harvey.

These narratives, alas, are a combination of ignorance, and arrogance that tells the reader more about the narrative spinners’ flawed view of Houston than about the city itself.

Let’s start with some facts and perspective:

• Harvey is the wettest storm ever to hit the continental US. Over 50 inches of rainfall and 1 trillion gallons of water fell during the event. No one builds a church for Easter, or a gated community for the zombie apocalypse. It’s pretty naive to expect people to expect the unexpected.

• So far, there have been fewer than 50 storm-related deaths. Each of these deaths is tragic, but even if that number creeps higher, it is a stunning low fatality rate for such a major event in such a large city. The Houston region has more than 6.6 million people, and every year more than 40,000 of them die – so Hurricane Harvey increased the annual death tally by about 0.1%. Sad, but not catastrophic.

• An estimated 30,000 people have been forced from their homes. This is approximately 0.5% of the population of the Houston region. In other words, 99.5% of people in the Houston region have been able to stay in their homes. Unfortunate, but not catastrophic.

• The Trump Administration has estimated that 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. While it is unclear how that estimate was obtained – if 30,000 people were forced from their home, then probably 70-90% of those homes did not sustain enough damage to force an evacuation – the Houston region has more than 1.6 million housing units, so about 6% of homes sustained damage of some kind. Lamentable, but not catastrophic.

• Economic impact estimates are all over the map at this point; initial estimates were in the $30-40 billion range, but have been rising since then. Let’s say they end up being comparable to Superstorm Sandy, which caused about $70 billions of damage in today’s dollars. The Houston region GDP is about half a trillion dollars a year, so Harvey’s economic cost would be about 14% of our total economic output. Expensive, but not catastrophic.

A dispassionate weighing of these facts would tell you that while stressful events always help identify areas for improvement, by and large our infrastructure and leadership performed admirably well under extraordinary circumstances.

It other words, the facts would tell you that Harvey was not a catastrophe for Houston; it was our finest hour.

But the narrative spinners have an agenda: they want to assert that this event was an utter failure for Houston, and shame our city and county leadership into embracing centralized planning, and ultimately zoning. They believe in a top-down, expert-driven technocracy that rewards current real estate owners by actions that restrict new supply, raise property value (and therefore taxes), stifle opportunity and undermine human agency. As a life-long Houstonian, I would like to politely ask the narrative spinners to please pound sand.

Peter Drucker once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and Houston’s culture is one of opportunity. People come to this city to build a better life for themselves, to start and raise a family, and to do so with the support and encouragement of neighbors. This culture of opportunity means that Houstonians welcome newcomers, in a way that older or more status-conscious cities do not. Houston may not be a nice place to visit during the summer, but it is a great place to create a life all year round.

This culture really shines through during events like Hurricane Harvey. Despite what the narrative spinners would have you believe, we are not rugged individualists; we are rugged communitarians. We know that when times are tough, you must rely first on family, then friends, then neighbors, and then – and only if you’re one of the few, unfortunate folks who cannot rely on any of those three – on the government. And if we have family, friends, or neighbors who can help, reaching out for government support is actually taking resources away from those who need them more.

In short, the best governance to rely upon is self- governance.

When the storm hit, I saw these networks in action. People first took care of family – in my case, my five siblings and I were in regular communication, checking in on how each of us was weathering the storm. Good news: everyone came through pretty much unscathed.

Once it was clear that my family was OK, my wife and I began to focus on neighbors and friends. Yesterday, I spent several hours with neighbors clearing away trees that had fallen across streets in our neighborhood, making them unpassable. It was hard work – lots of chain sawing and branch hauling – and we were helped by a crew that was distributing power poles in our area. But folks just driving in the area would also stop and help, doing what they could, or just providing fellowship and encouragement. One lady in the neighborhood brought us some chicken meatballs for lunch – no one asked her to do that, she just wanted to help however she could. (The meatballs were delicious – thanks Costco!)

Also, in our network of friends, there were a couple of families who were forced from their home. We worked together to find them places to stay, and today a group of about 40 men, women, and children went to their house today to box up and move out their valuables, throw away everything else, and tear out the damaged drywall. People brought tools, gloves, and a can-do attitude, and a job that might have taken weeks was finished in about 6 hours. Our friends now have their valuables with them in a rented home (found by another friend in our network), ready for the next step in returning to normalcy.

These stories are real, and not about heroes doing the unusual. They are commonplace and just the way things get done in Houston. If you have friends in Houston, just ask they will tell you similar stories.

Of course, leadership is important, and our regional leadership did great. Mayor Sylvester Turner and Judge Ed Emmett were both calm, deliberate, and stayed on task throughout the crisis. Governor Abbott and President Trump did their parts, but make no mistake about it – this was a local challenge that required top-notch response from local officials. And they did their jobs well.

Houston was able to absorb the wettest storm on record with remarkably little loss of life and property also because of good engineering, informed by the experience of previous storms. A good engineer designs systems that won’t fail when hit with an expected event; a great engineer designs systems that fail gracefully and non-catastrophically when hit with an unexpected event. Hats off to our great engineers.

However, a focus on Houston’s public officials or public infrastructure will lead you away from the more important truth: our response was driven by thousands of Houstonians who voluntarily stepped up to the challenge, and didn’t wait for some central authority to tell us what to do. The truth is that Houston’s culture was its biggest asset, a culture of mutual support that is extraordinary in a city of this size and diversity.

And this culture is not an accident; it the consequence of a system that was designed to be driven from the bottom-up, by regular folks, responding to needs on the ground rather than some kind of theoretical plan put together by experts with no stake in our future, or interest in our family, friends, or neighbors.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. By studying what happened, we will find ways to improve the system for the next storm – and there will always be a next storm. We learned a lot from Ike, Rita, and earlier storms. When I was a child, a couple of inches of rain would flood my neighborhood; today, that same neighborhood absorbed 25 inches of rain and made it through. We have come a long way.

Harvey was a difficult challenge, but not a catastrophe. However, it would be catastrophic for city leaders to accept the narrative spinners’ version of what happened in Houston. It is demonstrably wrong on all counts:

Houston is a miserably hot swamp where no one really wants to live.

It’s hot during the summer, but it is pleasant the rest of the year. As this map shows, Houston actually gets more “pleasant days” than Miami, Raleigh-Durham, Chicago, Portland, or Phoenix. Forget your preconceptions for a moment, and answer a simple question: how could a place get to a population of 6.6 million if no one wanted to live there?

It embraced a “wild west” approach to growth.

Houston’s approach is not the “wild west.” We have land use that is managed from the bottom up, through a system of deed restrictions that often include local homeowners’ associations to police those restrictions. What we don’t have is a top-down, expert-driven, bureaucratic system of centralized planning. As a result, it’s easier to develop real estate than most cities, which keeps real estate prices – especially housing prices – low relative to the rest of the country. It is actually a more sophisticated and economically efficient system than the antiquated politically-driven zoning system that generally favors entrenched interests over new entrants.

Paved over wetlands

Over an 18 year period, Houston lost about 25,000 acres of wetlands. But this amounts to about 4 billion gallons of storm water detention capacity. As stated above, Harvey dumped about 1 trillion gallons; so the lost capacity represents about of 0.4% of Harvey’s deluge. But it’s also important to understand that the streets – a huge portion of the paved area – are used as detention, places to hold storm water temporarily when there is nowhere for it to drain. Houston’s strategy for many years has been to use streets as detention and runoff channels, the idea being that it is better to flood a street than a house. And the city’s performance under Harvey confirms the wisdom of that strategy.

Refused to implement zoning, which would have lessened the impact of Harvey by requiring developers to mitigate the impacts of new projects.

This is the most ridiculous of all the claims made by the narrative spinners. Mayor Turner put it best: “Zoning wouldn't have changed anything. We would have been a city with zoning that flooded.” Proof positive of this fact: one of the harder hit areas was Sugar Land, just south of Houston. Sugar Land has zoning. Alas, Harvey was unaware of that fact and dropped 30+ inches on them anyway (and they handled it well, just like the City of Houston, evidence that zoning was not correlated with impact).

Moreover, it is the global center of the energy business, which is the biggest driver of climate change – one impact of which is the increased frequency and severity of hurricanes like Harvey.

Yes, Houston is the center of the energy business. But Houston’s energy industry is as much about natural gas as crude oil, and the increasing use of gas in power generation has led to a much-improved carbon dioxide picture in the US. If you believe that CO2 is causing climate change, you should be thanking the energy entrepreneurs in Houston for bringing cheap, clean natural gas to the nation. Moreover, the hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions impact Atlantic hurricane activity is controversial; an official NOAA publication stated that “neither our model…nor our analyses…support the notion that greenhouse gas-induced warming leads to large increases in either tropical storm or overall hurricane numbers in the Atlantic.”

A final point about who pays for all this.

The narrative spinners have made a big deal about how federal funds will be needed to rebuild Houston, and therefore Houston must do what they say.

My take on this is: we are going to rebuild with or without you, so you are not the boss of us.

Most of the money from previous Texas hurricanes has come from private insurance. And, in some ways, this process of rebuilding restores a balance in the economy. For the past couple of decades, almost all homeowners have paid for insurance but few people make a claim. Most of that money sits on the balance sheet of big insurance companies to pay out future claims, and those companies often invest those dollars on Wall Street and real estate. That’s all fine – good, healthy commerce.

Now the time has come for the flow to go the other way. Big insurance companies will be paying out money to settle insurance claims, and most of that will go to working class Americans who will rebuild damaged property. Demand for labor will rise, as will wages, as the money starts to flow. The tilting of the economy away from physical labor toward the financial sector will reverse – maybe only temporarily, but it will still reverse.

Of course, if the federal government decides to give away money, I suppose people will sign up for it. But this madness eventually needs to end. The federal government is broke, and insisting that folks in Kansas or Vermont pay for a hurricane in Houston is silly on the face of it. This is not an invading army we’re talking about here. It’s a really bad storm. The Constitution doesn’t contain the words “storm,” “weather,” or “insurance.” Why are we continuing to twist its meaning to make Congress and the President look like heroes? If they want to help, let them help with their own time, talent, and treasure. Like the rest of us.

But we also don’t want to be suckers. If Washington DC decides not to help Houston, they should end it for everyone in the future. Which they should, in my opinion.

Bottom line: I believe we should celebrate the ability of the nation’s fourth largest city to absorb the wettest storm on record and bounce back with gusto. It is a testament to the culture of my hometown and the leadership that supports and nurtures that culture.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to work. That wet drywall won’t remove itself.

Leo Linbeck III is a husband, father of 5, CEO of Aquinas Companies, Executive Chairman of Linbeck Group, a Houston-based institutional construction firm, Founder and Chairman of Fannin Innovation Studio, a biomedical startup studio, and Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was also the Founding Chairman, and is currently the Vice Chairman, of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, a Houston-based think tank.

Top Photo: A Dickinson resident hugs a friend who came to help her remove possessions damaged by flooding brought on by Hurricane Harvey, Sept. 1, 2017 in Dickinson, Texas. Source - http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-harvey-victims/story?id=49451305

Second photo: Volunteers from Performance Contractors help co-worker Cornell Beasley recover from damage to his home after torrential rains caused widespread flooding during Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey, Sept. 1, 2017, in Houston, Texas. Source - http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-harvey-victims/story?id=49451305

Third photo: Volunteer rescuer workers help a woman from her home that was inundated with the flooding of Hurricane Harvey, Aug. 30, 2017 in Port Arthur, Texas. Harvey, which made landfall north of Corpus Christi late Friday evening, is expected to dump upwards to 40 inches of rain in Texas over the next couple of days. Source - http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-harvey-victims/story?id=49451305

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