Positive Press for Houston Growth

photo credit: baldheretic

In case you missed it, there was an interview with Harvard University economics professor Edward Glaeser in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal [subscription required]. Dr. Glaeser has been a big proponent of Houston’s recipe for growth:

There’s a reason Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix are our four fastest-growing ares. They offer an astonishingly high standard of living for ordinary Americans.

New York City is a great place to be really rich and not a terrible place to be really poor, but it’s a pretty hard place to live on $60,000 a year. You don’t experience anywhere near the basic standard of living you would in Houston on the same income.

He also makes an intriguing point:

I think the relatively laissez-fair approach of Houston may be workable when you’ve got ungodly amounts of land you can use, but the more you squeeze in an area, the more policies you need–and the great hope is those policies don’t limit growth.

I would argue that the laissez-fair approach is only workable if you have ungodly amounts of land, and that demand for that land is relatively uniform. This doesn’t apply to Houston. Although we have the capacity for virtually unrestrained growth outwards, this city has a cultural and economic center (unlike Los Angeles, for instance) inside the 610 loop. Consequently, there is greater demand for land inside the loop than outside it. This is exactly why we’re seeing land use problems inside the loop. Despite Houston’s ability to grow outwards, there’s a finite supply of land inside the 610 loop, and we’re only going to see more problems like the Ashby High-rise as Houston continues to grow.

If you want to read more, Dr. Glaeser wrote a terrific article in the New York Sun last week titled “Houston, New York Has a Problem.”

Tagged as: atlanta, city planning, dallas, economics, edward glaeser, growth, houston, new york city, phoenix, standard of living