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The Burroughs of Houston
R. Alex Whitlock
Chris Elam points out an interesting article on the
growth of Fort Bend County, just southwest of Houston.
Location, location, location was still a big factor for Fort Bend County in 2004. Some 6,869 new homes were sold during the year, which translates to an estimated 21,568 people. The county accounts for 9 percent of the regional population, but captures 16.4 percent of the new home market share in the region.
The average home price in 2004 for resales was $192,108, while new homes averaged $230,840.
Multi-family housing posted a 638-unit gain during the year.
While the homes are pricey, the report shows 63 percent of the households in Fort Bend can afford the median-priced homes within the county, compared with 48 percent in the United States and 50 percent in Texas metropolitan areas.
The report estimates the workforce in the county at 210,000 people, but local unemployment fell to 5.2 percent, lower than the region, state and nation.
"The important number for the EDC is the number of jobs available in Fort Bend County for our residents," Appel said. "in 1990, only 41 percent could live and work in Fort Bend. Today, there are enough jobs in Fort Bend to support 61 percent of our workforce. Fort Bend County ranks at the 99.7 percentile in employment growth in the United States."
Commercial and industrial real estate space continues to be promising. There is an estimated 18.5 million square feet of industrial space with a 5.5 percent vacancy rate.
I've never cared much for most of Fort Bend county, particularly it's flagship town of Sugarland. This article miraculously makes me like it even less.
But it's instructive about one of the things that I really love about Houston. Houston is set up as the epitome of what is wrong with modern cities. Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor of Massachusetts had repeatedly held Houston up as an example of what Boston can't be allowed to become. Nearly every conversation about freeways turns on those evil commuters that hog the freeway and harm the environment.
But a closer look at what's happening in Houston and its surrounding areas demonstrates that this view is quite misguided. Anyone who has driven into town during business hours (why bother with the misnomer "rush hour" anymore?) can attest to the fact that there are indeed a lot of commuters. But for the most part the outlaying towns (even those technically part of the Houston municipality) are actually self-sufficient for the most part. Nobody I knew in Clear Lake had parents that commuted. They all worked for NASA or IBM or some other organization with a local office. The most interesting part of the above article was regarding the jobs that are being created out there.
People aren't moving there to escape the minorities or abuse the environment, but rather to live, work, and play. Suburbs and exurbs have the added benefit, of course, of being accessible to a large city. Let's not kid ourselves, without Houston, Sugarland would not be growing at nearly the rate it is. It's bolstered not just by the convenience of a sports team, opera, and whatnot, but very oftenly one partner of a couple works in the suburb and the other works in the city. That part can't be denied, but instead of demonizing the suburbs, I wonder if instead we shouldn't applaud more development out there to create the jobs that will prevent people from needing to drive in day in and day out.
Houston could easily stretch as far as Sealy to the west, Huntsville to the north, Galveston to the southeast, and Victoria to the southwest, but doing it one town at a time. Some people view this with abject horror, particularly those that don't want the roads or anything built in their back yard. But I think there is something to be said for that. Because while residents of Kingwood and Sugarland may rarely traverse on each other's grounds, there is a wonderful unity that Houston has thus far maintained and I believe can continue to maintain.
Observations
I just tired of watching them build larger roads, and having people abuse them (with bad, rude, inconsiderate driving). That whole "keep right" concept is dead in Texas (especially south of Dallas).
Houston drivers are definitely a handful sometimes. Though honestly, by avoiding rush hour driving habits I was able to avoid most of the problems that inevitably come with overcrowded freeways.
Though, contrary to what a lot of anti-pavement folks have to say, I don't think freeway expansion must remain cyclical if done more wisely. I want to post on this at some point, but I think Houston needs to stop thinking centrically (everything goes through the loop) and reconsider its recent tendency to make every new freeway a tollway in leiu of raising gas taxes.
Some of the roads are so bad now that "rush hour" does not apply. My commute in on 59 takes 45 min regardless of time of day (no traffic is about 20). Heaven forbid there's an actual accident on the road.
Like I said in the post, the freeways are bad during business hours. But outside of business hours (or, as I did, going in the opposite direction of traffic) makes a huge difference. I10 is awful, awful*, and US59S was on the road to to that when I left. I45 depended on when you were leaving and where you were going. More often than not, it wasn't that bad outside of the Beltway (the places I went usually had me turning off at the beltway).
On 45, 59N, and 290 I never had the problems that others did. Largely by not heading into down at any time in the morning and out of town any time in the afternoon.
*the only good experience I had on I-10 was, ironically, commuting from Memorial to Baytown, leaving Memorial at 7am and Baytown at 5pm.
You make a good point that a good portion of the people living in the suburbs are actually working there too. Heck, my parents (and your dad) did. But it does not follow that the argument against freeways is baseless. Even if only half of suburban parents actually commute downtown, that leaves...what? A million people traveling there every day? In half a million cars? Public transport could easily move that many people, and probably with less than a quarter the pollution.
I also happen personally to abhor the look that modern suburbs have taken on, but that's another point for another time.
Linus,
I wasn't trying to imply that the argument against commuters is baseless. I was trying to detangle the frequent equation that suburbanite=commuter and by extention, suburbs are bad. I suspect that the number is significantly less than half once you get outside the beltway (at least in the southeast, but most parents I know that lived outside the beltway in Kingwood and Katy also worked out there). That doesn't change the fact that there are, of course, a significant number of commuters even if they are a distinct minority.
The point I was trying to make was that the "urban sprawl" taking place in Houston is significantly different than what people think it is and that the nature of it can actually be beneficial to everyone involved if more of the jobs moved to the suburbs rather than trying to get the people to move to the city (or just go away entirely).
On the remaining two subjects, I am generally in favor of freeway expansion in some areas for a couple reasons. First, even if you take commuters out of the equation, there are all kinds of people trying to get in the city in the morning and out of the city in the afternoon/evening. Also, the downside of Houston decentrilized nature (that it doesn't have a place where all the jobs are) limits the potential of public transportation compared to a more traditional centrilized/planned city. But while I am pro-freeway expansion, I'm also pro-public transportation. I think the light rail is dumb, but primarily because I think it's a bad investment serving the wrong demographics and diverting METRO funds from more worthy projects.
As for the "look" of the modern suburbs, I really don't disagree. I've always prefered "old" suburbs like Seabrook and League City to "new" suburbs like Clear Lake and Friendswood. But to each their own.
So you would promote effective public transport AND freeway expansion? In a place like Houston, I think that's a formula that would keep public transport from ever really catching on. That is, unless gas prices rise to reflect environmental, health, and national security costs. (Not meant to be an incendiary statement, just what I believe)
For a place like Boston, I can totally understand why some inhabitants want to make a stand against freeways. If they can prevent freeways from getting as large as those in Houston, they might stand a chance of preventing that kind of sprawl and preserving their historic downtown areas. It all depends on priorities, really. History and downtown "personality" are more important in Boston than in Houston. If I had a choice between the two, I'd choose Boston all the way.
I'm against strangling the roads in order to create demand for public transportation. At least I am against it in a decentrilized city like Houston where sometimes you just need a car and the costs that would be required in order create public transportation that could take care of all current automotive needs is prohibitively expensive.
While there's something to be said for having a vital downtown, there's also something to be said for Houston having a downtown, then having a galleria area, then having a med center area, then having a Clear Lake and also a Montrose/Richmond and also a Memorial and also a River Oaks and also a Pasadena and on and on. The great thing about Houston in my mind is that in leiu of a super-lively downtown, you're always near something no matter where you are. I lived in the Clear Lake area, the Jersey Village area, the Galleria area, and the Memorial area. Each of these places had a vitality of its own and, for the most part, little need to socially go inside the loop. There doesn't have to be one place that everyone is headed. There's something for everybody everywhere.
That's where Houston's strenght lies and if I were in charge of Harris County, that's likely what I would focus on. Solutions to a good deal of the gridlock, I believe, are in the suburbs themselves and connecting them to one another rather than running everything through the loop.
As for public transportation, it depends on what the goal is. Yours, as near as I can tell, is to get people out of their cars, making it all a zero sum game. My main concern is to just get people moving. Get public transportation first and foremost for those that can't afford cars, for those too drunk to drive, and lastly (but not leastly) for those traveling frequent routes to and from work (Clear Lake to downtown, for instance, or Katy to the Galleria) who would rather work on the crossword than sit in traffic for an hour. There may perhaps be a moral imperative towards convincing more people to be passengers than drivers, and perhaps a moral imperative towards forcing it by choking the existing infrastructure by refusing to expand it.
Maybe so, but I'm not on board with that, yet.
I find that the desirability of a place (for me) is inversely related to its reliance on cars. This is partly due to my environmental convictions, but also because I think social contact increases in places where people walk, bike, or take public transport, and I value that highly.
Obviously Houston would be a very difficult place to "retro-fit" with this kind of infrastructure. If I lived there, I would lobby for it. But I don't, and if those who do want to expand the highways, that's their choice. I think there are environmental consequences to that decision and hope that someday gas prices will reflect those consequences, but until then the easy decision for Houston is to put all their stock in automobiles.
Houston is definitely more decentralized than most cities, but I think you underestimate how well other cities provide "something for everybody everywhere." Very few cities that I've seen have any "need to socially go inside the loop" except for orchestra/opera/theater performances, museums, and top-rated dining experiences. What vibrant downtowns can provide is a cultural/historical center for the city that residents take pride in and other people identify the city by.
Personally, if I were to live in a big city, I think I would want that. And Houston doesn't have it. I'm not railing against Houston here, it's just not for me. To each their own.
Man, I'm argumentative this morning. :-)
Argumentativeness can be fun! Though unfortunately, I think this will be my last response as I need to use the rest of my downtime preparing for my flight to northern Idaho.
I may well be underestimating what other cities have. I was thinking of the pros and cons of Houston versus Austin. Austin is known - and rightfully so - for 6th street. Indeed Houston has absolutely nothing like it. For a while, that was a big attractor towards moving to Austin. But the more I looked at Houston, the more hidden treasures I discovered. The more each place has its own... well... everything from corporations making their housing there to substantial malls. I may be underestimating the burroughization of other cities, but I'd be awfully surprised if they're as varied as Houston has had to be because it's so spread out (larger than every city besides Los Angeles).
Houston may not have as lively a downtown, but we also have less need to go downtown because the major employers are scattered about town. That leaves more potential for shorter commute times (in fact, Houston's commute times are on the lower end of major metropolii) because a 15 minute drive from League City to IBM's Clear Lake office is considerably better (for most) than a forty-minute bus ride to downtown.
That, I think, is the source of Houston's growth potential.
Couple of interesting comments.
Working for an Engineering company that's current so overloaded with work they are scurrying to find people before they get washed away, you might be interested to know there are several projects aimed at "revitilizing" downtown as a point of interest.
There's a huge project to build a sort of outdoor mall.... lots of retail shops, with office buildings and condos and hotels. I've seen several of the plans for it, but have yet to see the final idea. Not sure when that will begin, but it's definitely a huge task.
There are several more projects like that in and around downtown.
There are also other projects such as a huge theme park that will be built out in Katy.
I am suddenly reminded of when people were protesting the light rail (which I'm not saying I'm for) but it was interesting that one opponent had this to say. "Houston needed to improve it's public transportation 10 years ago." Wait, that was from someone protesting? How can you say it was needed 10 years ago and be against it now?
People are very weird.
Kavey,
Yeah, they've been working on "revitalizing" downtown for a while now - and with some success. Mayor White's plans for the park may be useful to that end. I can't say that I think that's a particularly good use for the city's resources, but a lot of people in Houston seem to be struck with World Class Fever so I'm somewhat in the minority on the subject.
My opposition to the rail had a lot more to do with who it was serving and what it was trying to accomplish (all roads lead downtown) rather than timing. I'm not against rail in theory, but diverting tens of thousands of dollars to let people get from one posh part of town to another while cutting bus routes and trolly services while failing to address the commuter issue strikes me as getting everything backwards and indicative of priorities being more along the lines of being "World Class" than addressing our transportation issues.
It's a neat toy, though.
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