But if you're going to attribute jobs to high oil and gas prices before the recession, you should expect a crash in prices to produce more unemployment.
It did produce more unemployment......TX started in the low 4s....in March, 2010, it's rate was 8.2%:
google.com
Michigan started in the high 7's and low 8's, and now its unemployment rate is well over 10.
Don't look now, but I think you're abandoning your initial position.
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There is very little land left that is green and we want to keep that land green. However, housing prices started climbing well before there was a growth mgmt plan in place. Strong population growth and limited land availability typically lead to higher prices.
I've been there and recall seeing lots of green spaces.
Sammamish WA pop 34K
Fall City pop 1638.
Novelty pop 11K 8 miles from Redmond - home of MSFT, sitting in a river valley.
Duvall WA pop 4616 14 miles from Redmond, ditto.
Or look at a map of Everett and look east at all the flat developable land along the Snohomish river, follow it upstream. There's loads of land out there that could be developed. Its a long way east before you get to land thats too mountainous to build on.
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Most cities in TX would do well to grow as intelligently as Austin has.
Based on what? Because California transplants like it better there than other places in the state?
If I need to explain it to you, then you don't want to know, do you Brumar?
Sure I want to know. Thats why I asked. Don't make excuses for making stuff up.
Austin has a less humid climate than Houston, has a major university right in the city so the population has lots of college aged kids with bars and night spots (and the city is small enough the university can impact the city), the country around it is hilly and attractive. I can see the attraction. But as for "liberal smart growth" ... baloney.
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What Hollywood is to entertainment, Wall Street is to finance, Texas, and especially Houston, is to energy. There's a vast pool of companies and intellectual and financial capital there. As long as they maintain a friendly business climate it will stay that way.
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Houston is the U.S. energy headquarters and a world center for virtually every segment of the petroleum industry.
Forty-eight percent of the region's economic base employment is related to energy.
The Houston metropolitan area has more than 3,000 energy-related establishments, including more than 500 exploration and production firms, more than 150 pipeline transportation establishments and hundreds of manufacturers and wholesalers of energy-sector products.
This concentration of oil expertise and experience has meant a large number of relocations to Houston nearly every year since Shell Oil left New York for Houston in 1971. Energy firms who have relocated in recent years include:
Heartland Oil and Gas Corporation relocating its corporate headquarters from Denver
CITGO relocating its corporate headquarters from Tulsa
Schlumberger relocated its corporate headquarters from New York
Parker Drilling Co. relocating its headquarters from Tulsa
Chevron and Phillips combining worldwide chemical operations into a 50/50 joint venture based in Houston
ConocoPhillips choosing Houston as headquarters after the merger
GlobalSantaFe relocating its corporate headquarters from Dallas
Noble Affiliates Inc. moving to Houston from Ardmore, OK
Direct Energy relocated its headquarters from Stamford, CT
Houston is home to 43 of the nation's 144 publicly traded oil and gas exploration and production firms, including 10 of the top 25; six of the remaining 15 have subsidiaries, major divisions or other significant operations here.
The Texas Gulf Coast has a crude operable capacity of 4.081 million barrels of refined petroleum products per calendar day—85.9 percent of the Texas total and 23.2 percent of the U.S. total.
The logistics for moving much of the nation's petroleum and natural gas across the country are controlled from Houston. Twelve of the nation’s top 20 oil pipelines have corporate or divisional headquarters or ownership interests in Houston, controlling 59.2 percent of U.S. capacity.
Fifteen of the nation's top 20 natural gas transmission companies have corporate of divisional headquarters in Houston, controlling 79.5 percent of U.S. capacity.
In July 2008, the Houston MSA held 28.9 percent of the nation's jobs in crude petroleum and natural gas extraction (47,000 of 162,800), 13.2 percent of jobs in support activities for mining (42,900 of 325,400).
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