Texas Surpasses New York, Becomes Nation's Second Biggest Economy

Texas moved past New York over the past decade to become the nation's second-largest economy, according to a USA Today examination of data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

"Texas (GDP) notched one of the biggest increases in size in a half-century, surpassing $1 trillion in annual economic output," the USA Today article said.

According to the article, Texas' $1.2 trillion 2010 GDP represented a 26.8-percent increase since 2000.

Though California retained its first-place ranking as the state with the largest economy, the article indicated that California's share of the national economy, which peaked in 1990, shrank faster than all but three states from 2000 to 2010. Noting the growth of Texas, USA Today suggested the Lone Star State may soon challenge California for the top spot.

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So, What's Wrong with Lemmon Avenue?

Removing San Francisco's Central Freeway

To the average observer, it would seem to be very hard to divert the auto traffic enough to make Lemmon Avenue a pleasant thoroughfare for pedestrians. To the average drive, any attempt to do so would impede the flow of traffic and make it take longer to cut across town. Yet both have been convinced in other situations that it can be done.

During the years I spent in San Francisco I saw two major pedestrian improvements, neither which seems to have done much to impede traffic flow and made a world of difference for pedestrians and neighborhoods.

The first was the replacement of the double tiered Embarcaderro Freeway with The Embarcaderro, a lively bicycle, walking and pedestrian street that extends from the Ferry Building at Market Street to Fisherman's Wharf. Soon after the Market Street Railway tracks were extended from the Ferry Building, along the Embarcaderro to Fisherman's Wharf. That's right, two layers of freeway were successfully replaced with a boulevard without resulting auto traffic jams.

The second was the replacement of the Central Freeway with Octavia Boulevard, which now includes lanes for bikes and pedestrians, and yes, cars.

Before Octavia Boulevard, the Central Freeway emptied directly onto a San Francisco neighborhood busy with pedestrians.

Car-Free on New York's Park Avenue

Of the two, Lemmon Avenue is probably closer to the example of Octavia Boulevard, although may be ahead of the game because there is no freeway on ramp leading directly onto it. According to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, the Octavia Boulevard project has delivered a transportation facility that provides neighborhood access to a regional freeway while providing an attractive public space.

The biggest difference may be a large amount of retail along Lemmon Avenue. That however brings more pedestrians, which makes the improvements all the more critical. Part of those improvements will be to begin to rebuild the retail into sidewalk-oriented storefronts with parking more condensed or in the rear of buildings to limit auto traffic turning on and off of Lemmon Avenue.

The short of what's wrong with Lemmon Avenue is that it's unfriendly, unattractive and worse, dangerous. As it exists, it's the result of years of misguided traffic planning that focused on the movement of cars, in some cases completely disregarding the existence of pedestrians. It's the result of suburban traffic planners who thought not of living in Dallas neighborhoods, but of making it easy to drive through them. It's also obvious not one ounce of thought was given to building a thoroughfare that added to the attractiveness of its location.

Today more than at anytime in recent memory, Dallas is a place where demand for housing is increasing. There will still be a need for others to pass through, but not at the expense of safety or aesthetics to the residents. Today we understand that a great city must have arteries that take into consideration a variety of transportation forms including bicycles, foot traffic, buses and automobiles. The businesses along those routes must also consider multiple routes of pedestrian entity.

Experience shows, it won't stop traffic. New York City is a prime example. Multiple acres of roadway have recently been completely closed off to traffic, including areas of Times Square without much impact on traffic flow. It's made New York a better place to live.

Let's try it. Close Lemmon Avenue for a car-free day and see what happens. It may just turn out to be no big deal. Cars will find alternative routes and patterns will change without much prodding (Hey, it worked on Park Avenue). In the long-run, closing it off to traffic won't be necessary. Auto traffic is part of the urban mix, but so are parking bump outs, safety barriers, bike lanes and wider sidewalks.

Rethinking and Rebuilding Lemmon Avenue will help do the same for Dallas.

The Image and Ideas of Dallas

Steam Engine in Grapevine, Texas

I arrived in Dallas in the early part of 2010 and was greeted by some snow. That was the first preconceived notion about the region that was broken for me.

I moved here with my partner from Brooklyn. I was concerned people in the South would have some animosity to New Yorkers- its that one cover of New York Magazine, which I think featured Newt Gingrich the on the cover, with the headline WHY AMERICA HATES NEW YORK. With that I suggested we say we hailed from Pittsburgh, the city we lived in prior to Brooklyn.

Eventually I got around to saying Brooklyn. It was easier that backtracking and explaining the last two years that followed our time in Pittsburgh-- in the capital of the world. It was pretty hard anyway given the license plate was still from New York and the back of the car said Bay Ridge Honda.

Compared to New York, or even Pittsburgh, we figured there wasn't much of a city in Dallas. Sure there were skyscrapers, but you couldn't really walk around or use public transit. With that we figured if we must drive, it may be wise to find a somewhat walkable suburb and at least limit travel time to my partner's work near the airport. We found Grapevine, Texas.

There was always some chance we would move again, but the four beasts that came along made it hard to find a rental, at least one in a place we would feel comfortable living. So we bought a house. The size of course made it attractive-especially compared to the 700 square foot apartment in Brooklyn.

On one of the first days here I heard the sound of a steam train. This was familiar to me as I grew up in a town with a steam train, however the sound of the train came a bit later. It's more accurate to say there was the rusting hulk of a steam engine that sat at the local landmark known as the Horseshoe Curve. For me, and many others in the town, it represented a glorious and prosperous past. Altoona wasn't a rust-belt city exactly-it hadn't been as hard hit as the towns with mills, like Johnstown and Pittsburgh. But it was always clear downtown and elsewhere that things weren't what they used to be.

Then one day came the inspiration and funding to make the old rusting hulk of metal run again. That they did, although it didn't last long before the boiler blew and the engine was removed from public view.

That was the background for me of hearing this steam engine in my new town of Grapevine. Exploring more, I discovered they also had a nice train station and the trains, while not always powered by steam, made regular runs to the Fort Worth Stockyards. Grapevine has two things Altoona didn't have, a working steam engine and a viable Main Street.

Altoona was something I left long ago, however and the infatuation with Grapevine began to dissipate. It never was an infatuation exactly, rather a best option at the time. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live, and perhaps the best suburb in the region as far as being a distinct, somewhat walkable place. The thing is, I didn't come directly from Altoona to Grapevine. I have spent 20 years in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and San Francisco in between. After a little more than a year here, the trips to Dallas, and to some extent Fort Worth, became so frequent, and the longing for a more urban environment so strong, it became apparent that the thing to do was move.

This is the point where this blog begins.