Houston's biggest challenges are transportation, inequality, and affordability, according to Zillow's chief economist

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

Location is a sustainable advantage is it not ? In the middle of the country on land and sea trade routs. Weather that is business friendly year round, and proximity to natural resources ? What else do you need to be sustainable ?

Too bad the people-in-charge decided on Dallas as the transportation hub for our region of the country. Why so many interstate routes and warehouse facilities there? And DFW airport? Nobody wants to locate a regional office in Houston for some reason. It's always Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, and even New Orleans! Rarely Houston is included on any corporate/federal government regional office location list.

Hopefully the Port of Houston will handle more of the other goods besides petroleum/chemicals once the wider Panama Canal is finally opened. (Saw a chart once that had at least 50-60% of items being or related to petroleum/chemicals once you added them up.)

Some Houston companies don't even have faith in our business-friendly weather because they have put their data in servers in tornado-prone Dallas, just in case the rare devastating hurricane hits Houston. (WTF?)

The news media scare people to stay home during the ice storms of the past few years and to a lesser extent the rain events in warmer months such as the two back in May. Terrible when it comes to productivity. Hell, Neal Conan on Talk of The Nation spilled the beans about how cold Houston gets in the winter too. (Bad P.R. on a national show.)

High tech? Austin has already spoken for that industry in our region. And it started when a Houstonian decided to found an eponymous company right before he dropped out of the best university in the state.

What natural resources? Everyone agrees that Houston is ugly! Lacks the weather and scenery of Los Angeles or San Francisco, not even the scenery of Denver or Calgary. haha

The good parts: Houston has some great bones. The freeway system is well designed. The downtown is actually the most vibrant in the South. Culinary crossroads with Texas BBQ and Cajun seafood.

But great bones mean it needs some work to realize its potential. Might add commuter rail and use the buses to service suburbs too far from a rail line or for overflow (called All-of-the-Above transportation policy). 7 day a week commuter line operations to get people shopping Downtown on the weekends. Improve Bush as a domestic hub also to be full-service like LAX, ORD, ATL, JFK, SFO.

And try to market Houston as the destination city in the South over the other cities listed to companies looking to relocate to the sunbelt. (And a little poaching from Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, and New Orleans wouldn't hurt either, especially Dallas!!! haha)

[ipuck]

Originally Posted by Dopo

The U.S. Has a Social Mobility Problem, But Not the One You Think - CityLab

Of all of our ideological disagreements in the U.S. over the state of the economy and how best to improve it for those struggling, one narrative has garnered consistent consensus: It's been getting harder and harder in America to climb the income ladder. President Obama has decried this trend. So has Marco Rubio.

They fear that the U.S. doesn't offer as much social mobility as it once did. A child who works hard today can't expect the same returns as her parents or grandparents once could. This suspicion is troubling – and politically potent – because it undercuts America's claim to be "the land of opportunity."

This is just excuse made up by liberals to justify feeding the lazy.

Please stop feeding this nonsense here.

[Houston321]

Zillow's biggest challenge is it's constant inaccurate information on it's main product...real estate valuation.
I am not kidding.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

Houston is way too spread out. Those disparate business districts hurt connectivity (and thus opportunity). I'm lucky to live on the Westside, where The Galleria and to an extent Greenway Plaza are much closer to me than Downtown, but for the commuters in the east, south, or to a lesser extent north of town trying to get to those two places is a nightmare.

Plus the public transit only runs Downtown, so I would wear out my car driving the entire 20-30 miles door-to-door each way to Galleria/Greenway instead of the 5 miles to the nearest METRO Park & Ride (and the rest to Downtown on a bus without worrying about parking fees, etc). Not to forget about the bumpy roads closer towards town and other miseries of the daily grind in this town!

Plus the selling point about the cheap housing, COL, cost of doing business is eroding. Houston and Texas don't have an advantage outside of that (low prices are always an unsustainable advantage). What happens when the next hotspot pops up and business start leaving here for there to chase the next trend? Where is the sustainable advantage in this town?

Public transit doesn't run ONLY downtown. Medical Center, Greenway Plaza and Galleria area all have park-n-rides in addition to local bus service. Medical Center has rail.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by ipuck

This is just excuse made up by liberals to justify feeding the lazy.
Please stop feeding this nonsense here.

Typical Conservative anti-opportunity mentality
That's why you keep on telling people to "Pull yourself by your bootstraps" something that is impossible to do

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

Too bad the people-in-charge decided on Dallas as the transportation hub for our region of the country. Why so many interstate routes and warehouse facilities there? And DFW airport? Nobody wants to locate a regional office in Houston for some reason. It's always Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, and even New Orleans! Rarely Houston is included on any corporate/federal government regional office location list.

Hopefully the Port of Houston will handle more of the other goods besides petroleum/chemicals once the wider Panama Canal is finally opened. (Saw a chart once that had at least 50-60% of items being or related to petroleum/chemicals once you added them up.)

Some Houston companies don't even have faith in our business-friendly weather because they have put their data in servers in tornado-prone Dallas, just in case the rare devastating hurricane hits Houston. (WTF?)

The news media scare people to stay home during the ice storms of the past few years and to a lesser extent the rain events in warmer months such as the two back in May. Terrible when it comes to productivity. Hell, Neal Conan on Talk of The Nation spilled the beans about how cold Houston gets in the winter too. (Bad P.R. on a national show.)

High tech? Austin has already spoken for that industry in our region. And it started when a Houstonian decided to found an eponymous company right before he dropped out of the best university in the state.

What natural resources? Everyone agrees that Houston is ugly! Lacks the weather and scenery of Los Angeles or San Francisco, not even the scenery of Denver or Calgary. haha

The good parts: Houston has some great bones. The freeway system is well designed. The downtown is actually the most vibrant in the South. Culinary crossroads with Texas BBQ and Cajun seafood.

But great bones mean it needs some work to realize its potential. Might add commuter rail and use the buses to service suburbs too far from a rail line or for overflow (called All-of-the-Above transportation policy). 7 day a week commuter line operations to get people shopping Downtown on the weekends. Improve Bush as a domestic hub also to be full-service like LAX, ORD, ATL, JFK, SFO.

And try to market Houston as the destination city in the South over the other cities listed to companies looking to relocate to the sunbelt. (And a little poaching from Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, and New Orleans wouldn't hurt either, especially Dallas!!! haha)

Dallas benefits from having several large metros to it's south as well as to its north but Houston is a logistical hub in its own right and with the eventual, although slow, development of I-69 Houston will be a more competitive overland transportation hub in the future.

No not everyone agrees that Houston is ugly and compared to some of the regional competition we have it is a relative garden spot. I agree we need to be more aggressive in competing for non oil and gas business relocations but the first thing we need to do is speak more highly of our own attributes and get over some of these feelings of inferiority that Houstonians themselves sometimes harp on.

[Yn0hTnA]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

Dallas benefits from having several large metros to it's south as well as to its north but Houston is a logistical hub in its own right and with the eventual, although slow, development of I-69 Houston will be a more competitive overland transportation hub in the future.

No not everyone agrees that Houston is ugly and compared to some of the regional competition we have it is a relative garden spot. I agree we need to be more aggressive in competing for non oil and gas business relocations but the first thing we need to do is speak more highly of our own attributes and get over some of these feelings of inferiority that Houstonians themselves sometimes harp on.

His/her post was just pure satire, at least in many portions.

[testmo]

Half of you must live in the midwest and never been to houston. Houston isnt seen as a place to headquarter your business? Cities with the most fortune 500 companies offices: nyc, houston. I struggle to think of any engineering company that doesnt have a major office, main headquarters, or north american headquarters in houston

The port does a lot more than oil. Its one of the busiest port in the US. One of the biggest things it handles is sorghum

[usc619]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

These people are here in co-operation with the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, so I don't think you can just write them off as irrelevant economist...

I think the CD posters have more credentials and knowledge on this matter or at least they think lol