Lol i am sure outside of houston people think this exactly. Media overblowing things as usual and people not realizing how huge houston is. Most of the city just got rained on with no flooding. The only parts that got screwed were the concrete parts in the sw mainly. You need trees not only to help with pollution, but for floods.
Its never not been great, don't let the outsiders **** with your head. We got better after Allison, stronger after Ike, now Harvey will make us stronger. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a drainage canal or two built in the future but regardless of the land we stand on Houston is the people. If you turn on your television right now you see the spirit of Houston in people going out of their own way to rescue people, citizens opening their homes and volunteering at shelters. I have two friends personally that are very well off and don't live in flood damaged areas but they haven't been home since Sunday because they took their seventy thousand dollar off road trucks and their fishing boat out to pull people out of dire situations. As I speak I'm headed to the M.O. Campbell Center in Aldine to do what I can for those people who were already living below the poverty line and have now lost it all. Instead of asking if Houston will be great again why not ask "how can I make Houston greater" and if the situation you see before you doesn't prompt you to action then Sir you are not being part of the solution.
Houston is great because of the people which is what I miss the most now living in Austin. They have shown this week what it means to be a Houstonian and those people aren't going anywhere.
I was volunteering at grb. It was crazy how much stuff they got. They had so many volunteers that people were just looking for things to do. Houston stepped up. I was driving around Houston yesterday and parts of it are devestated and I don't know if it's feasible for people to move back.
I'm not surprised at all. I saw this during Katrina when it didn't even directly effect Houston. Houston isn't perfect, but the number of caring people rivals any city I've been to.
Here's my concern. 20% of Harris County had flood insurance. We're talking about potentially hundreds of thousands who have lost their homes with no financial recourse. FEMA grants will give you at most $50,000 (and that's unlikely) which probably won't be close to sufficient to rehab a flooded house and make up for lost items. New Orleans lost people because entire neighborhoods were destroyed and it was impossible to get the money to rebuild them. There's no reason to think that won't happen again to parts of Houston. Now unlike New Orleans, Houston has a strong economic base to support the city but a successful recovery requires strong financial aid to rebuild AND a comprehensive flood management plan (including buying out flood prone areas), and stricter rules for new development. And yes we might even have to embrace zoning laws. It is insane that you can just buy a plot of land and slap some concrete and asphalt without question. There are neighborhoods that residents bought into that bordered huge swaths of prairie that served as natural flood protection. FEMA's flood risk analysis might have even tagged those neighborhoods as lower risk for floods (so no mandatory flood insurance) but then some developer comes along and just starts building around them and eventually the neighborhood has not only lost its natural flood protection but its subject to flood runoff from newer developments. But Houston needs to embrace flood management. Look at Miami, they've been adding pumps, raising streets, and updating building codes as a climate change strategy. The feds claim that current efforts have already bought Miami an extra 50 years before the oceans flood them. And as they keep devising new strategies, they'll adapt around rising oceans. Houston on the other hand is still the wild west with a flood strategy that dates back to the 40s. Lets get with the times, rebuild, and actually make an attempt to protect the city. Allison should've been the wake up call but hopefully Harvey serves as a catalyst for real action.
If local government officials and developers learn from their mistakes and look forward, it will be back better than ever.
Oil Companies are already diversifying. They are chemical companies and they own battery technology....investing in new tech.. This companies may want to slow down the move to EV, but they understand it will happen.....eventually.
Stupid post is utterly stupid. Houston is a dying city? FYI, Sishir, Houston is the only major city to never lose population in any 10 year census and is currently one of the fastest growing cities in the Country, easily projected to pass Chicago in the near future. Really dumb post.
I thought about starting a similar thread to this, but I stopped myself because I figured the backlash would be enormous. I think this certainly puts a damper on Houston's growth potential. If you're getting 100 year floods once a year and 500 year floods every 10 years, nobody is going to want to set up shop in your neighborhood. These risks are part of what has kept Houston so cheap and accessible for years, but everyone has their limits in terms of how many catastrophes they can stomach. Flooding is really the worst of the worst. Tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes. Give me any of those compared to a flood.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-i...is-equipped-to-recover-from-harvey-1504085403 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/business/economy/texas-hurricane-harvey-economic-impact.html
The development of Houston will certainly need to change and once the rescue phase is done there should be some hard questions asked about flood planning, zoning and developmental regulations.
Well, more like a shift from oil TO gas. When you plug in that electric car, you are fueling it with natural gas.
