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Is your state a Talent Migration Loser?

January 25, 2012 by Jim Russell
with 130 views
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If people vote with their feet, then Texas is a loser ... in the world of higher education. A journalist for the Washington Post crunched the numbers of the high school graduate college migration. The worst "brain drain" is in New Jersey. Texas is a distant second.There are a bunch of tasty data morsels in this blog post. There's a link... [read more]

Rebuilding Galveston, Texas As An Affordable, Sustainable Community

December 1, 2011 by Kaid Benfield
with 119 views
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   Three years ago, Hurricane Ike wiped out much of Galveston, Texas, including over 500 affordable homes administered by the city’s Housing Authority.  Faced with the task of starting over, the Authority began to rethink how it might improve upon its old public housing model. With the help of McCormack Baron Salazar, a... [read more]

Rick Perry, Texas Migration and Voting With Your Feet

August 17, 2011 by Jim Russell
with 98 views
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I reluctantly throw my hat in with all the analysis of Rick Parry's Texas jobs miracle. I take issue with the recycling of the positive migration story. Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) riding the "vote with their feet" meme:I’ve read a lot of blog posts lately painting Texas as a low benefit, low Medicaid, not so great system of public... [read more]

How To Transform Suburban Ghost-Towns Into Something Better

June 14, 2011 by Kaid Benfield
with 258 views
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    Jamestown Mall, 16 miles north of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, is an environmental disaster.  Built on farmland in an area rich with environmentally sensitive fields and floodplains, and completely automobile-dependent, it was built in 1973 – the heyday of shopping-mall speculation – as leapfrog sprawl, in... [read more]

Weather as a Migration Prediction Tool

April 24, 2011 by Jim Russell
with 49 views
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People should move from states with high unemployment to ones with relatively low unemployment. One major exception to that rule is amenities migration. Why one couple moved from hip Western Washington to struggling Colorado:"We moved here mostly because we hated the weather up there. It rains all the time," said Christina, 21, who will... [read more]

Texas is studying a tax on the number of miles you drive

January 13, 2010 by Chris Bradford
with 222 views
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News to me:  Texas will study a tax on miles driven: If you don't like gasoline taxes, here's an alternative: a tax on the number of miles you drive in a year. The Texas Transportation Commission has directed a fresh study of the idea, and it is not alone.  There are pilot projects in other states and nationally to gauge... [read more]

E-Krete the New Green Concrete

July 26, 2009 by Linda Rembowski
with 664 views
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Tyler is the first city in the State of Texas to use a new type of overlay called E-Krete for roads, shoulders and runways. Created, manufactured and distributed by Mississippi based PolyCon Manufacturing, city engineers say it will cut costs and improve overall quality of streets. E-Krete is an extremely durable polymer composite... [read more]

Environmentalists should advocate water pricing, not conservation campaigns

July 11, 2009 by Chris Bradford
with 114 views
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Environment Texas is lobbying City Council to increase its water conservation budget by one-third.  We're in a severe drought, you know.  Just like we were last year.We're also in a recession.  The city has no spare change lying around.  Why, it's even offering an on-line budget "simulator" so ordinary citizens... [read more]

Downtown Dallas Block to be Built from Sustainable Crowdsourcing

May 29, 2009 by Ari Herzog
with 883 views
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About two months ago, we read about a sustainable design competition called Re:Vision Dallas.Re:Vision asks the question: "What if one entire city block served as the model for sustainable design for the world?" The bigger question: "How would you create this building block?"Re:Vision Dallas is an opportunity to transform one "Big D"... [read more]

Wasted opportunity

May 18, 2009 by Chris Bradford
with 105 views
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Stassney between South Congress and I-35 is apartment-complex city.  Perhaps a half-dozen giant apartment complexes line one half-mile stretch.  None is older than four or five years. These are the standard suburban set up.  A collection of three-story walk-ups with open breezeways, a pool, a one-story... [read more]

Do Roads Pay For Themselves: Texas Says "No"

May 15, 2009 by Alex Ihnen
with 301 views
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We must continue to talk about the true cost of our transportation options. Here in Missouri there is no direct user fee for using a road so it seems to be "free". Many view roads as simply a sunk cost, after all we must have roads, right? But do we need the roads we have? Can we afford them? What are the opportunity costs of building... [read more]

First, figure out how much parking you can build

May 14, 2009 by Chris Bradford
with 133 views
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Austin's consultants are turning out reports faster than I can digest them. ROMA's proposal for a permanent density bonus program downtown is worth a read.  The ultimate recommendation -- make residential developments pay bonuses for extra floor space -- is a bad one.  But the report contains some interesting... [read more]