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Friday, January 5, 2007
Politics When Houston Attacks!
Posted by on Fri, Jan 5 at 3:29 PM
I’m a few days late on this—neighborhood activist Jim “lets add more lanes to the freeway” Karlock just posted it to the Lents neighborhood email list, so hat tip to him—but on December 30, the Houston Chronicle published an opinion piece about the city’s efforts to do some urban planning. Houston’s famous for being Portland’s exact opposite when it comes to urban planning—we do lots of urban planning, they do virtually none.
The two guys who wrote the piece—”Leonard Gilroy is a Houston-based certified planner and senior policy analyst with the Reason Foundation. Tory Gattis is editor of the Houston Strategies Web log.” The Reason Foundation’s a libertarian think tank, and Gattis’ blog appears to be the Bojack.org of Texas—point out that Houston’s not Portland, with a heapin’ pile of disdain for the way we do things here in the Northwest.
A city without a plan; Before process heads in different directions, here’s a path to avoid
…Contrast Houston with its polar opposite — Portland, Ore., held by planners as the Mecca of highly prescriptive and restrictive urban planning.
While Portland has succeeded in creating a handful of attractive neighborhoods for young, childless professionals, some of the side effects have been disturbing. Given broad latitude in shaping the city through policy and regulation, its planners have worked for decades to force people to adapt to the plan.
For example, the Portland region has intentionally disinvested in highways to make driving more difficult (i.e., forced congestion) in order to encourage transit usage. Yet this plan has backfired. Portland’s heavily subsidized light-rail system only accounts for a paltry 1 percent of the city’s total travel, and the city has seen one of the country’s largest increases in traffic congestion, a slowly tightening noose around the regional economy.
Even worse, planners have used zoning to reduce the range of consumer housing options by effectively outlawing new suburban and exurban development, forcing families into higher density living environments (i.e., smaller, tightly packed homes on smaller lots). By simultaneously preventing development on surrounding farm and forest land, the city’s 30 years of “smart growth” policies have created an artificial land shortage, constricting the supply of new housing, inflating home prices and reducing economic opportunities for working families. By the turn of the century, Portland had become one of the least affordable housing markets in the nation, and its homeownership rate lagged behind the national average. According to Coldwell Banker, a 2,200 square foot, four-bedroom home that costs $155,000 today in the Houston area would cost $357,000 in Portland.
None of this is to say that Houston’s current planning efforts are inherently misguided or that planning will take us down the Portland path.
I’m surprised Portland’s planning community hasn’t publicly ripped this piece to shreds yet. (Or maybe they have, and I haven’t found the debate. If so, point me towards it, please!)
Comments
Amy,
Why has JK posted this to the Lents neighborhood email list? And what is this email list? Does JK live in Lents? or do you suspect that he's doing some covert style propaganda?
I don't think Jim lives in Lents, because I believe he's a board member of the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood association. At least, he attends and videotapes those NA meetings.
He frequently posts to Lents' list, though, as there's usually a lively discussion there about revitalization, gentrification, transportation, etc. All stuff Jim seems to have strong opinions about. He was really rankling other Lentians last week... over density and light rail v. highway lanes.
The list: ilovelents.com
What in that article is incorrect? The UGB and the rest of the land use scheme do drive up property values. It is more expensive to live in Portland than Houston. That's incontrovertible. Whether it's a good idea is another question entirely.
After taking a short tour of ilovelents.com and many encounter with JK on the net, I've come to the conclusion that JK is bonkers. His personal mission in life is to see Portland fail for it's pursuits, it's fucking wierd. Why does the guy live here? Why not move to Texas buddy?
brett asked what was incorrect. Not so much incorrect as spuriously asserted: Amy has helpfully highlighted most of them.
One passage she didn't highlight, that is also factual, is that Portland lags in homeownership. However, the implication is that's because of land-planning--rather than the large number of young creatives, who are neither old enough to have earned the money to buy anywhere (much less Portland), move too often to make buying sensible, and typically live alone or with non-related roommates. Does price further depress the instinct to buy? Surely--but that's by no means the only reason for a low ownership rate.
Let's put this 'Portland is expensive' thing in perspective.
Look at all the major cities on the coasts... Seattle, SFO, LAX, San Diego, NYC, Boston, Baltimore, D.C., Miami, etc. Please show me one with cheaper real estate. Oh sure, maybe Charlotte may check out, but the pickings are slim. REAL ESTATE IS MORE EXPENSIVE ON THE COASTS, WHERE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE. Portland is famously livable and is still famously a great real estate value nationally. We have established neighborhoods, trees, rivers, mountains, and recreation, just to start. In Texas and other midwestern locales, there are few geographic barriers to rapid, cookie-cutter growth. We NEED land-use laws here, not that it shouldn't be considered elsewhere.
The Bogs and Karlocks of the world can't be convinced of this, no matter how much reality you throw at them.
Also... I know many commenters on Bojack have asked Karlock whether he receives income for his life-engrossing activism/propaganda work, but haven't received an answer. Considering he never leaves a direct challenge unanswered on those boards, I think it's somewhat telling. Rarely do individuals go to bat for industry interests so zealously without having some monetary interest.
Just sayin...
Oh Jim Karlock, He is such a hoot!! He's always railing against the "social engineering" that Portland engages in. But yet, he himself has received income from political advocacy organizations with an ideological agenda. Therefore, he IS one of those social engineers that he hates so much.
He has exactly three tricks in his bag and they are all easily identifiable. Whenever somebody challenges him with undeniable proof of his statements (which usually isn't that hard) he will:
1) not respond to a person that doesn't type their full name (this is his preference)
2) he will simply ignore the question by not replying or......
3) he will reply by changing the topic entirely, thus not answering the question or challenge posed to him.
He gets me riled up sometimes, but I do have to say his ranting is REALLY entertaining. You should read his kooky statements, fuzzy math, and irrelevent facts over at commissionersam.com
PS Feel free to reply to this Jim, as you can see I put my real name!
PS TKRUEG, I can't confirm that Jim Karlock receives income for his advocacy, but as you astutely state he refuses to answer the question when asked.
Deductive reasoning leads me to believe....yup he's a paid social engineer
The more negative press about Portland the better in my book. Keep up the good work Houston Chronicle.
So I checked out Sam's blog and then blueoregon. This JK troll is everywhere! He must easily be the most posted man in PDX. Every single blog in Sam's is hijacked by JK, and he denies global warming. Yeah, I'd say he's on someones payroll to take Portland down. It's funny though, JK has a better chance of seeing god than changing Portland's politics to resemble Houston's.
Let's all thank God for the fact that Texas exists, otherwise all those people would be here fighting for more suburbs. If we didn't have land use planning, our suburbs would extend all the way to Salem by now-and that's no exaggeration. Texas is self-selecting--kind of like cruises.
One way to make housing more affordable in Portland is to turn it into a giant fucking shithole like Houston.
Though I think Skinny City Girl is right. We're taking the battle to Houston, so we don't have to fight it here. Sure, we have our occasional free radical Jim Karlock (shudder), but Houston is an asshole magnet. Only a few Jim Karlocks will escape Houston's asshole magnetism.
Jack Bog should be completely ignored on some subjects, and the subject of growth and change is #1 on that list. He lives in a fucking la-la land on the subject, and conflates his reactions to his own nostalgia and impotence with a workable approach to running a beautiful and growing city. If there's anything consistent about Jack Bog's thinking on the subject, it's that he doesn't want any growth or new development at all. Great. Unworkable. Thanks for playing.
Karlock, on the other hand, is an ideological warrior, and a pitiful one at that. Ultimately, he resents any restrictions whatsoever on property use, and any attempt to diminish the dominance of the automobile in the world of government transportation subsidies. He thinks he's defending freedom, but he lacks the ability to see the forest for the trees.
Shh. We are working on a deal to trade Karlock and Bog to Houston in return for future rights to Yao Ming and the right to live in a city where you are not trapped in your car all day. We have a nice $150,000 split level McMansion in Sprawlsville with a Hummer and $10,000 in unmarked bills to get them started on their new life. Given their beliefs, they will probably be mayor and attorney general in no time.
What kind of dull gray boring world would it be without A-holes like Jim Karlock around? His stupid arguments do nothing but make those who oppose him look even smarter. BTW...I know there are plenty of BoJack haters in here, but I wouldn't necessarily put him in the same basket as Karlock.
One of the unintended consequences of the UGB is rapid cookie-cutter growth inside already established neighborhoods.
Drive around areas like Raleigh Hills and Garden Home and you'll see townhouses being slapped up to replace bulldozed older houses. Or you'll see five-acre parcels of Douglas Firs being clearcut to make way for subdivisions of McMansions.
How does this make the metro area more liveable?
Amy,
The reason you don't hear much out cry from the planning community this is because the planning (and most of the rest of the general) community thinks Houston is pathetic. So why bother?
Lisa,
It is important to note that teardowns and "cookie cutter" development has been a nationwide trend in several parts of the US in the past 15 years and not just Portland based on consumer demand for larger and/or more modern buildings, condos, the willingness of land owners to cash in on real estate trends. The cookie cutter issue is one of building costs and demand as this is what developers build based on profit margin, consumer demand, and the permitting process in cities. Portland is not unique at all in this regard, and thus the UBG is a very small cause at best.
As for affordability and the UGB. Sigh. California doesn't have a UGB, nor does Washington State, nor North Carolina and about a hundred other cities (such as Portland Maine, Miami, Austin Texas, etc) in the US and they have all seen huge increases in lack of affordability. How do you explain the lack of affordability in those places? (Hint: Economics 101 elasticities and supply and demand curves).
I never said it was unique to Portland, but I do believe the UGB is a contributing factor to the destruction of already-established neighborhoods, in the name of greed.
It is about supply and demand -- my original point, but your smugness must have clouded your reading comprehension.
Do you know why the percentage is so low? That is, the percentage of people on transit...
It's because it doesn't go into Vancouver, it misses several key corridors, the transit centers are uninviting and fairly low capacity, and because so many people treat it as a joke and an oddity.
Build more freeways on the fringes of town, fix arterials, and build more MAX lines. Wins for everyone.
Thanks so much EAC. Just another rude Portlander that I can disregard.
Lisa,
Sorry for the rudeness. However that does not take away from the salient point that the UGB is not responsible for ugliness. Go to Houston...and then compare.
How do you know EAC is a Portlander in the first place?
Rudeness isn't necessarily determined by geography.
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on the other hand, Portland, unlike Houston, is not a giant fucking shithole-so we've got that goin' for us.