Reasons not to become a public figure…
Wed 30 Apr - Jim Anderton, 11.00am PHOTO OP: defrosting of Colossal Squid. Te Papa storage facility, Tory St, Wellington.
You can currently watch the squid defrosting live here. (Once Days of our Lives has finished obviously.)
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April 28th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Speaking of giant squid I have been browsing Farrar’s Blog and I found this:
“# Owen McShane (194) Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 10:54 am
There is another “suburban� analogy.
Follow the history of San Francisco and Houston.
SF is one of the most beautiful cities and used to attract migrants from around the world and from the US States.
Houston was a hell hole.
Then California adopted climate alarmism and Smart Growth in a big way. The Bay Area in particular adopted policies which drove house prices through the roof, and government did everthing they could to prise people out of their cars and to use public transport.
Houston has no zoning and definitely no Smart Growth and you can buy a house for 2.7 times your household income. Population 5 million and growing fast.
The planners used to say that Houston was the worst planned city in the US.
End result. San Francisco is loosing US citizens to Houston. Houston is one of the most rapidly growing cities in the US. And has just been declared the most successful urban economy in the US.
SF continues to attract overseas immigrants but even they move on very quickly when they add up their rents and taxes.
So you can prise people out of their cars and single family houses but they simply go where they can enjoy both somewhere else.
Silicon valley is now losing business start ups to Houston as well.
It’s called killing the goose.
Planning destroys urban economies. So yes, Houston is the worst planned and that is why it is doing so well and why people are flocking to live there.
”
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/04/the_extent_of_the_migration_from_new _zealand.html#comments
Speaking as a Euro ex-pat, the US is generally cheaper than Europe, but often it is a cultural desert.
CONS:
1. Ugly city-scape, huge freeways
2. Anonymous malls, huge parking lots
3. Not walkable at all, a vehicle is required
4. Crap tv, radio and newspapers
5. Lack of a public sphere for political discussion
6. Bad fashions and fashion sense (especially noticeable when coming from Milan, maybe)
7. No local shops (i.e. no delis, bakers, green grocers, butchers local markets)
8. Lack of bookshops/cafes/pavement life
9. Bad coffee
10. Lack of theatre/film/art/fashion/dance etc.
PROS
1. Very friendly people
2. Better drivers
3. Money goes further, e.g in terms of rent, bigger houses/apartments/gardens
4. Generally cheap cost of living, e.g. grocery bills
5. Tex-Mex
6. Barbeque
7. Cheap travel to Mexico, Central and South America; cheap flights to Asia (Japan, China, etc.)
posted by carter at 10:47 AM on March 3
http://ask.metafilter.com/33687/Life-in-Houston
Peak oil??
April 28th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
“Houston needs a regional growth plan to compete globally with cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Dubai. That was the warning — and challenge — issued by land-use experts Thursday at a panel convened by the Center for Houston’s Future. (Return to story) ”
“visited washington dc on a government field trip a couple weeks back. the subway system was efficient as hell, $1.65 will take you to the other side of the city. if only we could have one here. the only problem is the size of houston. the square area is much too large to maintain a working subway system. even the metro busses operate only in harris county, which is a small portion of houston. another obstacle is the walkability of houston. only in downtown can you really walk anywhere. we cannot use mass transportation unless walkability of our city improves.”
“Houston is a big, sprawling, chaotic, polluted mess. We lost a new Toyota plant to San Antonio because of our poor air quality.”
“Without it, in 30 years, this place will be a dusty armpit of other cities’ leftovers.” Too late. It’s been a dusty armpit for 30 years already. I am a native Houstonian, so I’ve seen it for all this time. People here just drive, drive, drive. You couldn’t ride your bike if you wanted to because there are no sidewalks or bike lanes. Instead of rail, how about a larger bus service? How about a bus service with smaller vehicles? The traffic and the pollution will limit the growth of this city. And don’t bother telling me to leave, that’s in the plan.”
“Before we can move on we have to dis-courage land developers from being so greedy. Our main problem is we have too much land, which encourages sprawl, which causes longer and longer commutes, which stresses out drivers, causes more wreak and increases anxiety. When we travel by car in Houston, there is never a guarantee we will get to our designation in time. Never.
Non-wizards like former Mayor Bob Lanier, Michael Stevens, the prior owners of Cinco Ranch, etc. (aided and abetted by Tom Delay and John Culberson) have carved up the plains and stuck us with mind numbing commutes. Sure cheap lots are good, but freeways are not efficient and reliable enough for the long commutes created. Rail is much more dependable.
”
http://www.chron.com/disp/commnts.mpl/metropolitan/5524074.html?plckCu rrentPage=3
April 29th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Excellent reply there JH, I recall reading very recently that Houston had taken over from Los Angeles as the US city with the poorest air quality in 1999.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/everydaylife/archives/HP_ILP_Feature_ 03.html
I wonder if Owen McShane would rather live there than in San Francisco?
Better yet, although he most likely doesn’t read this blog, I’d challenge him to actually go and in live each of those cities for, say, six months each. I’d be interested to hear his conclusions.