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.
LOL. How so?
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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.
They are called parks.
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.
Sammamish and Duvall are in Snohomish County....they are exurban.....more rural....just now developing. Seattle and Bellevue are in King County. King County is mostly built up.
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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.
I didn't make it up. It doesn't surprise me that Austin is known as a model city in the rest of the country but not in TX.
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.
I was talking about its industry mix......nicely diverse.....state gov't, tech and some manufacturing............the envy of other cities.
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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.
We'll see.
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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.
You never want one industry to dominate your employment base like oil does in Houston [see Austin]. If oil decides to move, Houston is screwed. And its about to lose a major employer......Continental. A city's prospects can change overnite. |
