The problem as I see it with Houston is that there are few inhibitors to the sprawl, and few options to navigate it. Land to the west of town(where a significant part of the growth is happening) is plentiful and relatively cheap. I sometimes joke that Houston and San Antonio will merge at some point.(they are technically ~180 miles apart)
There are now 3 rings around the city: 610, 8 and 99. The best way to get in and out of the city is by car, there just isnt a comprehensive public transport system to be found. There is talks of rail every few years, but they usually end up being shot down because
a) nobody wants to give up their land to build it(imminent domain fighting)
b) the city is so damn big it would be cost prohibitive to build a rail system.
The only way I manage to deal with it is to work 6am to 3pm so that my commute is in front of rush hour. I'm admittedly part of the problem, as I live 30 miles southwest of the city. If I were to commute at the 8-5pm time, I would be on the road for 110 minutes each commute. As long as I get on the road by 5:30am, I cut that to 45 minutes in the morning and 55 in the afternoon.
> the city is so damn big it would be cost prohibitive to build a rail system.
But yet there is endless money for roads and parking lots as if they are free or cheap. I'm so sick of people acting like there is no money for public transit.
In my hometown of San Diego they are spending close to a billion dollars adding a single lane to a freeway.
Also, public transit is not the same thing as rail. Public bus systems work amazingly well in other parts of the world. But in America they are stigmatized (as being for poor people) to the point that they aren't even mentioned as public transit options.
In 2020, 691 K jobs are inside I-610, while 911 K jobs are in the ring between I-610 and TX-8. The other 1850 K jobs are in various sectors around the perimeter.
So not only do most Houston metro residents not commute to the city center, they do not commute to inside of 8, a ring of about 25 miles in diameter.
> The problem as I see it with Houston is that there are few inhibitors to the sprawl
While Lake Ontario prohibits development to the south of Toronto, Canada, there is not much limiting development in any other direction, and the suburbs have done so.
However, to protect the water supply and farmland, the Ontario legislature created a 'green zone' around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that limited municipalities and regions/counties from approving development in certain areas:
According to the Citizen's Budget Commission >The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization whose mission is to achieve constructive change in the finances and services of New York City and New York State government. Our mission is rooted in serving the citizenry at large, rather than narrow special interests; preserving public resources, whether financial or human; and focusing on the well-being of future New Yorkers, the most underrepresented group in city and state government.
See Figure 1 of their Report at https://cbcny.org/research/rent-and-ride for a comparison of housing plus transportation costs for a median income household for 20 cities. Miami is the lowest; San Jose is the highest. Figure 3 shows housing and transportation as a percentage of median income. Washington, DC is the lowest; Phoenix is the highest.
The study appears to be based on the city, not the metro area. Cities vary considerably in how much of the metro is covered by the city, what percent of city workers live outside, what percent reverse commute, etc.
Turns out building in a flood plain leads to flooding too. Maybe no zoning laws has drawbacks.
I stayed with a friend in Houston for a week. As a New Yorker, I took the bus a few places. I also found a farmers market within walking distance to his home and organized a few people to shop there. They were pleasantly surprised at this wonderful, affordable source of delicious, healthy produce.
But these social activities were swimming hard upstream. Telling people I took the bus to meet them prompted reactions like I came from another planet. Not many people looked like they ate a lot of vegetables. They liked it far more when I told them I went to a firing range and shot a gun for the first time.
This sounds exacty like the kind of bigoted drivel you'd get from someone who thinks they know what Houston is like, but has never actually been there. First, Houston has pretty strict zoning laws, second, the metro system is pretty widely used where it is built out, and thirdly, Houston with some exceptions, is one of the blue-est (and some areas are the red-est, to be fair) cities in the state, with a pretty wide spectrum of political opionons represented in between. Where exactly in Houston were you? Edit: 'zoning laws' is the wrong term. Houston, does not, in fact have zoning laws as we we think of them traditionally, but are instead governed by 'https://houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/'
One thing unaccounted for in the comparison is the type of housing that each respective city affords. Housing costs may be similar (Houston is still less compared to NYC in the article), but Houstonians are certainly getting much more space, both inside and out of their home, than NYC residents. This matters when it comes to things like larger families. Spending time on the road is definitely a huge pain in Houston, but in the end where you live doesn't just come down to a numerical comparison.
> getting much more space, both inside and out of their home
I recently visited Dallas (which I assume is similar to Houston) and I asked my airport Uber driver what there is to do in Dallas and he couldn't name a single thing. I ended up spending my small time there at a Texas Roadhouse (on recommendation) which is some horrible corporate restaurant chain getting served luke-warm mushy green beans that were mostly inedible.
Say what you will about space, I don't know how anyone could live in a place as culturally dead as Dallas.
It would really be interesting to see the amount spent on fuel -- as a proxy for driving -- in the summer vs the fall/spring.
While everyone on here advocating for fewer cars and more alternatives (walking, biking, public transportation) is correct for all the usual reasons (environment), there are several issues that make it harder in Houston:
1. The heat in the summer
2. There isn't mixed use housing. Walking by restaurants and cafes and people in NYC is a pleasant experience. Walking over sidewalks in the heat without a person in site is not as pleasant.
I think if they start more mix use housing (several brave souls try every year), and as they become successful, we will see more walking in the good seasons.
I know, it feels like we don't have that kind of time, but hopefully we can plant more trees in the meantime to slow it all down.
Native Houstonian turned New Yorker (25 years!) here. I often say to my Houston family and friends that while it may be hotter in Houston, we New Yorkers deal with the summer heat way more than they do. They go from their air conditioned houses to their air conditioned cars to their air conditioned destinations. We New Yorkers are out in it all day...we walk a hell of a lot more, and stand around in the ovens otherwise known as subway stations. And there are just way more spaces that simply lack A/C in NYC.
Yes we do have smaller living spaces, but I will say that my household electricity usage is about 50% less than most of my Houston cohorts, especially in the summertime.
I've not spent much time studying this but is it not the case that there's basically some sort of 'ideal suburban-ness' beyond which things start to get horribly congested?
If you want the sort of front and back garden, big detached house lifestyle, then it feels like you want to get in early whilst a city is still small. Once it's beyond a certain size, even if you can afford it, traffic is just awful at any time of day so you're not getting anywhere.
Public transport isn't the answer either - taxi services can work, but if you bought in to a place for the sprawl, you just can't get buses and trains to every corner of it. (It's theoretically possible, but people who move to these places don't want it by definition - the whole point of having that big old house is to fill it with big toys, the workshop in the garage, the big chest freezer, etc etc).
There's a natural push-pull here, though. Big cities have the best, most high-paying jobs. People move to Houston for the earning opportunity and then put up with the traffic because they have to (not realizing how much it's costing them). Small cities with less sprawl and less traffic don't have those same job opportunities. The network effect is very real for companies.
> However, median transportation costs were $1,152, a figure 38 percent higher than for New Yorkers. In total, the study found, living in Houston was only $79 cheaper each month than New York.
What isn’t clear to me from this if if the median transportation costs are higher in Houston because they have to be, or because people have more free income and are simply choosing to spend it on more expensive vehicles. I’d guess you’d find plenty of SUVs and trucks in and around Houston, which are expensive luxury vehicles that are not needed to commute. So you’re paying a higher lease price and higher gas prices for your gas guzzling status symbol, but that’s your own choice - you could drive a used beater sedan and have lower costs.
Not an expert on Houston, but did spend the past weekend there.
There's definitely a big car factor there. I had reserved a mid sized rental car to get to and from the airport and around the car centric area I was staying. When I got to the rental car center they apologized and said they were out of mid sized cars and said I could take a truck, a large suv, a jeep wrangler or what she referred to as a 2 door. It turns out a 2 door was a dodge challenger (large, overpowered and fuel inefficient car). The representative said they got rid of all the smaller cars because no one would be willing to rent them.
The concentration of pickup trucks being driven as day to day commuting vehicles seemed quite high as well.
It’s probably a bit of both. Houston uses HOV toll lanes, so there are additional costs to commuting there. The distance that people commute in the Houston area can be insane, though, which is where I imagine the cost comparison comes in. 30-50 mile commutes aren’t uncommon in the Houston metro area.
I just moved to NYC from Durham, NC, and I braced for the change in COL.
But I don't think it's as bad as people say, and I think a big part is transportation.
The 1 month Metrocard costs about what I was spending on gas in a month of commuting with a 124 Spider (not the most fuel efficient car, but very far from a gas guzzler)
Once maintenance and insurance are included, the Metrocard is cheaper (as I take trips outside of work).
-
I can also walk to most errands I previously had to drive 15-20 minutes for (40+ minutes total after parking and traffic).
Besides saving money, the time saved is pretty valuable
Perth Western Australia needs to look very hard at this.
Its rapidly becoming affordable to live and work in the States capital, and the rest of the state gets their costs driven up and resources strangled off to try and pay the escalating cost of sprawl.
News flash: general living activities, working and housing being far apart from each other is expensive. See Mr Money Mustache for supporting evidence.
Former Houston native here so I will weigh in. Houston being less affordable that NYC is debatable. I have lived in 3 other states and 5 other major cities and everywhere I have been has been a give and take situation.
For example, property taxes in Texas are legalized robbery. But in Ohio, property taxes are pretty low. But I get to pay state, and local city income taxes so my savings in that category is made up for in another. Same goes for food, rent, transportation, etc.
Sprawl has to do with annexation. Texas allows larger cities to annex smaller ones and that is how Houston is getting bigger via sprawl. Last thing Houston, Dallas, or Austin wants is to be locked in geographically. Houston would rather go to court to fight Dallas to annex a city than build skyscrapers used for housing.
Sounds like a success. The city grew huge until an equilibrium was reached that slowed growth. With restrictive zoning, you would just have a smaller, poorer city which fewer people would have wanted to move to.
Every growing city reaches peak suburb eventually and going back to normal (transit, bike, and walk oriented) land use patterns just harder and harder the more car-oriented your city gets
While transportation in Houston's sprawl is a factor (and yes, duh, requires a car for almost everybody commuting), the quality of life in Houston, even considering the heat, humidity, and potential for flooding if you buy too close to a flood-prone bayou, is literally orders of magnitude higher than NYC. Seriously, NYC (or any other congested city like it) is just below Hell on the list of places I NEVER want to be, much less live...) . I lived in Houston for 10 years, and although I like Austin better overall, there are things I really miss about Houston. I would not live in NYC for any level of income. Seriously - offer me $3M/yr and I'll say you're not even close...
Enjoy it while the cost of fuel doesn’t include the environmental costs. Future generations will end up paying for the comforts of these years. That is not to say NYC is ideal, but moving mass over great distances is not free.
Obviously, simply living isn’t free either, and who’s to say what this generation is entitled to consume versus the future ones.
As a Houston native I strongly disagree. You spend a huge % of life in a car there, and not in a fun way driving down twisty roads either. That is much more unpleasant than being cramped in NYC for many, where at least you can walk everywhere.
Why? Walking is good exercise and the public transit will take you almost anywhere, plus the gender ratios are nice. It’s only bad if you use a car.
Personally I absolutely hate cars, they’re expensive, unreliable, complex, and ridiculously dangerous. Cars are the largest killers of young healthy people in the US behind drugs.
[+] [-] S_A_P|6 years ago|reply
There are now 3 rings around the city: 610, 8 and 99. The best way to get in and out of the city is by car, there just isnt a comprehensive public transport system to be found. There is talks of rail every few years, but they usually end up being shot down because
a) nobody wants to give up their land to build it(imminent domain fighting)
b) the city is so damn big it would be cost prohibitive to build a rail system.
The only way I manage to deal with it is to work 6am to 3pm so that my commute is in front of rush hour. I'm admittedly part of the problem, as I live 30 miles southwest of the city. If I were to commute at the 8-5pm time, I would be on the road for 110 minutes each commute. As long as I get on the road by 5:30am, I cut that to 45 minutes in the morning and 55 in the afternoon.
[+] [-] rjkennedy98|6 years ago|reply
But yet there is endless money for roads and parking lots as if they are free or cheap. I'm so sick of people acting like there is no money for public transit.
In my hometown of San Diego they are spending close to a billion dollars adding a single lane to a freeway.
Also, public transit is not the same thing as rail. Public bus systems work amazingly well in other parts of the world. But in America they are stigmatized (as being for poor people) to the point that they aren't even mentioned as public transit options.
[+] [-] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
In 2020, 691 K jobs are inside I-610, while 911 K jobs are in the ring between I-610 and TX-8. The other 1850 K jobs are in various sectors around the perimeter.
So not only do most Houston metro residents not commute to the city center, they do not commute to inside of 8, a ring of about 25 miles in diameter.
[+] [-] throw0101a|6 years ago|reply
While Lake Ontario prohibits development to the south of Toronto, Canada, there is not much limiting development in any other direction, and the suburbs have done so.
However, to protect the water supply and farmland, the Ontario legislature created a 'green zone' around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that limited municipalities and regions/counties from approving development in certain areas:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbelt_(Golden_Horseshoe)
[+] [-] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
https://cbcny.org/about-us
See Figure 1 of their Report at https://cbcny.org/research/rent-and-ride for a comparison of housing plus transportation costs for a median income household for 20 cities. Miami is the lowest; San Jose is the highest. Figure 3 shows housing and transportation as a percentage of median income. Washington, DC is the lowest; Phoenix is the highest.
The study appears to be based on the city, not the metro area. Cities vary considerably in how much of the metro is covered by the city, what percent of city workers live outside, what percent reverse commute, etc.
[+] [-] spodek|6 years ago|reply
I stayed with a friend in Houston for a week. As a New Yorker, I took the bus a few places. I also found a farmers market within walking distance to his home and organized a few people to shop there. They were pleasantly surprised at this wonderful, affordable source of delicious, healthy produce.
But these social activities were swimming hard upstream. Telling people I took the bus to meet them prompted reactions like I came from another planet. Not many people looked like they ate a lot of vegetables. They liked it far more when I told them I went to a firing range and shot a gun for the first time.
[+] [-] sillyquiet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slavapestov|6 years ago|reply
Do you really believe NYC hipsters have a monopoly on eating vegetables?
[+] [-] ljoshua|6 years ago|reply
You pick your priorities.
[+] [-] rjkennedy98|6 years ago|reply
I recently visited Dallas (which I assume is similar to Houston) and I asked my airport Uber driver what there is to do in Dallas and he couldn't name a single thing. I ended up spending my small time there at a Texas Roadhouse (on recommendation) which is some horrible corporate restaurant chain getting served luke-warm mushy green beans that were mostly inedible.
Say what you will about space, I don't know how anyone could live in a place as culturally dead as Dallas.
[+] [-] omarhaneef|6 years ago|reply
While everyone on here advocating for fewer cars and more alternatives (walking, biking, public transportation) is correct for all the usual reasons (environment), there are several issues that make it harder in Houston:
1. The heat in the summer
2. There isn't mixed use housing. Walking by restaurants and cafes and people in NYC is a pleasant experience. Walking over sidewalks in the heat without a person in site is not as pleasant.
I think if they start more mix use housing (several brave souls try every year), and as they become successful, we will see more walking in the good seasons.
I know, it feels like we don't have that kind of time, but hopefully we can plant more trees in the meantime to slow it all down.
[+] [-] xseparator|6 years ago|reply
Yes we do have smaller living spaces, but I will say that my household electricity usage is about 50% less than most of my Houston cohorts, especially in the summertime.
[+] [-] esotericn|6 years ago|reply
If you want the sort of front and back garden, big detached house lifestyle, then it feels like you want to get in early whilst a city is still small. Once it's beyond a certain size, even if you can afford it, traffic is just awful at any time of day so you're not getting anywhere.
Public transport isn't the answer either - taxi services can work, but if you bought in to a place for the sprawl, you just can't get buses and trains to every corner of it. (It's theoretically possible, but people who move to these places don't want it by definition - the whole point of having that big old house is to fill it with big toys, the workshop in the garage, the big chest freezer, etc etc).
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javagram|6 years ago|reply
What isn’t clear to me from this if if the median transportation costs are higher in Houston because they have to be, or because people have more free income and are simply choosing to spend it on more expensive vehicles. I’d guess you’d find plenty of SUVs and trucks in and around Houston, which are expensive luxury vehicles that are not needed to commute. So you’re paying a higher lease price and higher gas prices for your gas guzzling status symbol, but that’s your own choice - you could drive a used beater sedan and have lower costs.
[+] [-] jeffasinger|6 years ago|reply
There's definitely a big car factor there. I had reserved a mid sized rental car to get to and from the airport and around the car centric area I was staying. When I got to the rental car center they apologized and said they were out of mid sized cars and said I could take a truck, a large suv, a jeep wrangler or what she referred to as a 2 door. It turns out a 2 door was a dodge challenger (large, overpowered and fuel inefficient car). The representative said they got rid of all the smaller cars because no one would be willing to rent them.
The concentration of pickup trucks being driven as day to day commuting vehicles seemed quite high as well.
[+] [-] save_ferris|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selpop|6 years ago|reply
But I don't think it's as bad as people say, and I think a big part is transportation.
The 1 month Metrocard costs about what I was spending on gas in a month of commuting with a 124 Spider (not the most fuel efficient car, but very far from a gas guzzler)
Once maintenance and insurance are included, the Metrocard is cheaper (as I take trips outside of work).
-
I can also walk to most errands I previously had to drive 15-20 minutes for (40+ minutes total after parking and traffic).
Besides saving money, the time saved is pretty valuable
[+] [-] senectus1|6 years ago|reply
Its rapidly becoming affordable to live and work in the States capital, and the rest of the state gets their costs driven up and resources strangled off to try and pay the escalating cost of sprawl.
[+] [-] mjparrott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HoustonRefugee|6 years ago|reply
For example, property taxes in Texas are legalized robbery. But in Ohio, property taxes are pretty low. But I get to pay state, and local city income taxes so my savings in that category is made up for in another. Same goes for food, rent, transportation, etc.
Sprawl has to do with annexation. Texas allows larger cities to annex smaller ones and that is how Houston is getting bigger via sprawl. Last thing Houston, Dallas, or Austin wants is to be locked in geographically. Houston would rather go to court to fight Dallas to annex a city than build skyscrapers used for housing.
It's money and power. Cost of living...eh...
[+] [-] collective-intl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helen___keller|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cartercole|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dublin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|6 years ago|reply
Obviously, simply living isn’t free either, and who’s to say what this generation is entitled to consume versus the future ones.
[+] [-] gameswithgo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swiley|6 years ago|reply
Personally I absolutely hate cars, they’re expensive, unreliable, complex, and ridiculously dangerous. Cars are the largest killers of young healthy people in the US behind drugs.
[+] [-] reallydontask|6 years ago|reply