New Geography

Blog

  • NGVideo: East St. Louis (Part II)

    The second part in the series on East St. Louis gives views of downtown today, shows how its history can be seen in the city, and explains why the city could still be a good place for new development.

    Part I discusses the origins and development of East St. Louis as an industrial city.

    Part III will explore ideas put forward for (re)development of the city, including cultural tourism based on the city’s African American heritage and use of vacant land for farming to create a local food source for the St. Louis metropolitan area.

    Michael R. Allen is the Assistant Director at Landmarks Association of St. Louis. He edits the blog Ecology of Absence, “a voice for historic preservation and a chronicle of architectural change in St. Louis, Missouri and its region”.

    Alex Lotz is an undergraduate film student in his final year at Chapman University.

  • Millennial Perspective: The Global View

    In the past few years, as my millennial generation has entered college, global and international studies have started to creep onto the list of the ten most popular majors, a list that historically hasn’t changed much. I’m a High School senior, and at a couple of the universities I’ve looked into, Admissions Officers have mentioned that it’s become a top choice – if not the top choice – among applicants as a major field of study. Even small liberal arts schools are recognizing its importance and appeal with international study institutes of their own. Since this is my area of interest too, I’ve been doing some thinking about why this field is so popular right now.

    We seem to have a new sense of geography. Unlike the generation of my parents, my generation comes out of a truly multi-ethnic culture. Within my relatively close social circle, I can quickly think of friends whose parents come from Mexico, Israel, Iran, Brazil, Russia, Uruguay, Korea – and I’m sure there are many more. Being a first generation American, if not an immigrant, is so commonplace that it seldom comes up in conversation. And this is just in the environment of a private school. For my friends in the Los Angeles public schools, the situation is even more extreme. In comparison, my parents tell me that, growing up, they knew few, if any, kids with backgrounds substantially different than theirs. And, unlike a generation ago, many of my friends have actually lived in and/or travel frequently to their parents’ home countries.

    This may be one contributor to — or reflection of — my generation’s focus on international studies and much greater tendency to study and travel abroad than in the past. The number of college students that study abroad has had a five fold increase since 1986. Whether we’re studying international business, language, culture, or technology, we’re getting a lot of exposure to other cultures, and we see the differences…and similarities.

    I had the opportunity to study for a semester in Israel. My last meal there was a falafel sandwich on a busy street in Jerusalem. The square was teeming with an array of Israelis. Hassidic families hustled past salesmen in the window of the fashionable Diesel store. People on cell phones, Russian-speaking school kids, schwarma chefs and jewelry vendors were in the mix, too, along with an American girl from Los Angeles. I fit in and belonged there, I realized, as much as anyone else did. In order to be at home in Jerusalem, I didn’t need to join an already unified culture. It’s a culture of multiple perspectives, just like my home in Los Angeles.

    Everyone complains about the sprawl of Los Angeles, but I see it as just the opposite. My Los Angeles is a crossroads where everything, and all kinds of people, come together. In this Los Angeles, the wonderful Persian tradition of expansive hospitality, combined with the urge of all immigrants to adopt American customs, dictates, for example, open cappuccino buffets for Halloween trick-or-treaters. At the city’s Youth Council, I work in another L.A.: one where students worry about getting shot and sixteen-year-olds drop out to clean houses. I used to love a now-closed restaurant called, appropriately, Crossroads. The food was Israeli, but many of the customers were Latino laborers. The owner spoke to them in Spanish, but the customers knew the menu, and I wasn’t that surprised when someone answered with a few words of Hebrew.

    So, it makes sense that my generation sees the whole world as its field of study. Many of us come from or have experienced places that – like L.A. – are intersections where we’ve learned to integrate our own experiences and values into a mix of disparate cultures, languages, goals, and people. Our computers feed us second-by-second updates on the world’s diplomatic challenges. We know there are problems that simply must be fixed. At my school, and probably at many others, the Community Service Fair is the most popular event of the school year. When we go to a concert, it’s often a benefit for a cause that we may also post on the ‘Causes’ tab of our Facebook page.

    The urge to change global conditions makes the field of international relations both a potential career and a pursuit of a personal passion. In an article about trends in “hot majors”, Paul LePore, an assistant dean at the University of Washington, told the Seattle Times about the increasing desire of incoming students to “do social good”, even though “There isn’t a ‘change the world’ major.” But as I look at the world, it seems like international studies is a pretty good place to start.

    Abigail Zwick is a High School senior in Los Angeles.

  • I’ll have a $14,000 vacation with my lobbyists, please.

    Democratic lawmakers from California recently took a break in the midst of “intense state budget negotiations” to travel up to a wine-country lodge complete with gourmet food, rooms, and cocktails with a trio of interests footing the $14,000 bill.

    At the time of the retreat, the Consumer Attorneys of California (who, along with labor unions, had been pushing to roll back some labor rules) the California Professional Firefighters (seeking to protect funding for fire safety programs) and the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council (lobbying for greater roles for private contractors in state construction) all had strong interest in the proceedings.

    The getaway came a day after Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of fiscal emergency and ordered the Legislature to discuss a series of proposals to plug a projected $42-bilion budget gap.

    For the most part, each group had its interests protected in the budget package passed in February – though each group denied the retreat had anything to do with the budget.

    Such extravagance gifted to lawmakers is not uncommon; groups with business before the state commonly bankroll such outings. Dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse with a $144 price tag, tickets to Disneyland, and $13,211 trip to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, among many others, were revealed last week in documents filed by lawmakers.

    Indecent lobbying goes down best with a vintage cabernet.

  • Why The Stock Market Matters

    My father was a career enlisted man in the United States Air Force. I was in the third or fourth grade when he graduated from high school. My mother graduated from high school after I was married. My dad worked for several companies after his Air Force career. He was working for Disney when he died. My mother worked part time in child care from time to time.

    I tell you this to show that this is not a wealthy family. When my dad died, my mother received the standard Disney benefits. My guess is that those benefits were more generous than average for American business, but not extravagant.

    My mother put the death-benefit funds at a bank trust department. They invested the funds in a portfolio that is standard for widows. Some of the funds were put in fixed securities. Some were invested in stocks that were considered safe. These funds, along with some fixed income securities, represent her liquid assets. Her only other assets are her survivor’s share of my father’s pensions, and a small condominium.

    What has happened to her portfolio? Let’s look at the Dow for an indication. The Dow peaked at 14,164.53 on October 9, 2007. It was down to 13,264.82 by the end of 2007. It was only 8,776.39 at the close of 2008. Today, Monday, March 09, 2009, the Dow closed at 6,547.05.

    Since its high, the Dow has lost 53.79 percent of its value. It lost 33.84 percent of its value in 2008. So far this year, it has lost another 25.40 percent. These are huge losses.

    If we apply this year’s average daily loss, we are less than three days from a Dow value of 6,422.94. This was the value of the Dow at the closing on December 4, 1996, the day before Greenspan gave his famous quote on the market’s irrational exuberance. Remember that? It was a very long time ago. We’ve lost more than a decade’s gain in a remarkably short time.

    When asked about the stock market, President Obama dismissed it as unimportant: “You know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics,” he said last week. “It bobs up and down day to day, and if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.” It is just a guess, but I’m thinking that if his poll numbers had declined over 25 percent this year, he’d be spending some time worrying.

    A friend of mine dismisses the stock market losses as paper losses. He claims that the firms, factories and other assets still exist. I don’t buy that. If that is the case, why would we have mark-to-market rules? The fact is that many assets have vanished. They are gone. Many more are reduced in value. Certainly, today’s present value of future earnings — the fundamental source of stock value — is far below what it was on October 9, 2007.

    Wealth has disappeared, and that disappearance has serious consequences to real people. Which brings me back to my mother: The combined impact of stock and real estate values has caused her net worth to fall over 50 percent. She’s half as wealthy as she was just a short time ago. That is a problem for her, and it is a problem for America.

    Economists are notorious for disagreeing. However, the belief that people spend out of wealth is about as close to a consensus as one can find. My mother will confirm that belief with her actions. The children and grandchildren will get smaller gifts on their birthdays and at Christmas. She will travel less. She will eat out less. She’ll cut her spending.

    There will be other impacts. My siblings expect an inheritance, and that inheritance is a significant portion of their wealth. Right now, with the inheritance being less than half of what it was, their wealth is down a lot. That means they’ll be spending less. That is a problem for America.

    This sort of wealth destruction is happening to families across the country. It is happening to rich families and to families that are far from rich. The Dow has declined an average of about 50 points a trading day this year. Millions of American families, responding to the steady erosion of wealth, are cutting back their spending plans. This feedback from the stock market to the economy will likely swamp any stimulus plan.

    The message is clear. The stock market matters. Its freefall must be halted before the recovery can begin.

    Bill Watkins, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Economic Forecast Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a former economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington D.C. in the Monetary Affairs Division.

  • Different Shades of Green

    Last month marked the 15th anniversary of the settlement of Plotkin vs. General Electric, the landmark “greenwashing” lawsuit I filed in 1993. At the time, GE was misleading consumers by selling phony lookalike energy efficient light bulbs that were in fact just old fashioned incandescent wolves in green packaging.

    I took no money from the case. But I required G.E. to make labeling changes and to pony up $3.25 million dollars in consumer refunds and donations to environmental and public service groups. The labeling changes made it easier for the manufacturers of real energy efficient light bulbs, which were just then entering the marketplace, to distinguish their products on the shelves. Plotkin vs. GE also more firmly established the ability of environmental activists to turn to the courts when state and federal government agencies fail to punish greenwashing. The settlement we achieved created a powerful deterrent that continues to produce benefits to this day.

    In the meantime, though, greenwashing has become a virtual industry in the political and policy worlds. Take, for example, the growing push for economically regressive and environmentally problematic HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes. HOT lanes are toll lanes on public highways. Prices are set dynamically so that HOT lanes keep moving even if all the other lanes are stuck. Governor Schwarzenegger and many leading Democrats favor the idea and use it to paint themselves green. HOT lanes are also popular with many affluent motorists who love the idea of driving their SUVs in the carpool lane for what amounts to pocket change. It’s an odd alliance.

    Unfortunately, support for HOT lanes is also becoming a litmus test issue for some environmental groups when they evaluate political candidates, apparently without much thought about the economic consequences, particularly for the poor.

    HOT lane backers push their plan by claiming that only a limited number of lanes will be involved, typically just one to start. But in Europe, where many of these experiments began, “congestion management” programs have since morphed into systems that essentially allow rich drivers to hog public roads. Give the upper crust the fast lane and, it turns out, pretty soon they want the whole road.

    HOT lanes are an example of one of the worst forms of regressive taxation imaginable. Like all regressive taxes, they exact a higher percentage of income from the poor. But in this case, they also tax the very mobility of the poor, making it harder for them to commute, including to work and school, which can effectively lock people into low end jobs and poverty that they might otherwise escape.

    What little thought the proponents of HOT lanes have given to their impact on the poor appears to be in the category of “let them eat cake.” One widely-cited report recommending HOT lanes even dismissed concerns they were unfair to the poor by noting that service workers can use the lanes to get to their clients’ houses more quickly:

    “… studies of Orange County’s SR-91 show that the variable-priced toll lanes are not used exclusively by the wealthy. The ability to save time and reduce uncertainty confers substantial benefits to all drivers, including service professionals who can make more service calls…”

    In the San Francisco Bay Area, Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission are fast-tracking a HOT lane implementation plan that could be devastating for students at area community colleges. At De Anza College in Cupertino, California, for example, more than 10,000 students commute to school each day. For many, this is the only reasonable path towards upward mobility. I know. Thirty years ago, I was one of those students, only to return more recently to serve on the college district’s board of trustees.

    A proposed fee of $5 a day per trip on Highway 85 during peak rush hour, as envisioned, would boost a typical De Anza College commuter student’s expenses by as much as $100 a month. That burden is sure to grow over time. Escaping poverty is often a game of inches. Our surveys indicate that thousands of our students live at or near the poverty level. Each additional expense imposed by our government makes a high quality college education less accessible.

    HOT lane proponents say that over the long run the impact on the poor will be positive because the tolls will be used to improve public transit, which will benefit less affluent citizens and increase use of public transportation.

    But this is out of touch with the realities of life in places like Silicon Valley, where the automobile is still the most practical way for many people to get to work. What may work for investment bankers taking transit to downtown San Francisco doesn’t work for a student who lives in Mountain View and needs to get to Cupertino and then to a job in Redwood City each day.

    What’s more, the promised transportation improvements may take decades to implement and may never meet the real world transit needs of working students, not to mention those who also have to stop to pick up their children, get groceries or complete errands on the same trip.

    But one thing is for sure. While we wait for those HOT lane financed transit improvements to kick in, a generation, maybe more, will find it harder to attend school or get to their jobs.

    Global warming is a very real problem. But it can and must be addressed in far better and more equitable ways. Those less regressive ideas include higher taxes on gas guzzlers, road electrification, remote sensing (“by wire”) vehicles, increased subsidies and public support infrastructure for carpools, home-based work and or possibly even a boost in industrial levies based on employee commute profiles. All of these advances will require government action and a communal effort. But each of these more significant steps are far less likely to occur if rich divers can easily get wherever they want to go quickly at the expense of everyone else. That’s the road the current elitist HOT lanes proposal takes us down.

    It also raises the question of what comes next. Will this same crowd of economic elitists also want to make public parks and beaches off limits to all but the affluent, too? After all, those are also getting pretty crowded. Or we will defend a more traditional American value: public spaces, including roads, are created, maintained, protected and improved by the public to benefit the public.

    When General Electric put phony energy efficient light bulbs on stores shelves two decades ago, taking the company to court was the smart way to fight back. Unfortunately, there is no court we can petition to ensure that regressive tax policies aren’t greenwashed in ways that trample the rights of the poor, community college students and working people. But there is at least one place we can fight for the smarter, more effective and more equitable environmental policies we need: the state legislature.

    Hal Plotkin is a veteran Silicon Valley journalist and commentator, a founding editor of Marketplace on public radio, and the founder of the Center for Media Change, Inc., a Palo Alto-based 501(c)3 non-profit that enables crowd-funding of high-quality journalism.

  • Hal Plotkin

  • How the Financial Crisis Threatens Localism

    By Richard Reep

    As in many places, the poor economy is forcing many families in affluent Winter Park, Florida to make some necessary adjustments. One of the most basic adjustments relates to shopping for food and staples. In better times, Winter Park was ruled by two Publix supermarkets and a Whole Foods. Grocery-cart conversation among friends became a common event; now this smooth, middle-class lifestyle pattern has been disrupted.

    Hard times are driving people to less intimate settings, largely to Wal-Mart and other discount stores, whose offerings and management are largely interchangeable between places. In this way hard times could be shifting the pendulum swing away from localism and towards globalism. For now, Wal-Mart’s globalism offers the advantage of low prices, overcoming the disdain that many in Winter Park expressed at this store; for it is the antithesis of Winter Park’s treasured shopping culture epitomized by Park Avenue, a quaint strip of unique boutiques. Even if you did buy those steaks at Wal-Mart, you didn’t exactly advertise the fact at your dinner party.

    Winter Parkers had thought that their basic food needs had been comfortably institutionalized. As neighborhood touchstones go, Publix is Florida’s gold standard. Winn-Dixie, Albertson’s, and other competition paled in comparison to the customer loyalty that Publix brought. Their brands weren’t much different, and neither were their prices. There was just something about that kelly green logo that inspired people to integrate Publix into their own personal culture and lexicon.

    For years, this chain has built a loyal following in Florida. Good customer service, great store brands, convenient and quality stores all contributed to their preeminence in the grocery market, and allowed them to expand in the Southeast. Today, however, Publix is challenged by its own reputation, and has become vulnerable to competition as local shoppers tighten their pocketbooks.

    Winter Parkers had two choices between their Publix: Hollyanna and Lakemont. The brand veneer, both in content and in form, was subtly bent to suit local tastes. People referred to their favorite as “my Publix”, and even when the Baldwin Park Publix opened in 2003 closer to many folks, their loyalty with their particular store kept them from going to the Baldwin Park store. (Its architecture doesn’t help; this storefront might have been designed by Albert Speer).

    Suddenly, however, Publix faces real competition from stores that traditionally do not overlap with its market share. This Lakeland-based company, which boasts an excellent reputation, finds itself now with both emptier parking lots and smaller cash register totals. What’s going on here?

    At the Lakemont Publix, the organic produce area has grown, in direct response to hip, organic Whole Foods up the street. Whole Foods, however, is suffering mightily in this economy – who needs $8.00 strawberries? If you are skeptical about this, a tour of their largely deserted parking lots and front entry areas on Sunday afternoon, when grocery shopping is near-peak, can be quite telling.


    Whole Foods has some great parking spaces right near the front door, and the entry area, usually clogged with shoppers, seemed to be nearly desolate. A few students sat at the bistro tables tapping on laptops; not the usual rich scene for this upscale store.

    Publix at Lakemont also had some great parking spaces right near the front door, and an even more desolate entry area. In fact, where are the Girl Scouts?


    Where have all these people gone? The answer lies up State Road 436 to the left, ladies and gentlemen – Wal-Mart! Parking near the front…forget it. At the entry, a line of people going in and full shopping carts coming out! And the Girl Scouts are smart enough to realize that this is where the local culture is going these days! Is Wal-Mart the new Publix?

    As everyone is frantically re-tooling their own personal economy, Wal-Mart has become the grocer of choice for more and more of Winter Park. Are the prices really lower? A little bit. Will Publix adapt to the new, changing times to meet this challenge? For this 79-year-old Florida-based grocery store chain, and all its loyal (but more loyal to their checkbooks) customers, we certainly hope so.

    The buying power of globalism continues to disrupt and shift local patterns. As Wal-Mart, Costco, and others compete in this New Economy, local and regional chains need to react quickly to gain back their customer base, or they will find themselves in for a difficult struggle to regain lost ground.

    Richard Reep is an Architect and artist living in Winter Park, Florida. His practice has centered around hospitality-driven mixed use, and has contributed in various capacities to urban mixed-use projects, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years.

  • PARIS: Urban Museum Amidst a Suburban Sea

    I arrived in Paris on March 1 for my annual visiting professor assignment at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers. Again, I have taken a flat (apartment) in the 1st arrondissement (district) in the heart of the ville de Paris, one of the world’s great pedestrian expanses. It is also one of the great virtual experiences – a place oddly disembodied from its setting.

    The flat is just a couple of doors to the right on the first perpendicular street in the picture below, which was taken at the entrance of the Chatalet-Les Halles Metro-RER station, less than 200 yards away.

    It is 300 yards to the Pompideau Museum, a structure whose hideousness is compensated for only by the fact that because of its dense surroundings it cannot be seen from anywhere more than a block away. The Louvre and the Hotel de Ville (city hall) are each one-half mile away and Notre Dame is less than three-quarters of a mile away. This is probably the ultimate in urbanization outside of Hong Kong.

    Sundays are very relaxing in Paris. There are people on the streets. The atmosphere is informal. Crowds are out examining the art works, books, maps and posters of the vendors that line both banks of the River Seine. I always like to attend Vepres (Vespers) at Notre Dame at 5:45 on Sunday evening. This is bit ecumenical for an Anglican, although not much of an ecumenical stretch to Roman Catholicism. I understand nothing, but the singing and the organ are inspirational nonetheless.

    There are many advantages to living in central Paris. Nearly the entire ville de Paris is an outdoor museum of architecture. There is the dense, irregular urbanization of the ancient Marais, a relic of the pre-Hausmann city, as well as walks along the well planned Champs d’Elysee toward Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe on the newer 19th Century boulevards created by the master-planner.

    Everything is so close that there is no need for either car or transit. The classroom is a 15 minute walk. This small section of Paris is a model for walkability. Yet this does not, however, necessarily translate into the social connections advocates of walkability suggest. I took a survey in Montorgueil, another busy pedestrian quarter, for a few days. Out of more than 5,000 people who had stopped to talk to someone or were on cell phones, 80 percent were on the phone. This illustrates how technology has made it possible for us to interact more with those we have common interest, wherever they are, instead of being limited to those who just happen to be in geographical proximity.

    We also have to understand the ephemeral nature of the Parisian core. It is now more museum and place of “experience” than a thriving residential neighborhood. The center of the area – the 1st arrondissement (there are 20) – is a shadow of its former self in population. Today, the 1st arrondissement has 18,000 people, 80 percent below its 1861 figure of 90,000, and probably lower than the 1836 Paris core peak. The overall city has lost population as well, dropping from 2.95 million in 1921 to less than 2.2 million today, a decline on the order of some US central cities (such as Chicago).

    One reason: living in central Paris has its disadvantages. One of them is shopping. Perhaps no city has more grocery markets per capita than Paris. But they are so small that probably no city has less grocery square footage than Paris. It is quite an adventure. Not all stores carry the same products, which makes it necessary to go to more than one grocery store to fill the larder. Not surprisingly, such small stores prices have much higher prices than the supercenters – Carrefour, Auchan and other Wal-Mart lookalikes (though often larger) – that have located just outside the Boulevard Peripherique, the six to eight lane freeway that surrounds the city.

    Some of the Metro lines extend beyond the Boulevard Peripherique, allowing urban Parisians to take advantage of lower suburban supercenter prices. Suburbanites can also shop at supercenters on the second ring freeway (the A-86) and the third ring freeway (the “Franciliene”). It may not be as famous as Le Metro, but Paris possesses the best freeway system in Europe outside of the Dusseldorf-Essen (Rhine-Ruhr) area. But the stores are not permitted, by law, to be open on Sunday, which makes parking lots and adjacent streets so crowded on Saturdays that both employees and police are used to direct the traffic.

    The biggest surprise to many Americans would be the extent of the Paris suburbs. Many, especially in the urban planning community, have long deluded themselves and others into believing that Europe, unlike America, has no suburbs. The core of Paris is very small, with most of the monuments and museums that are of interest being within a less than five square mile area. The ville de Paris itself covers approximately 40 square miles. The suburbs extend outward for more than another 1,000 square miles, 25 times the area of the ville de Paris.

    So, yes Paris has suburbs, as does every big city in Europe. In fact, virtually all European urban growth in the last 40 years has occurred in the suburbs, while virtually all of the cores have either experience slow growth or lost population, much like the United States. The European suburbs continue to attract residents from the cities, and whatever gains are achieved by some core cities are the result of international migration, not domestic migration from suburbs to the cities.

    Overall more than 80 percent of Parisians live in the suburbs and exurbs. The ville de Paris has less than 2.2 million people, while the rest of the urban area has nearly 8 million people, according to the French national statistical agency (INSEE). Another 2 million people are included in the rural and exurban portions of the metropolitan area (the “aire urbaine”) which are the French equivalent of exurbs.

    There is also a perception – oft reported in the New York Times and other urban-centric media – that the suburbs of Paris are made up of poor people. Certainly, like many American cities, Paris has poor suburbs, particularly in the department of Seine-St. Denis, to the north of the city. This area has high rise public housing blocks that look every bit as decrepit as the mercifully demolished Robert Taylor Homes on the south side of Chicago. But most Paris suburbs are predominately middle class housing, just like in America. There are also some very wealthy areas, as we find in the periphery of our own metropolitan regions.

    For two months, the ville de Paris is an absolutely delightful place to live. But once my Parisian sojourn is over, I, for one, will be very happy to return home to the suburbs of St. Louis which may be duller, less colorful and historic than Paris, but far more comfortable and affordable for the experience of everyday living.

    For additional information, see the Paris Rental Car Tour at http://www.rentalcartours.net/rac-paris.pdf.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • How Houston Will Weather The Recession

    In the past year or so, traveling the various geographies of this country has become increasingly depressing. From the baked Sun Belt suburbs to the green Valhallas of Oregon and the once luxurious precincts of Manhattan, it is hard to find much cheer–at least from entrepreneurs–about the prospects for the economy.

    Until recently Texas, and particularly Houston, has been one of the last bastions of that great traditional American optimism–and for good reason. Over the past few years, Houston has outperformed every major metropolitan area on virtually every key economic indicator.

    Last year, the region was rated among the major metropolitan areas as the best place for everything from earning a living to college grads to manufacturing, according to such publications as Forbes, Business Week and Kiplinger’s.

    But the city that could may soon not. Like a couple of bad storms, the recession is barreling in from east and west, shutting off credit to even the most successful businesses. Just last month, Hanley Wood’s Builder ranked Houston the “healthiest” housing market in the nation. But when you get on the ground, things appear far less sanguine.

    Particularly hard hit has been the once-vibrant inner city condominium market, which has been attracting a whole new generation of young professionals to urban living. Now some condominiums, suggests developer Tim Cisneros, are being abandoned by younger workers who have become the prime victims of a contracting economy. As seen in other regions, others are turning to rentals as potential buyers fail to qualify even at Houston’s reasonable prices.

    However, the biggest problem facing Houston today revolves around the energy industry, which represents to this region of well over 5 million what finance does to New York. Already lower energy prices, along with the global slowdown, have taken a dent in job growth. Just last week, the Texas Workforce commission reported a 0.7% employment increase for the area in 2008, compared with a robust 3.5% the year before.

    Bill Gilmer, a veteran economist who covers energy for the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve, reports that proposed new taxes and regulations plus falling prices have started to decimate the domestic oil and gas industry. Over the past year, he reports the number of rigs in operation across the country dropped from 2,000 to some 1,300.

    The impact of this on Houston’s energy economy, Gilmer suggests, will be severe, and it will drag the region and much of Texas down with it. “We are talking about a Texas recession now without question,” he says. “I lived through the Jimmy Carter era before, and now it’s déjà vu.”

    Of course, some high-end jobs in energy will remain, particularly for those who work on massive new projects overseas, like in Saudi Arabia. Instead, the biggest hits will affect the production sector, which until recently was a prodigious creator of high-wage blue-collar jobs. Over the coming years, the production downturn could devastate places like western Texas, the Dakotas, Louisiana, California’s Kern County and anywhere else that produces American crude and gas.

    Indeed, it may turn out to be one of the great ironies that the Obama administration, which campaigned earnestly against our “dependence on foreign oil,” will in the end make us more so. Barring an unexpected shift toward nuclear power, it is hard to see how the country–given the administration’s stance–will produce enough energy to meet its need in the near or even mid-term without turning increasingly to the Saudis and others overseas.

    Of course, the Houston-centered domestic energy industry may not go quietly into the night. The D.C. correspondent for the Energy Compass, Bill Murray, expects a “battle royal” in Congress over climate change legislation this fall.

    Houston Mayor Bill White, who is running for the Senate in 2010, also seems ready to fight the anti-oil and gas prejudices of key administration insiders. Natural gas, he suggests, “has to be a big part of the future if [we] have any chance at all to have electric power that is affordable and cleaner.”

    It is critical to point out that White is not some Neanderthal GOP “ditto head” but a former assistant energy secretary under Bill Clinton, a one-time chairman of the Texas Democratic Party and a widely popular figure in majority non-white Houston. He has a long record championing energy conservation and alternative fuels, but he says he cannot embrace an inquisitional approach to his city’s signature industry.

    “There’s a difference,” he said, with obvious reference to the Democrats in Washington, “between mandating one kind of technology and reality.”

    Yet even if the green Torquemadas have their way, White thinks Houstonians will find a way to keep their city ahead of the country’s other urban sad sacks. Throughout the expansion of recent years, when other cities went on insane spending sprees, Houston has kept the cost of services low and focused on basic infrastructure. Critically, Houston is also among the few big cities that has streamlined its pensions for public employees.

    Houston may also benefit from its historical experience dealing with near-depression conditions. When energy prices collapsed after 1983, the region went through a decade-long recession. The city went from being one of the country’s busiest construction sites to being filled with empty “see-through” office buildings and expanses of foreclosed homes.

    Under another Democratic mayor, the revered Bob Lanier, Houston gamely recovered, without much help from Washington. Lanier and other Houston leaders drove to diversify the economy–particularly in medical services, international trade and manufacturing–by investing in basic infrastructure and keeping costs low.

    “We’ve already lived through one depression,” says local real estate investor David Wolff, who also serves as chairman of the region’s transit agency, Metro. “We have already learned humility, and we have learned how to prepare for the world when everything shifts under our feet.”

    So despite all the problems surrounding energy and the encroaching recession, Houstonians continue to be cautiously optimistic about their future.

    They still excel at all the hallmarks of a progressive economy, such as improving both road and rail transport, reforming the school system and working to expand new industries, such as medical services, that have not yet been targeted by the Obamamians.

    To be sure, Houston, which missed the Bush recession, is beginning to feel the pain during the new administration’s watch. But Houstonians long have displayed remarkable grit and creativity in the face of tough times. Having survived catastrophic energy price declines, several huge hurricanes and endless humid summers, Houston is still among the best bets to survive these tough times and come out, in the end, a strong winner.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • Transit Captures Little of Driving Decline

    Over the past year, transit ridership has risen and that is a good thing. At the same time, driving has declined, due to both higher gasoline prices and the economic downturn. Some analysts have implied that people are giving up driving and using transit instead. An analysis of just released transit and urban roadway usage indicates no such thing. During the fourth quarter, the transit increase from a year earlier represented just 0.7 percent of the driving decline. This is even lower than the 2 to 3 percent figures registered in the first through third quarters. Of course, the principal reason why people do not substitute transit for driving is that it is not available for the overwhelming majority of urban trips.

    The latest data is available at: http://www.demographia.com/ut-hwytr2008f.pdf.