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Originally Posted by
ghettopalmetto
Well, I think you're one of the few who is saying that Houston is "successful". So let's leave that alone for a moment.
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Respondents to this year's survey for The List of the Largest Houston-Area Commercial Building Contractors reported billings for 2013 that were on average 38 percent higher than in 2012. The List publishes in the May 9 edition of the Houston Business Journal.The increasing demand will likely have a positive impact on most companies in the industry, provided that they can hire enough people.
"Growth in Houston is quickly depleting the available workforce to support the industry," Steve Mechler, division president of Balfour Beatty Construction, noted when asked about the most important challenge the industry is currently facing. "Acquiring and training qualified professionals will be critical to meet the growth demands of our business."
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Texas is killing it.
It dominated the recession, crushed the recovery, and in a new analysis of jobs recovered since the downturn, its largest city stands apart as the most powerful job engine in the country -- by far.
The ten largest metros have recovered 98 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, on average. But Houston, the first major city to regain all the jobs lost in the downturn, has now added more than two jobs for every one it lost after the crash. That's incredible.
I guess I don't understand what your definition of success is...cuz that sounds like they're doing something right. I mean if Detroit had even a few of the growth numbers that Houston has, people would be dancing in the streets around here. We can have a conversation about if it's sustainable or if they are setting themselves up for failure...but that can be said about any boom town, anywhere, ever.
of course then there's this:
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According to one recent Rice University study, Census data now shows that Houston has now surpassed New York as the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse metropolis.
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Even as Houston has continued to advance outwards, the region has added more multiunit buildings over the past decade than more populous New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.
So, how exactly is Houston not successful?
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If sprawl is not problematic to Metropolitan Detroit, would you say that the physical layout of the area is the most efficient for purposes of tax collection and delivery of services? If so, I'd like to know why the Detroit area is flagging when compared to large metropolitan areas across the country, or even within the Great Lakes region.
Its incredibly inefficient, but that isn't what he was saying was it? Pontiac and Metro detroit are shitholes because it sprawled for no reason. Sprawl didn't make it shitty. Unnecessary sprawl did. It's flagging because we have been in a recession bordering on depression for 15 years as the region is almost entirely dependent on a shrinking industry and overbuilt due to cheap money, provincialism, not an insignificant amount of racism, huge amounts of denial, and insanely bad planning
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Is it strictly a function of jobs? If that's the case, is it the types of jobs that are available? Or is it that would-be employees can't get to the jobs that are available? And if jobs are the reason, how is it that one city [[Pontiac) can remain so down-and-out while it's neighbors [[Auburn Hills, the Bloomfields) can be relatively prosperous at the same time.
It's a function of jobs. We have depression level unemployment here, especially in the low/no skill population. There is no job going unfilled for lack of worker. Solve that and the region wouldn't be a shit hole. But places like Houston...which is a brutally ugly sprawly place I wouldn't choose to live... show it's not about "sprawl" it's all about jobs.