Houston Strategies

Summer 3Q06 Highlights

Time again for the quarterly highlights post. These posts have been chosen with a particular focus on significant ideas I'd like to see kept alive for discussion and action, and they're mainly targeted at new readers who want to get caught up with a quick overview of the Houston Strategies landscape.

September 2006

• Demolition for another Houston treasure? (Save the Downtown Elevated!)
  
• Kotkin on cities as engines of upward social mobility
• Leveraging small dollars for big improvements in public education
• Preservation vs. dynamic renewal
• New petition to save the Alabama Theater Bookstop
• Reason on Why Mobility Matters

August 2006

• Challenges to Urbanism in Houston, parts 1, 2, and 3 (urban corridor planning)
• Lemons to Lemonade: Salvaging the Metro Universities line

July 2006

• Houston's identity: Global Village, American Dream, Texas Spirit (lead-up posts: strategy and previous branding attempts, why brand a city?)

From Spring 2Q06:

June

• Transportation Lessons from Houston: Part 1, Part 2
  

May

• A Tropical Texas image strategy
• Density, Vibrancy, and Opportunity Zones
• Opportunity Cities vs. Pleasantvilles
• Applying Jane Jacobs' 4 tenets of vibrant neighborhoods to car-based cities (mobility/draw-zones for vibrancy)
• Opportunity dollars for upward social mobility (bottom half of the post)
  

April

• Live from the Astrodome
• Metro settles Universities/Westpark/Richmond rail alignment (April Fool's)
  

And from Winter 1Q06:

March

• Houston makes the cover story of Governing magazine, exposing questionable TIRZ practices
  
• Is money in politics always bad?
  
• The Woodlands' inevitable annexation
  
• Public-private partnerships for parks
  
• Growing cities, sun, sprawl, cars, commutes, skills, youth, the zoning tax and housing costs
  
• Another option for Houston's branding identity (Engineering City)
  

February

• Houston's potential for mixed-use pedestrian districts
  
• Mayor White on what makes Houston special
  
• Winning acceptance for Richmond rail
  
• Managed competition for Houston city services?
  
• New Urbanism and the value of mobility
  
• Partial-day telecommuting to relieve rush hour congestion

January

• The return on mobility investments
  
• Houston lessons from the updated "Dallas at the Tipping Point"
  
• High-density smart growth = population implosion?
  
• GHP strategic plan and marketing Houston (Open City)
• City identity and attracting educated youth
  
• Are income disparities in Texas a bad thing?

2005 Highlights can be found here.

posted by Tory Gattis @ 7:02 PM