Is Houston A Better Place to Live Than New York?
The New York Sun looks west and finds a lot to love in Houston's cars, growth, and pro-development policies.
"New Yorkers are rightly proud of their city's renaissance over the last two decades, but when it comes to growth, Gotham pales beside Houston. Between 2000 and 2007, the New York region grew by just 2.7%, while greater Houston — the country's sixth-largest metropolitan area — grew by 19.4%, expanding to 5.6 million people from 4.7 million.
To East Coast urbanites, Houston's appeal must be mysterious: The city isn't all that economically productive — earnings per employee in Manhattan are almost double those in Houston — and its climate is unpleasant, with stultifying humidity and more days with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees than any other large American city. Since these two major factors in urban growth don't explain Houston's success, what does?
Houston's great advantage, it turns out, is its ability to provide affordable living for middle-income Americans, something that is increasingly hard to achieve in the Big Apple. That Houston is a middle-class city is mirrored in the nature of its economy. Both greater Houston and Manhattan have about 2 million employees.
In Manhattan, almost 600,000 of them work in the idea-intensive sectors of finance, insurance, and professional services; only 2% are in manufacturing, and fewer than that in construction. Finance increasingly drives New York City's economy as a whole. By contrast, Houston is a manufacturing powerhouse that makes machinery, food products, and electronics, with a retail sector twice the size of Manhattan's and lots of middle-class jobs."
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Silly environmentalists...
"Of course, Houston's development isn't costless. Like most growing places, it must struggle with water issues, sanitation, and congestion. For environmentalists who worry about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, Houston's rapid growth is particularly worrisome, since Houstonians are among the biggest carbon emitters in the country — all those humid 90-degree days mean a lot of electricity to cool off, and all that driving gobbles plenty of gas.
But Houston's success shows that a relatively deregulated free-market city, with a powerful urban growth machine, can do a much better job of taking care of middle-income Americans than the more "progressive" big governments of the Northeast and the West Coast."
So in other words ... the writer, Glaeser, isn't going to address those concerns, and that is somebody else's problem!
apples & oranges
You can't compare metro Houston to Manhattan and then in the next paragraph compare metro Houston to the 5 boros. Everyone who knows New York knows that the bulk of the manufacturing takes place across the river in NJ. If memory serves me manufacturing jobs in the NY metro represent about 11% of the workforce and from what I can find it's about the same in Metro Houston.
It's ridiculously disingenuous to compare a built out central city like New York to a sprawling metro like Houston. When you compare metro to metro we see that Houston covers an area of 10,062 sq. mi. and New York comes in at 11,842 sq mi. Except that New York has 4x the population. When you compare metro to metro New York's growth was 8.4% from 1990 to 2000. The census bureau has a well documented habit of under-estimating growth in the northeast and overestimating decline for cities that are losing population. You're not going to find me believing that there's been a 2/3 drop in growth this decade as compared to last. The early 90's were a lot rougher on NYC and the metro than any part of this decade has been.
You also won't find me giving too much credit to a city that saw a huge spike in population because it was convenient for refugees fleeing a natural disaster.
But
is Houston's per capita environmental degradation that much worse than the NYC metro? The perception is that it is much worse, but don't all the cars in the New York are pollute as well. How about buses and trains? Heating and cooling all of the housing units? Houston's air quality might be somewhat worse, but they perform some of the functions (oil refining, for example) that other areas benefit from.
I don't think he is suggesting that the environment becomes someone else's problem or should, rather he is illustrating how some cities like New York tend to squeeze out the middle class because of numerous factors. Conversely, many other cities like Houston tend to accommodate the middle class quite well.
There is something I find very ironic about this story linked to a debate forging right now on a Staley planetizen blog. Those who lean to the political left tend to like cities like New York (dense, liberal, heavy transit use, lots of great public spaces, historic, high culture, romantic, etc.) and despise places like Houston (auto-dominant, no great downtown, lots of freeways, etc.). Conservatives - vice versa for the most part. When comparing this to America's economic restructuring, one might conclude that Houston (economically speaking) is representative of our nation circa 1960 (broad middle class, some manufacturing jobs). NYC represents the future of our nation (very little manufacturing, high wages for brainpower, low wages for service providers, and little in between.) But, the irony is that those who lean to the political left seem to decry the fact or at least the perception that we are losing our manufacturing jobs and our middle class. So, in effect, they want our economy to look more like Houston, but want our cities to look more like New York. Conservatives, on the contrary, seem ok with having an economy that looks more like New York City, but would rather have a geographic settlement pattern closer to that of Houston. The question then becomes, is having a geographical settlement pattern like New York City anethema to having an economy and middle class like Houston? and vice versa? I don't know, but it's interesting to me.
Yes we can!
"The question then becomes, is having a geographical settlement pattern like New York City anathema to having an economy and middle class like Houston?"
We can have a NYC settlement pattern and cheaper housing costs.
The answer is two simple words: deregulate infill. Cut down the cost of regulation, increase supply, and it seems to me that cheaper housing will come.
Is it politically easy? No.
But in theory it certainly is.
In theory
I suppose it's plausible. But, I'm not convinced the deregulation of infill alone would reconcile this. Indulge me for a minute with this possible scenario.
Metros with physical geographic barriers to entry have somewhat higher land prices. Some aspects of the physical geography draw in more demand. Residents demand growth control to retain their physical geographic amenities. Increased demand combined with NIMBYism creates much higher land prices. Wages increase to be competitive, particularly for the high end who have top qualifications/experience. Resource intensive industries relocate because they can't make it here (land, labor too expensive). Middle class folks don't move here and emigrate elsewhere where their dollar goes further. The lower tier/less mobile stay for family, roots, other reasons. The affluent demand more regs/subsidies to protect the lower tier, knowing they need them for menial/service jobs. Middle class gets little benefit and is further squeezed. They keep moving away. Pretty soon, you have SF, New York, LA.
Many middle class jobs seem to require a lot of space - warehouse, manufacturing, call center, back office, big boxes, single-family home construction, etc. So, if land is too expensive and the labor market ultimately responds with higher wages, a lot of these operations won't be profitable or as efficient in that world.
But, knowledge workers, some creative class types, and service workers (because you need them) will still be in these denser, shrinking middle class cities.
What I'm getting at is that maybe the urban form of a metro ultimately does help determine whether it will be conducive for a growing middle class. It will never be as simple as something we can throw into a comment, but I'm sure someone has done an economic geography dissertation on it.
lots of interesting thoughts
So some feedback:
"Metros with physical geographic barriers to entry have somewhat higher land prices. Some aspects of the physical geography draw in more demand. Residents demand growth control to retain their physical geographic amenities."
You mean islands and peninsulas? Perhaps so- but physical barriers certainly aren't the only cause of urban form. Jacksonville is chopped up by rivers in numerous places but has hard-core sprawl.
And NYC outside Manhattan is less "sprawling" than many places, though less dense than Manhattan.
And how did middle-class people stay in NYC, SF etc for the first half of the 20th century? [And in parts of Philadelphia they still do, and would in greater numbers without the slums and their residents as a deterrent] Remember, the status quo hasn't lasted forever.
"Resource intensive industries relocate because they can't make it here (land, labor too expensive). Middle class folks don't move here and emigrate elsewhere where their dollar goes further. The lower tier/less mobile stay for family, roots, other reasons. The affluent demand more regs/subsidies to protect the lower tier, knowing they need them for menial/service jobs."
Really? Outside planners' listservs and a few ultraliberal enclaves, is there really an enormous demand anywhere by ordinary citizens to have subsidized housing nearby?
And what is a "Resource intensive industry?"
"Many middle class jobs seem to require a lot of space - warehouse, manufacturing, call center, back office, big boxes, single-family home construction, etc."
Jobs don't come with a "middle class" label eternally attached. Jobs are what they are because of the laws of supply and demand, not because it is a natural law that some jobs will forever be middle class and others not. And most of the so-called upscale parts of the economy have middle-class jobs attached (e.g. lawyers have paralegals, doctors have nurses).
Conversely, many of what you think of as "middle class jobs" aren't all middle class (e.g. cashier at Wal-Mart, recent immigrants working home construction) or don't require that much space (e.g. back offices of the financial industry)
Likewise
"You mean islands and peninsulas? Perhaps so- but physical barriers certainly aren't the only cause of urban form. Jacksonville is chopped up by rivers in numerous places but has hard-core sprawl."
Very true, however, there are very few denser metros that don't have any physical limitations.
"And how did middle-class people stay in NYC, SF etc for the first half of the 20th century? [And in parts of Philadelphia they still do, and would in greater numbers without the slums and their residents as a deterrent] Remember, the status quo hasn't lasted forever."
Understand that. But, I would argue the economic structure of our country is very different today. The knowledge and service economy and decline of the production one have changed things.
"And what is a "Resource intensive industry?"
Requires more land and labor per unit of production or unit of something?
"Really? Outside planners' listservs and a few ultraliberal enclaves, is there really an enormous demand anywhere by ordinary citizens to have subsidized housing nearby?"
The key word here is nearby. You are correct if you include that word, but I think incorrect if you don't. There is demand to help the less fortunate in many of these denser, expensive metros, just not near where I live (hence, NIMBY, not BANANA).
"Jobs don't come with a "middle class" label eternally attached. Jobs are what they are because of the laws of supply and demand, not because it is a natural law that some jobs will forever be middle class and others not. And most of the so-called upscale parts of the economy have middle-class jobs attached (e.g. lawyers have paralegals, doctors have nurses)."
I agree, but paralegals can make good money in some of these areas so maybe these aren't the type of middle class folks getting squeezed as hard.
"Conversely, many of what you think of as "middle class jobs" aren't all middle class (e.g. cashier at Wal-Mart, recent immigrants working home construction) or don't require that much space (e.g. back offices of the financial industry)"
There are always some exceptions especially when making broad sweeping statements - like I did. But, I did so to try to suggest a possibility that urban form may have at least some effect on a metros ability to foster a middle class population. We could even argue over what is "middle class".
Ah what the heck I'll join you on a digression...
I agree, CP, that the article is not about environmental degradation, but rather the intersection of economic and planning issues. Nonetheless, Glaesser, is the one who makes the point that Houston's auto-dependency is potentially a problem, but then glosses over it. As to whether Houston or New York is better or worse is a matter for a much bigger debate.
I think you are also onto an intriguing point about the strange contradictions within both conservative and liberal thought. In non planning issues you see this very starkly when it comes to how the ideologies approach the politics of morality. As you can see from this google images sampling, numerous people have tried to address these complexities graphically:
http://images.google.com/images?q=Political+spectrum+diagram&ie=UTF-8&oe...
I remember the first time I read about Jefferson and Hamilton's debates at the founding of our country, I was interested in how neither current party maps directly to either of those early political philosophies.
Personally, the most resonant difference in political ideologies today is between urban and rural voters. Urbanites fully accept collective rights and responsibilities, while rural communities are truly libertarian in their embrace of individual rights and responsibilities.But then again the vast shades of suburban and exurban communities again complicates those differences. Suburban and exurban communities must struggle with balancing a desire for public services like roads and schools with an aversion to regulations and taxes.