COMMENT OF THE DAY: STRIKING AT OTHER ROOTS OF HOUSTON FLOODING 
“St. Augustine grass has a very shallow root system that barely reaches 2 inches into the soil. Beneath that root system is our typical thick clay gumbo soil that is very slow to drain moisture and more prone to let water run off into the storm sewer system. When you plant native grasses and plants, the roots reach down much deeper in the soil and fundamentally change the [bulk] composition of the soil. Instead of the thick gray clay gumbo soil, you get a much looser brown soil that does a much better job absorbing and holding water instead of letting it run off into the storm sewer system . . . Just imagine the amount of water that could be kept out of the storm sewer system if everyone replaced the St. Augustine in their front yard with native grasses and plants.” [Old School, commenting on Houston’s Sustainability Question; Fire Destroys Cleburne Cafeteria in the Middle of the Night] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: A HISTORICAL METHOD OF EXPANDING HOUSTON’S FLOODPLAINS 
“Another recent policy development is that subsidence is now taken very seriously (with massive infrastructure being built to put utility districts onto surface water from Lake Houston and the Trinity River). But it was a very, very big problem up until around 1990. So you had all this sprawling development inside of Beltway 8, and off of 1960, and out near West Oaks, and there wasn’t adequate on-site or off-site stormwater retention infrastructure that had been built — and that same development thereafter was sinking at a steady rate, so that any flood control infrastructure was becoming increasingly obsolescent for reasons other than simply rainfall rates and runoff.” [The Niche, commenting on Comment of the Day: Who Foots the Bill for Houston Floods] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHO FOOTS THE BILL FOR HOUSTON FLOODS 
“Since much of the development inside the Loop is done over existing impermeable surfaces, it would seem to me that the majority of the additional demand on our bayous is coming from the large greenfield production builders further upstream. My intuition is that the amount of building going on out there most likely dwarfs what’s occurring inside the Loop (can anyone find numbers on this?). And what’s really fueling all that development is the billions of federal, state, and local tax dollars going [toward] expanding and enlarging highway construction all over the place. By reducing the time/cost of commute, they serve as enormous incentives enabling building and selling more cheap houses further away from the employment centers closer to the city. In a nutshell, that is the sprawl Houston is famous for and I think the main source of our flooding woes. There’s no easy answer since we all want cheaper houses — but someone pays for that, somewhere.” [Build Up, commenting on Why Houston Keeps Flooding; Meet Photo Blog Purple Time Space Swamp] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HONORING THE SECRET FUNGAL AUTHOR OF THE HOUSTON SAGA 
“The toxic mold madness explains the entire history of our region. Think about it: the cannibal Karankawas on the Island of Doom, the ignominious and mysterious defeat of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the mass hallucination that Buffalo Bayou was a navigable waterway on which a major port could be constructed, the race for space, the Candy Man, Mattress Mack and the subsequent mattress obsession, Robert Durst, the tree holocaust, and so on. We should name toxic mold as the official mold of the City of Houston.” [Memebag, commenting on What Floated and What Didn’t by the Halstead Apartments at N. Braeswood and 610] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUILD UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERS BUILD UNTO YOU 
“For this city-wide Houston experiment of no zoning to work, it takes good judgment, responsible developers, people living by the golden rule, doing what’s right, loving thy neighbor, walking a mile in another man’s shoes (or zipcode!), however you get there. I mean that. And I love Houston because — shockingly — this mostly works. When it fails, laws do exist to establish a minimum standard we all live by; those minimum standards [get] called on because someone tried to circumvent the law and selfishly do whatever the hell they wanted anyway.” [G Rod, commenting on The Shakeup Around White Oak Music Hall’s Outdoor Stage] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TAKE CARE OF THE OTHER BURIALS BEFORE PUTTING I-45 IN THE GROUND 
“I don’t understand why people want to bury the Pierce Elevated. That seems like something to put onto the table after all the murders are solved and money starts to rain down from the sky. Can someone explain this to me? How could it possibly be practical to tear down this road?” [Commenter7, commenting on Defending the Pierce Elevated; The First Toucan Traffic Signal in Texas] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BOTH OPTIONS FOR DEALING WITH RUN-OF-THE-MILL HOUSTON TOXICITY 
“My wife, until last May, worked at a school very close to this (but [which] was not mentioned). The air pollution on normal days is so bad that my wife’s doctor suggested that if we wanted to have children that she should think about changing jobs.  . . .  Attention is only drawn to the problem when major events happen — but perhaps long term effects of living and working in the area are greater ([and] simply tolerated as business as usual). I have said it before, but it is worth mentioning: I called the TCEQ and many agencies during my wife’s time working over there about the pollution . . .  they informed me that the area has regularly violated EPA standards and my only option was to ‘vote for people who care about government regulation’ of said pollution. Sounds like a tough project!” [Anon, commenting on This Morning’s LyondellBasell Refinery Fire Put Out 19 Hours after Yesterday’s ExxonMobil Refinery Fire] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE JOBS WILL GO WHEREVER THE WIND BLOWS THEM 
“I think it has less to do with the location of high-paying jobs, and more [to do with] proximity to the Ship Channel and its pollution. If you look at wind pattern maps, all the historically least-desirable areas are where prevailing winds off the coast end up tending to blow pollution originating from the Ship Channel. The high-income jobs are located west of downtown because that’s where the high-income people wanted to live, not the other way around. This isn’t specific to Houston, either – the west side of most North American cities tends to be the more desirable side, owing to prevailing winds and the location of dirty industrial areas. Chicago is an excellent example — the south side being less desirable owing to its location downwind (south and east) of the massive stockyards that existed there a century ago.” [TMR, commenting on Comment of the Day: Breaking the Cyclical Expansion of the Donut of Despair] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BREAKING THE CYCLICAL EXPANSION OF THE DONUT OF DESPAIR 
“Nobody is suggesting that we go back to the old, post-war, car-centric way of developing. Even single family, suburban communities are now being built with something resembling walkability in mind. They have made the houses much more dense, and they have made efforts to link retail to the neighborhoods. But what we risk doing is creating donut cities: with a core of walkability, older suburbs that are not walkable, and a ring of new, sort-of-walkable suburbs. Worse than that, if we continue to starve those older suburbs of investment (on the idea that we don’t want to ‘throw good money after bad’ or whatever), we will create wealthy cores, poor old suburbs, and middle-class new suburbs. Still worse, if we allow this to happen, we will cause more sprawl, because middle class people won’t see the old suburbs as an option, so they’ll keep driving further and further out. At some point, like it or not, we will need to reinvest in those older suburbs – and it’s for the sake of building more sustainable, equitable cities.” [ZAW, commenting on Bellaire’s Hong Kong Chef Serves Last Customers; Sunbelt Cities Are Just Misunderstood; previously on Swamplot] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: STILL LONGING FOR THE COMMERCIAL COMPANIONSHIP OF DAYS GONE BY 
“I miss the billboards of my youth. I grew up in a world where the freeways were surrounded by them, and never thought much about it. Now that they are almost all gone, I realize they gave the city character. I don’t understand the hate for them.” [Memebag, commenting on Comment of the Day: What Keeps Houston Billboards Standing Tall] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT KEEPS HOUSTON BILLBOARDS STANDING TALL 
“If you only knew how much the city has gone through to reduce billboards. Their billboard ordinance was pioneering. Existing billboards in the city are under an abatement condition – if you take one down, you can’t replace it. However, many billboards are highly, highly profitable, and the industry has a formidable lobby to defend what they already have, and try to reinstate the ability to add billboards where they’ve been banned or removed. From a property rights perspective, sign regulation is already an iffy business. So while yes, most of us would like to see further reduction in billboards, please try to appreciate what’s already been done.” [Local Planner, commenting on City Inspector: Those Who Want You To Live In The Glass House Should Not Post 130-Ft. Signs] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LEASING THE SKY AND OTHER ACTS OF VANTAGE PRESERVATION 
“Only guarantee to protect your view is to buy the air rights. (Not sure it is possible, but you can buy mineral rights — why not air rights?) Maybe this will be a new trend in real estate, to protect and guarantee views. Otherwise, buy the land so you can determine what does and does not go up.” [HouCynic, commenting on Cosmopolitan’s Condo Association Preemptively Sued by Would-be Nextdoor Highrise Developer in Uptown] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT ’THERE’S NOWHERE TO PARK’ REALLY MEANS 
“People would rather circle for hours for a spot that is 3 ft. from the door they wish to enter than to: A) pay to park B) walk.
So please keep in mind, when someone says ‘there’s nowhere to park in the village’ what they mean is:
There’s nowhere within 3 ft. of my destination to park.
Of course, everyone knows where they can park, but the last thing they want to do is walk from their car to their destination.” [toasty, commenting on Shake Shack Will Take Over La Madeleine’s Rice Village Space] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT IS AND ISN’T RISING IN THE MEYERLAND FLOODPLAIN 
“Last night I rode my bike over to an area of Meyerland that I kept seeing listed in the Daily Demolition Report (this is the pocket just south of S. Braeswood, west of S. Post Oak). It was worse than I imagined. Many houses have been removed. Many others are still standing but vacant. A few have been rebuilt or are in the process of being rebuilt — these are all 2-story ‘McMansions’ and elevated. Visually, it’s a weird looking place. The new houses stick out because of their scale to start with, and putting them up on pedestals next to empty lots exaggerates the effect. When the floods come again, they will be surrounded by a giant McMoat.” [Memebag, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where Houston Stayed Underwater After the Memorial Day Flood] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE HOUSTON STAYED UNDERWATER AFTER THE MEMORIAL DAY FLOOD 
“Was there ever any kind of press writeup on why so many homes in Meyerland did not come back from this last flood? I’m saddened by all the vacant lots, and on some streets off Endicott, there are clusters of teardowns. Was insurance plus flood insurance essentially useless for all of those homeowners? Or was it the new city building requirements? Genuine questions, because I’ve been in the area 30 years and this [flooding] seems to have been so much more devastating than Allison (and Ike).” [Heather, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: As Is, Where Is] Illustration: Lulu
