Houston’s metropolitan area shares many characteristics with Southern California, so it’s always interesting to review assessments of Los Angeles’ urban boondoggles for guidance on how to avoid the same mistakes here.
In this L.A. Times op-ed, urban economics expert Joel Kotkin (previous posts here) explores the latest initiative to allow L.A.’s white elephant — the downtown convention center — to feed at the public trough. Despite the fact that the center has been a chronic money-pit despite a $500 million city expansion investment 17 years ago, the city is now proposing $300 million in loans, tax breaks and fee waivers for a $750-million, 54-story complex ó including a 876-room Marriott Marquis, a posh 124-room Ritz-Carlton and 216 luxury condos ó across from the Convention Center (sound familiar?). Despite the huge public outlay of public funds for the downtown convention center, Kotkin reports the following:

L.A. is still not on the list of the nation’s top 10 convention cities and has little prospect of competing successfully against Las Vegas, New York and Orlando, which have far more attractions. According to one trade publication, L.A. hosted fewer major conventions last year than Indianapolis and Rosemont, Ill. But there’s a bigger problem here.
The simple truth is that convention centers are rarely a good public investment. A definitive national study by the Brookings Institution, released last year, found that they frequently operate at a loss, including the recently expanded centers in Washington and St. Louis. In most cases, their much-ballyhooed effect on the local economy ó new private investment, more jobs and increased levels of tourism ó “has simply not occurred,” reported Heywood Sanders, the study’s author.

One problem is the convention business itself, Sanders noted. Overall attendance at the 200 largest trade shows ó the critical market for large convention centers ó has not grown measurably since 1993. Yet 44 cities ó including Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Washington and San Diego ó were building or expanding convention centers, some by subsidizing the construction of a convention hotel, a development Sanders compared to an “arms race” among cities.
Stagnant trade-show business coupled with a convention center glut translates into more white elephants subsidized by taxpayers. Some cities such as Washington are already offering deep discounts to conventioneers to keep their buildings occupied. The L.A. Convention Center faces ever more cutthroat competition in such an environment. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that a flashy hotel nearby may not increase the center’s allure, especially because other cities, including Denver and Phoenix, are planning similar investments.

So, if the investment of public funds doesn’t generate jobs and other economic benefits for a city’s core, then who is benefitting from the public largesse?:

So if the hotel subsidy doesn’t make economic sense, who benefits from the largesse? The biggest winner from the new public investment stands to be billionaire Phil Anschutz, whose $2.5-billion, 27-acre L.A. Live project ó billed as “Times Square West” ó is slated to be built adjacent to Staples Center. The refracted prestige of a new Ritz Carlton and luxury condos in the neighborhood would add luster to Anschutz’s project, the proposed home of the West Coast headquarters of ESPN and a Grammy Award museum.

Meanwhile, urban economics expert Robert Bruegmann (previous post here) authors this LA Times op-ed in which he explains that L.A.’s urban sprawl is a reflection of its economic success and that its mobility problems largely stem from expectations generated from that success. Bruegmann suggests that it’s time to think outside the box:

Unhappily, the fixation on sprawl has also detracted attention from the scenarios that might, over the long run, help build effective new public transportation systems. It is quite likely that this will need to involve the replacement of both the train and the gasoline-fueled automobile in the years ahead. Both are, after all, 19th century means of transportation, and very inefficient ones at that.
There is no technical reason that we couldn’t have, not too far in the future, personal rapid transportation capsules running both on rails and rubber wheels, using alternative fuel sources and operating either on their own over short distances or linked together for longer distances on guideways that would allow speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Such a system could vastly increase the capacity of existing right of way and go far toward reducing pollution.
Because cities are so dynamic, it is difficult to know whether our future urban areas will be lower or higher in density than today’s. In either case, new modes of transportation that combine the adaptability and personal comfort of the auto with the efficiency of the train or bus are more likely, in the long run, to satisfy the needs of most Americans than forcing everyone back into high-density cities so they can ride trains.
We can do it, and we can enhance mobility for everyone. But only if we can put aside for a while the old and not-terribly-helpful battles over sprawl.

Hat tip for the links to Peter Gordon, who notes ruefully in his latest post:

Not to beat a dead horse, but today’s LA Times includes a front-page feature, “Roads at Breaking Point” which begins this way: “California’s highways, once the gold standard of the interstate system, are today some of the busiest, most dilapidated and under-financed roads in the country …”
Nowhere does the article mention that the 30-year old crackpot idea (cheered by the Times at every turn) of diverting funds from roads to transit explains the mess.

Is Houston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority listening?