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chupacabra

T E X A S

Mar 27, 08 10:30 am  · 
 · 
aquapura

The sunbelt is growing and new england is shrinking. Hasn't that been happening for the past 30+ years? Tell me something I don't know.

Mar 27, 08 10:34 am  · 
 · 
Living in Gin

Watch how fast they shrink when they run out of water.

Mar 27, 08 11:16 am  · 
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evilplatypus

Theres a lack of sustainable water sources in the southwest and air conditioning takes 2/3 more energy than heating

Mar 27, 08 11:16 am  · 
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vado retro

I'm tired of this dirty old city.
Entirely too much work and never enough play.
And I'm tired of these dirty old sidewalks.
Think I'll walk off my steady job today.

Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montanna.
And gimme all I got comin' to me,
And keep your retirement and your so called social security.
Big City turn me loose and set me free.

Been working everyday since I was twenty.
Haven't got a thing to show for anything I've done.
There's folks who never work and they've got plenty.
Think it's time some guys like me had some fun.

Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montanna.
And gimme all I got comin' to me,
And keep your retirement and your so called social security.
Big City turn me loose and set me free.

Mar 27, 08 11:40 am  · 
 · 
aquapura

Oddly enough water is a bigger issue in Atlanta than in Phoenix/Las Vegas. Go figure.

Mar 27, 08 11:45 am  · 
 · 
lletdownl

also oddly enough, 2 of the fastest growing counties, and the fastest growing county in the country is in chicago...

just wish it was cook... which lost population again, despite the insane boom

Mar 27, 08 11:55 am  · 
 · 
Sarah Hamilton

I wish people wouldn't migrate into Texas. Call me hateful, but damnit they're screwing up the demographic!

Mar 27, 08 11:57 am  · 
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evilplatypus

Lletdown - a big part of the collar county boom is the hollowing out of the Chicago Ethnic Neighborhoods. The Polish, Eastern Europeans, Hispanics - are increasingly going straight to the burbs. Hanover Park is essentially a Hindu village. So the pattern is the same, growth is the same, but its just not in the city. The reason is simple - Jobs, Taxes. Thats the reason Texas, Pheonix and Joliet/ Napervile are booming.

Mar 27, 08 12:56 pm  · 
 · 
treekiller

these statistics are misleading. If there is a population of 2 and 4 more people move into town, the population growth is 200%. now if the population is already 1 million folks and 500,000 more people move there, the population growth is only 50%. which place had more growth???? the place with more people. damn news media and statisticians.

More people are born in chicago, then have moved to most of these podunk counties that have 'big growth'

Mar 27, 08 1:16 pm  · 
 · 
weAREtheSTONES

it kills me that people are still moving to FLA in large numbers. specially witha name like "Palm Coast"

"hey they have horrific natural disasters on the east coast just about every 2-3 years....lets move there"........ummmm helllllooooooo

Mar 27, 08 1:28 pm  · 
 · 
ichweiB

NASHVEGAS

Apr 13, 08 5:17 am  · 
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won and done williams

so much for florida/uli's contention of the rebirth of city cores. looks to me like most people want an acre of land in the middle of nowhere to quitely live out the rest of their quiet lives. (hey, but at least they got hd.)

Apr 13, 08 10:13 am  · 
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mantaray

exactly why I can't stand statistics, tk. Nice breakdown.

Apr 13, 08 4:21 pm  · 
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mantaray

Also, people are moving to Kenner, LA? Bullshit.

Apr 13, 08 4:21 pm  · 
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won and done williams

they did break it up both by percentage and net increase.

i'm not sure what's worse the people who are moving to these places or the progressives who refuse to acknowledge that the majority of americans still want to live in 3,000 sf of contractor luxury in the country. both seem equally delusional in my book.

Apr 13, 08 10:23 pm  · 
 · 
aquapura

I think it's a little myopic not to consider that these places are growing because that's where the job growth is. One needs to look at why businesses are moving to these areas. Clearly taxes and regulation are far less in places like TX, FL, GA than in NY, MA, PA, etc. Yet, people still will blame it on the McMansion or try to argue that it's only cow towns that saw small growth equalling big percentages. Last I checked Dallas, Atlanta and Houston were no cow towns and seeing growth that makes Chicago's look quite small.

Apr 14, 08 12:04 pm  · 
 · 
chupacabra

Texas has no state income taxes...companies tend to get treated well here...so, yep, there are jobs and winters are little to none.

Apr 14, 08 12:09 pm  · 
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won and done williams

i think it's far more complicated than low taxes and lack of regulation, aqua. retiring baby boomers? shifts in the economy from industry to service? a construction boom that produces its own cyclical growth? but one could also say that that construction boom subsequently produced the subprime mortgage crisis. suburban metropolitan growth decimated farmland and forests, making driving a necessity, putting major strains on infrastructure where there is no tax money to make improvements because of the low taxes. the economy is dependent on many different forces. the free market if taken to its extreme can also take down an economy as easily as it built it up.

Apr 14, 08 12:25 pm  · 
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farwest1

From an ecological perspective, the majority of the fastest-growing cities are also the ones that rely heavily on a car culture and air conditioning almost year round.

Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Phoenix are probably the least ecological places to live on the planet. Good luck fixing the global climate change problem.

Apr 14, 08 12:30 pm  · 
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le bossman

depends on your point of view, j. personally i feel the winters in the south are miserable.

Apr 14, 08 1:07 pm  · 
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chupacabra

air conditioning almost year round? maybe 6 months in Houston...substantial...but hardly year round.

Apr 14, 08 1:09 pm  · 
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aquapura

I don't disagree that the urban development of the much newer cities like Atlanta, Houston and Dallas are far less sustainable than older cities like NYC, Boston or Chicago. However, that's a different topic than quantifying growth. I live in a northern city for personal reasons of my own. So far as growth goes, I know exactly what would make a declining city like Detroit or Cleveland boom again. Make a business atmosphere second to none. There's a reason Toyota built a new plant in TX and not MI, and it's not the weather.

Apr 14, 08 1:25 pm  · 
 · 
farwest1

I'm not arguing against the economic advantages of these places. Real estate in Texas is cheap, with all that land. It drives all other costs down. I understand WHY companies, and therefore citizens, would want to move there.

But this is a different issue than sustainability. New York is one of the most sustainable places on earth from an individual carbon footprint perspective—and it has everything to do with density and sharing of resources such as transport.

In Houston/Atlanta/Dallas/Phoenix, conversely, many people are contributing to sprawl by building huge tract developments where each family can have its own little homestead and two cars and a chemically landscaped lawn and six to nine months of air conditioning for a 5000 sf home.

This is a problem. As architects, we need to be thinking up palatable models for creating density and shared resources that will be desirable to the average American and that don't contribute to sprawl.

Apr 14, 08 1:50 pm  · 
 · 
evilplatypus

The temperature differential between heating from 15 to 71 versus cooling from 90 to 71 is not being portrayed above ccorrectly - it takes far more energy to cool the air a few degrees, or rather pull out the heat and humidity. Insulated homes in the midwest use far less energy in the heating season than a similar home in Pheonix during the summer.

Plus the midwestern autums are really spectacular. Winter too - for a while.

Apr 14, 08 1:54 pm  · 
 · 
won and done williams

once again, you're oversimplifying, aqua. toyota's main technical center in the us is in ann arbor. why? strategic. it's located within throwing distance of the big three (has very little to do with taxes). toyota also has no manufacturing plants in michigan and relatively few suppliers. why? strategic as well. toyota has always been anti-union. that's not going to fly in michigan, so toyota has located all of its assembly plants and parts suppliers in the south. it works with their business model. (again, this has almost nothing to do with the role of state government and taxes.)

i will absolutely concede that states can do a lot to lure business, but simply lowering taxes and deregulating business is a dangerous and socially irresponsible way of doing it.

Apr 14, 08 2:06 pm  · 
 · 
le bossman

that said, the city of detroit will happily give away free land for the construction of new factories. and can you say renaissance zone? the successfull redevelopment of most of most of michigan's inner cities in the last decade has largely been the product of a limited suspension of taxes. not quite the same thing as what aqua is talking about.

Apr 14, 08 2:20 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

i'd be more interested in slow growing cities than the fastest. urbanity is not a race.

Apr 14, 08 2:25 pm  · 
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evilplatypus

no one will ever put a new factory in Michigan - its a rabid unionized territory that kills businesses. Michigan is a state that has done everything it can to drive its industry out. People - unions in their current form are dangerous and dont actualy help as much as they claim in the long run.

Apr 14, 08 2:56 pm  · 
 · 
farwest1

I'd agree, puddles, that it's better to live in a slow-growing city.

But as an architect, I feel like I have to think about these fast-growing cities. I'd love to collectively come up with a model for growth that Americans could embrace, that didn't create sprawl. And all of these fast-growing cities are characterized by just that: sprawl.

Apr 14, 08 3:47 pm  · 
 · 
le bossman

yes, nobody would ever do this, due to it's rabid unionized state

http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/projects/hmi/default.asp?projID=hmi

http://www.architectureweek.com/2002/0102/environment_1-2.html

only a couple examples, but lot's of people build stuff in mi

Apr 14, 08 3:53 pm  · 
 · 
evilplatypus

[url=http://www.new-federalist.com/eiw/public/2004/2004_30-39/2004-37/pdf/38-39_36_ecomich.pdf
]job losses[/url]




Unionized workforce by state




Apr 14, 08 4:12 pm  · 
 · 
le bossman

i'm not saying its not unionized, but it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that no one will ever put up a new factory in michigan. i spent three years in college working for an erector putting up factories all over the state.

Apr 14, 08 4:25 pm  · 
 · 

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