Political Guide for Moving to Texas, Houston No-Zoning Video, and More

Continuing from last week on catch-up items…

• From Twitter: My oversimplified political guide for moving to Texas: progressives to Austin, conservatives to DFW, and pragmatic centrists and independents to Houston.
• NYT: The Future of America is Texas

“But if you’re really looking for a bellwether state that offers a glimpse into the country’s economic future and engines of growth as well as its political fault lines in the long run, it’s not California. It’s Texas.”

“For every new white resident that Texas welcomed over the past decade, there have been three Black residents, three Asians, three people with multiracial backgrounds and 11 Hispanics. Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston also have large L.G.B.T.Q. populations.”

• City Beautiful covers the details of Houston’s lack of zoning in this 10 min video. Mostly pretty good, but I think he misses some of the densification and affordability benefits. He talks about affordability, but only on a metro level, ignoring how we’re able to increase access and affordability for the most desirable core neighborhoods through new townhomes, apartments, and residential towers.
• A website that wants to change the route of Texas Central high-speed rail line. I’ve always thought there would be value in more stops along the way with express vs. “local” trains.
• Passing this great graph along from Scott Beyer at the Market Urbanism Report: “A decade after the recession, and peak permits are still down in almost every major metro except in one state. Any mystery why this state remains affordable even as millions of people move there?” I’m impressed to see we’re holding steady vs. our crazy-high peak building during a previous oil boom.

• Houston airport lands title as best and cleanest in the U.S.” Notably, Houston is the only U.S. city to have two airports in the Best Airports in North America and Cleanest Airports categories.“
• Houston boasts massive population growth among major U.S. metros from 2010 to 2020

“Data from the 2020 Census released August 12 shows Houston at No. 5 (20.3 percent) among the country’s 50 largest metro areas in the biggest jump in population from 2010 to 2020.

Houston maintains its position at No. 5 (7,122,240 residents), the Census data notes. For some perspective, Houston was No. 8 (4,944,332) in the 2010 Census.

The Bayou City is also one of the three U.S. metro areas to gain at least 1.2 million residents over the decade. (Dallas-Fort Worth and New York are the others.)”

This piece previously appeared on Houston Strategies.

Tory Gattis is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Urban Reform Institute (formerly Center for Opportunity Urbanism) and co-authored the original study with noted urbanist Joel Kotkin and others, creating a city philosophy around upward social mobility for all citizens as an alternative to the popular smart growth, new urbanism, and creative class movements. He is also an editor of the Houston Strategies blog.