Sunbelt City Transformation?

[Prahaboheme]

Why is San Diego always so uniquely overlooked on these forums? It is already ahead of the aforementioned cities, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, in the urban department, has a higher population density, better rail transit and connections (although it needs a more extensive streetcar network especially to Uptown / Hillcrest area), and as already mentioned, cannot sprawl anywhere. The downtown East Village neighborhood is going through a total transformation at this very moment, and its clear this will push development into the older, ethnic neighborhoods to the east, Barrio Logan, City Heights, etc. The last remaining parking lot in the entire Gas Lamp district is making way for a new luxury hotel.

It also surprises me that New Orleans has not been mentioned, as it is going through a total transformation at the moment.

[ATXboom]

Which cities have the highest office rental costs, apartment rental costs, home purchase costs in the core? This should reflect demand.

[mello]

The question with LA/SD is will the quality job growth be robust enough to truly drive urban transformation? In Dallas and Houston you have at least 8 million square feet of office space being added every year to each metro area. Here in Southern California the amount of people moving here for new jobs is paltry in comparison as is the % population growth.

Why people don't pay attention to SD even though it has had one of the biggest downtown transformations in the last 15 years along with Seattle, Miami, Austin, and now LA? I would say its because we are in the shadow of our big buddy to the north and haven't built any ultra tall skyscrapers due to the 500 foot height limit and we haven't been building any new transit. Also Prahaboheme I love my city but not sure our downtown is ahead of Atlanta as far as being a complete urban experience the sheer number of office workers they have blows us away. I guess we have a better quality urban environment than downtown Miami but obviously we are blown away there in the skyline department.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by AviationGuy

I think some SSP'ers may not be aware that Houston, Dallas, and Austin are growing both upward and outward (including a lot of highrise residential as well as mid-rise). They should monitor the city development threads more closely. It seems unfortunate that suburban sprawl in those metros continues unabated, but as has been emphasized repeatedly here, the general population doesn't live solely to satisfy the desires of SSP members. It's what a lot of Americans want (or can afford) all over the country.

I think most of us are aware that most cities are growing upward and outward.

And there's a big variation on how much cities sprawl, reducing that should of course be a priority, and cities (i.e. regions) will obviously be judged around here by how responsible they are in that regard.

[RC14]

Honestly, I think all of these sunbelt cities have a ton of potential.

Someone said that Miami could become the New York of the south. I think the same thing could happen with Houston, Dallas or Atlanta. All of these cities have incredible stats when you look into them.

Even Phoenix, although it is probably the least likely to develop a dense urban core anytime soon, has a ton of potential. I know the economic down turn really hurt Phoenix but before that it was on track to become the fourth largest city in America. (I'm not sure if that is still the case.) It is only a matter of time before the valley of the sun starts to become a large urban city. They have the population and growth they just need smarter growth. I don't think Phoenix will ever be a centralized city but I could see it becoming a large, decentralized, urban area at some point.

L.A. is Phoenix except many decades ahead.

Atlanta has a strong urban backbone which will allow it to develop into a well built mega city.

Houston and Dallas have the job growth to create and support increased demand.

Miami, as I mentioned before, will always have more demand than supply for coastal real estate. Miami will always be able to attract immigrants and transplants from other parts of the country.

[memph]

I think Houston will be interesting to watch. Yes, there are still a lot of vacant lots in the East Loop but Houston, like many sunbelt cities has a weak downtown and the centre the action is in a quadrant outside downtown.

For Houston it's a couple miles West, LA as well, Atlanta it's North and East, Dallas it's NW.

Older cities might have a quadrant pattern too, but downtown is more of a focal point with the favoured quadrant being more of a secondary area of reinvestment.

Also with Houston, just in general, development patterns seem more chaotic. You're more likely to see older housing becoming abandoned and new housing being built in the same neighbourhood. Suburbanization of poverty is pretty advanced there too, and occurring in every direction, even in the West side (beyond Uptown and the Villages). Although the outermost suburbs are still booming (I think?) with relatively little poverty, they seem to make up an increasingly narrow and far flung ring of prosperity. Meanwhile the area around Uptown is solidifying its status as the centre of wealth in Houston.

Even if the desirable parts of Houston a few miles West of Downtown are pretty suburban still today, there's no room to expand this area of prosperity onto greenfields like say in the prosperous northern suburbs of Dallas, so it's going to be either expanding through infill or gentrification of areas like the Heights and maybe even N and E loop.

What makes people put Dallas ahead of Houston for urban transformation? More light rail?

[soleri]

Originally Posted by RC14

Even Phoenix, although it is probably the least likely to develop a dense urban core anytime soon, has a ton of potential. I know the economic down turn really hurt Phoenix but before that it was on track to become the fourth largest city in America. (I'm not sure if that is still the case.) It is only a matter of time before the valley of the sun starts to become a large urban city. They have the population and growth they just need smarter growth. I don't think Phoenix will ever be a centralized city but I could see it becoming a large, decentralized, urban area at some point.

L.A. is Phoenix except many decades ahead. .

I'm not sure if this threads of this kind allow cosmic pessimism but allow me to suggest that a city - Miami - poised to sink into the Atlantic Ocean by the end of the century is really something you want to celebrate. New Orleans leads by unfortunate example in this way. By the same token, a city like Phoenix living on borrowed time due to increasing water insecurity (not to mention an urban form that is so flaccid that you could build single family houses around its downtown and people would clap their hands that the boom has finally returned).

You can't isolate the most epic challenge facing humankind - climate change - from predictions of future urban splendor. At some point, you have to account for something that is already a big black cloud on the horizon. Obviously, it's not just the Sunbelt cities facing this existential threat. But it is in the Sunbelt where too much or too little water will be most pronounced.

Just curious if anyone is concerned about this....

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Prahaboheme

It also surprises me that New Orleans has not been mentioned, as it is going through a total transformation at the moment.

New Orleans is an old line commercial river city - not really sunbelt...

Dallas is somewhat impressive, has good numbers, and currently seems to have more shine than Atlanta. I'd hand it the prize.

Don't have much experience on the ground in Houston.

Miami and L.A. are sort of in the "other" category, especially L.A.

[Prahaboheme]

Categorically speaking, New Orleans is in the Sunbelt and applies to this discussion. Certainly its location along the Mississippi in lower LA has had a major impact on its culture and environment.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Prahaboheme

Categorically speaking, New Orleans is in the Sunbelt and applies to this discussion. Certainly its location along the Mississippi in lower LA has had a major impact on its culture and environment.

just curious, why do you think that?

I think of sunbelt - i think of the secondary rise of cities that began to have a secondary boom at mid-century and beyond due to the help of specific demographic and technologic changes.


http://upload.wikimedia.org

new orleans was an outlying commerical city that saw it's rise in the 19th century. the fact that it is in the south is not relevant to this discussion, in my opinion, as there are vast swaths of the south that i would never describe as sunbelt, such as the delta. i also do not consider memphis to be a sunbelt city.

[RC14]

I could be wrong but I thought "the sunbelt" referred to the part of the country with warmer weather. California, Arizona, Texas and the south including North and South Carolina.
I have wondered about Las Vegas San Francisco and Honolulu?

[Prahaboheme]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

just curious, why do you think that?

I think of sunbelt - i think of the secondary rise of cities that began to have a secondary boom at mid-century and beyond due to the help of specific demographic and technologic changes.


http://upload.wikimedia.org

new orleans was an outlying commerical city that saw it's rise in the 19th century. the fact that it is in the south is not relevant to this discussion, in my opinion, as there are vast swaths of the south that i would never describe as sunbelt, such as the delta. i also do not consider memphis to be a sunbelt city.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt

[mhays]

Originally Posted by soleri

I'm not sure if this threads of this kind allow cosmic pessimism but allow me to suggest that a city - Miami - poised to sink into the Atlantic Ocean by the end of the century is really something you want to celebrate. New Orleans leads by unfortunate example in this way. By the same token, a city like Phoenix living on borrowed time due to increasing water insecurity (not to mention an urban form that is so flaccid that you could build single family houses around its downtown and people would clap their hands that the boom has finally returned).

You can't isolate the most epic challenge facing humankind - climate change - from predictions of future urban splendor. At some point, you have to account for something that is already a big black cloud on the horizon. Obviously, it's not just the Sunbelt cities facing this existential threat. But it is in the Sunbelt where too much or too little water will be most pronounced.

Just curious if anyone is concerned about this....

Absolutely, there will be huge effects. Even a few feet of ocean level rise would wreak havoc on much of Florida for starters, and levees wouldn't cover the whole state. Drought conditions will affect water tables and river flows, though Phoenicians(?) say the city itself isn't having a problem. Some areas will get more precipitation. Some more storms.

The common theme will be "different." Crops, trees, and fish that do well in yesterday's climate might not if rain drops 15% and temps go up a few degrees. Ski areas are obviously doing a lot of planning as things have already changed substantially for many of them. In my region that translates to problems with the mountain snowpack that we rely upon melting slowly to create the drinking water we need for the dry summer. And so on.

For cities, this will impact where people want to live, and the financial costs of doing so, which will affect population trends. Much like every penny creates a clear, predictable change in cigarette sales, population migration is affected by every few bucks in the AC bill for example.

[Obadno]

If I may interject,

Phoenix is actually densifying, but it has so much open land within itself from decades of Hop scotch development that there is a long way to go before it has to make any real verticl progress.

Our downtown has gone from a virtual ghost town to having like 5 or 6 new midrise buildings with 2 more on the way, a Downtown college cmapus, new convention center and hipster art scene in about 7 or 8 years.

I know not much, but considering it used to be Bums and warehouses not bad.

Just the fact that we are getting 3-10 story apartment buildings instead of single family homes 50 miles from downtown (although we are still getting some) is a big deal!

Part of this is the post 2008 lifestyle paradigme has changed to prefer...slightley... more urban lifestyles and the fact that most (obviously there are exceptions) people will only deal with about 45 minutes to an hour of a comute to work.

The other thing thats happening is the City itself is doing a very bad job attracting people and buisness to locate centrally, Buisnesses and new construction always go to the two near by suburbs of Scottsdale and Tempe, Tempe alone has like 2 million squarefeet of offices under construction, and phoenix hasnt had a new office building in 6 years (downtown). That is more of a city leadership issue than an issue endemic of the entire metro region.

But Id agree Phoenix is basically little Los Angeles (people hate to admit that) but its true, there are about 4 or 5 towns that have all grown together, all of wich could have been the "main" city, it happend to be Phoenix instead of Tempe, or Glendale. we are just now hitting the Point LA was hitting in maybe the 70's or 80's We have just began to hit our physichal boudries weather it be indian reservations or mountain preserve.

So when I am Bedridden at 85 I may see us get truley dense!

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by bobdreamz

Shawn? in all honesty? Florida really does have a "educated upper/middle class people with a "white collar / knowledge economy / STEMs" population though! They just move away to cities that pay better in other parts of the US.
Is it fair to say that Florida and it's "politicians" are still stuck on "tourism"? I happen to know a lot of people here in central Florida who work for Lockeed Marrieta, Gruman, etc. The knowledge is here in this state.

Sorry about that bob, I think I am guilty of too often just relying on "brand perception" without doing any real research. I'd get in heaps of trouble doing that for clients at work, I shouldn't do it here on SSP.

That being said, I see this type of article about Southern Florida rather frequently, and I see it in my industry publications too.

[chris08876]

I think its arrogant to think that white-collar/stem fields are the way to go and screw everything else. I don't want to sound hypocritical as I'm a STEM graduate, but we must realize that highly educated individuals that live prosperous lives and that contribute to the growth of the state are not all college graduates. Success and knowledge does not come from having a measly paper or being spoon fed ideology and facts. While having people that graduate college is nice, its not the sole indicator of a successful region nor is an industry in tech which can crash very easily and is vulnerable as a economic niche. At least thats how I interpreted the message of the article.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Prahaboheme

Why is San Diego always so uniquely overlooked on these forums? It is already ahead of the aforementioned cities, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, in the urban department, has a higher population density, better rail transit and connections (although it needs a more extensive streetcar network especially to Uptown / Hillcrest area), and as already mentioned, cannot sprawl anywhere.

Atlanta has better rail transit than San Diego.

[Prahaboheme]

Perhaps Atlanta has a better rail infrastructure than San Diego due to the 96 Olympics (although that is still debatable), but it is nowhere near as urban, and will never be.

[llamaorama]

Although the outermost suburbs are still booming (I think?) with relatively little poverty, they seem to make up an increasingly narrow and far flung ring of prosperity. Meanwhile the area around Uptown is solidifying its status as the centre of wealth in Houston.

The new suburban wealth is north Fort Bend/Katy and beyond and The Woodlands and northwestish of it. It's not been confined in the slightest otherwise you wouldn't see the massive corporate offices springing up in either. And it's super tacky $$$ suburbia in wholly unincorporated areas going up too. Out on the Katy prairie it's more Siena Plantation type stuff, in Montgomery Co it's large lot stuff around Magnolia or on the 59 corridor beyond Kingwood and points north. Everyone wants to be the next woodlands with regards to some kind of town center anchoring a master planned sprawl. Greater Houston is just out of control going to be a monster. Already on the north side I think the Grand Parkway is a bit inward of where there are soon to be real traffic problems and I can actually see some kind of freeway being needed between Conroe and Magnolia as frightening as that sounds. Combine that with a freeway to College Station.

I like DFW's suburban pattern more. It seems more orderly and more resilient and I like that most of the suburb cities are officially cities which means they can apply urban planning to adapt to the challenges aging suburbs face. As far as growing to Oklahoma is concerned, that's a fun hyperbole; while definitely there will be a small tendril of exurbia up 75 to link with Denison/Sherman really its like 45 miles between McKinney and the Red River and you could fit a whole other metroplex in the space you have in between. But yeah DFW will be ginormous like Houston.

As for the forbidden city vs city in respect to population growth, who ends up bigger is a hard call. Houston's not quite as big as DFW but its growing a bit faster. But Houston is more swayed by oil and could loose a little if oil ends up flat out crashing which is the direction prices are in now; while Dallas is a diversified corporate hub that could take advantage of the improving American economy in general. Throughout history they've been neck and neck, this just seems like the universe moving its hand to ensure they remain nearly equals, lol.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Prahaboheme

Perhaps Atlanta has a better rail infrastructure than San Diego due to the 96 Olympics (although that is still debatable), but it is nowhere near as urban, and will never be.

Make your case, using solid logic and true premises.