Urban Returns

The FTC goes after blogger endorsements

The Federal Trade Commission intends to make bloggers who endorse a product disclose freebies they receive from the product's seller.  Seriously.

The existing regulations require those endorsing a product for an advertisement to disclose a connection with the product's seller "that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement."  Being paid to endorse a product, the FTC believes, is a fact that "might materially affect" the endorsement's weight or credibility -- unless the endorser is a celebrity, whom everyone assumes is being compensated.   

But since "might materially affect the weight or credibility" is a mushy standard that could mean anything, the FTC has to use examples to show what it means.  And it intends to add paid blogger endorsements to its little menagerie of examples (FTC report pp. 84-85 (pdf)):    

Example 7.  A college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert maintains a personal weblog or “blog” where he posts entries about his gaming experiences. Readers of his blog frequently seek his opinions about video game hardware and software. As it has done in the past, the manufacturer of a newly released video game system sends the student a free copy of the system and asks him to write about it on his blog. He tests the new gaming system and writes a favorable review. The readers of his blog are unlikely to expect that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the video game system, this fact would likely materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge.

I don't know who tipped off the FTC attorneys to the blogosphere's existence, or what impelled him to do it, but he should be ashamed of himself.  Who was raising the hue and cry over blogger endorsements?  Who thought it was a good idea to sic an agency obsessed with balding treatments and miracle vitamins on the internet? 

Anyway, the damage is done.  The FTC attorneys have concluded that readers of these quirky and newfangled "weblogs" are entitled to the same protection from undisclosed endorsements that it guarantees TV viewers exposed to weight-loss and vitamin-supplement ads.

This is a silly regulation for many reasons.  First, the FTC can't effectively enforce its rules now for MSM advertisers.  There are just too many outlets (TV, newspapers, magazines, radio) and too many advertisers creatively gaming the rules.  The FTC can't even control specific industries.  It has been battling weight-loss and vitamin-supplement advertisers for decades.  Everyone operates at the laws' fringes; the FTC makes a rule, the weight-loss people figure out a loophole, and so on.  And so late night TV is filled with ads for all kinds of flaky weight-loss treatments.

Because the FTC struggles to regulate a few thousand MSM outlets, it has no chance of enforcing its rules among millions of blogs.  No chance at all.  Bloggers will be able to do what they want, confident in the anonymity provided by numbers.

And, second, even if the FTC could be a credible enforcer, why should it be?  I seriously doubt it will improve the reliability of blog product endorsements.  That ought to be the goal -- to improve the quality of the information floating around out there.  An undisclosed "material connection" perhaps sometimes reduces the value of the endorsement to readers. But lots of other things impair the value of endorsements.  The blogger might be an idiot, for example.  Or the blogger, while not an idiot, has bizarre, undisclosed fetishes which might make his experience just a mite atypical.  The blogger might not have done his homework on the product because he was lazy.  Or he endorsed the product because all the cool people were doing so.  In each case, the reader is likeliest to get the best information from the blogger who got the freebie.  

Third, the few, good bloggers who do provide useful information don't need regulations like this.  These are widely-read bloggers who have been around long enough to build up credibility with their readers.  Few would want to risk that credibility by failing to disclose something their readers would expect them to disclose.  And their readers might expect them to disclose a free book, meal or video game system.  Or they might simply assume the freebies and shrug.  For example, I assume Matt Yglesias and Tyler Cowen get free review copies of the books they review.  I don't believe that either will take the edge off a bad review merely because they got the book for free.  

Fourth, Google can fix any harm posed by a "tainted" endorsement in 200 milliseconds.  When deciding which video game system to buy, I can pull up my local bloggers' review,  but I can pull up a dozen others in just seconds, as well as discussion boards and professional product reviews.  There have been several widely-followed econ bloggers talking up the Kindle.  I suspect many of them got their Kindle gratis.  I don't know.  But when deciding whether to buy my kindle, I considered the possibility that their endorsements perhaps had an artificial glow.  But I also looked at the product review at Amazon (the 1* and 3* reviews are usually the most informative).  And I did other searches for blogs and  discussion boards devoted to the Kindle.  Acquiring information to counterbalance one compensated endorsement is virtually costless.  

These are four reasons why the regulations will either be impotent or pointless.  But here's the FTC's fundamental mistake:  it doesn't understand that readers' expectations depend on the background rules.  Under the current system, I don't know whether a given blogger is being compensated for an endorsement unless she discloses a connection.  If she doesn't disclose a connection, then I have to treat her endorsement with a bit of skepticism (although thorough, thoughtful reviews are good at dispelling this skepticism), and will continue to do so until I've developed trust in her blogging.  In an unregulated blogosphere, my default stance is skepticism.

Under the FTC regulation, if a blogger has an ironclad obligation to disclose freebies, then I'll expect him to disclose that he got a free copy of the product, and discount his endorsement appropriately.  If he does not disclose a connection, I'll assume that he's not being compensated.  Of course, he could be cheating, and we know the FTC will not have the resources to police this kind of misrepresentation.  In this case, the regulation's only consequence will have been too disarm me, to make me a little more gullible.

In a world without a credible threat of enforcement, we're better off in the first scenario than the second.  The FTC's existing rules for television have arguably made consumers more gullible.  They vaguely understand that the government requires commercials to be accurate.  But "accurate" is judged on a sliding scale; commercials make a lot of claims that are unlikely to be true but which "must" be true because the government is letting them appear on TV.  In the worst case, the FTC regulations increase the risk of deceptive and misleading blogposts by giving readers false assurances that they are not being misled.

One might argue that my concerns are overblown and that these regulations will be  harmless at worst.  But this is wrong.  They will cause blog clutter if nothing else.   Tyler's book reviews will come (I presume) with an asterisk and fine print at the bottom.  Food critics will have to run disclaimers at the bottom disclosing which meals were free and which weren't.  Clutter is irritating. 

And it will be particularly irritating to those of us who won't need to clutter our blogs because no one is sending us free stuff to endorse.  

H/t This Life in Austin

Perry vetoes smart growth bill

Did anyone know that the Texas Legislature passed a "smart growth" bill?  I first heard about it when Perry vetoed it.

The legislation merely established a working group to study and recommend a smart-growth policy, so it would have had no immediate impact on growth patterns in Texas.  But it was charged with developing a "comprehensive smart growth plan for the state to prepare for the projected population growth in the state" and addressing things like the quality of community life, the design of municipalities, counties and regions, health issues and "the encouragement of community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions."  

It's hard to get too worked up over legislation that merely would have established an advisory committee, but I think the veto was probably a wise decision.

As framed, the working group would have been charged with creating a statewide growth policy.  Bad, bad idea.  Most of our problems today stem from vesting TxDOT, a state agency, with unfettered control over major infrastructure projects.  It is TxDOT that decides whether to build this highway or that, to direct growth in this direction rather than that, and to toll or not toll.  (I admit TxDOT's policies on the latter match my preferences better than most of its others.)  And it is TxDOT that soaks up dollars that could be used to fund rail or other modes of transportation.

Infrastructure is destiny.  Choosing which and what kind of infrastructure to build is never a value-free choice.  And, today, the most important infrastructure projects reflect the values of a state agency rather than of the local communities most affected by them. Local communities should be able to shape their own environments.

We don't need a working group to give cities more powers.  Cities already have all the authority they need to regulate growth.  I think they mostly abuse it:  they impose minimum lot size requirements, rigid density limitations and strict separation of uses.  If a city can enact an ordinance like Austin's McMansion Ordinance, then it can do anything.

Counties lack some of these powers.  Counties can regulate platting and subdivisions, which allows them to dictate things like connectivity and minimum lot sizes, should they choose to do so.  But it's true they can't enact zoning.

Still, the problem for counties is not that they lack zoning, but that they can't regulate "commons" depleted by uncoordinated development.  Wells, for example.  Homeowners who lack connections to water utilities sink their own wells.  No individual homeowner has an incentive to ration his individual use; as a result, they cumulatively drain aquifers, especially in drought conditions.  Counties need the power to protect the aquifers for everyone.

But there is no reason to believe that a working group composed of state officials charged with implementing a statewide smart growth plan would have paid particular attention to county problems.  Much better to pass legislation tailored to counties rather than an open-ended mandate for statewide regulation.

Nothing to see here

The Census Bureau has released a new report (pdf) comparing the growth of Metropolitan Statistical Area central and outlying counties between 2000 and 2007.

Wendell Cox says the report shows "that the nation continues to suburbanize, despite the consistent media 'spin' that people are leaving the suburbs to move to core cities."

[T]he conclusion of the new report is clear. The nation’s most remote suburbs – its exurbs – are growing much faster than the central counties. Whether this trend will now reverse, of course, is up to debate. Perhaps demographic changes and higher energy costs will slow expansion on the outer fringes. More likely, the current recession may well lead to less exurban growth, but history suggests this may prove only a short-lived trend.

My own take is that this report offers little meaningful information other than growth and migration rates for the MSAs as a whole.  Breaking out the numbers for central counties and outlying counties tells us little because the Bureau defines "central counties" expansively as those containing all or a substantial portion of the MSA's urbanized area.   Since a city's urbanized area can and often does stretch across several counties, the Bureau's definition sweeps up counties that we typically consider suburban.  For example, Travis and Williamson are "central counties" in the Austin-Round Rock MSA, even though Williamson is the quintessential suburban county.   (Hays is considered an outlying county, but will almost certainly be a central county in the next census due to the rapid spread of Austin's urbanized area.)

Because of the broad definition of "central" counties, almost all MSA population is "concentrated" in these counties.  In MSAs with more than 5 million, for example, 97.4% of the population lived in central counties (2007 estimates).  For all MSAs, the number is 91.8%.

Naturally, because central counties began with a large baseline population, even large absolute increases in population yielded smaller percentage increases than small absolute increases in the less populous exurbs.   For example, in the Midwestern MSAs, the outlying counties grew at nearly twice the rate of the central counties.  But the central counties added 5 times as many people.   The New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island MSA is an even more extreme example.  Its central counties grew by 2.6% between 2000 and 2007 while its outlying counties grew at an explosive 26.6% rate.   But the central counties added 480,000 people to just 12,000 for the outlying counties, 40 times as many.

For the United States as a whole, MSA central counties added nearly 17 million people compared to 2.4 million for outlying counites.  Central counties in the northeastern region (which includes New York) added nearly 1 million while the outlying counties added fewer than 24,000.  The South Region's outyling regions added the most by far -- nearly 1.8 million -- but even here the outlying growth was dwarfed by the 7.7 million added by the central counties.   

If the Bureau's goal was to tell us something important about the relative growth of exurbs and central cities, it failed.   There's just not much to the data because of the overly-expansive definition of central counties.   As Wendell points out, this report might very well understate suburban growth (in fact, this is almost certainly true), but this report doesn't shed much light on the question.  Wendell himself recognized this limitation on the data, but unreasonably, I think, attempted to draw an unwarranted conclusions from the report anyway.

Equal protection for truckers

I've argued before that even if we don't congestion price I-35 for all drivers,  we should at least price the road for truckers, which will give them the incentive to take SH 130.   Some have suggested that we simply require through truckers to detour to SH 130.  Atlanta apparently does something like this.

Ben Wear put the notion of an outright ban to Carlos Lopez, the new district engineer for TxDOT's Austin division.  And I'm having trouble believing the answer.

Given all the big rigs clogging Interstate 35 through Austin and the really light traffic on the Texas 130/Texas 45 Southeast tollway loop, can't TxDOT just require trucks to use the tollways?

According to Lopez, there's no state or federal statute that says TxDOT can't do that. On the other hand, there's no state statute saying specifically that it can. Which would seem to leave the way open for something of that order to occur, assuming that the Legislature (over what would likely be fierce opposition from the trucking industry) decided to pass a law like that.

However, TxDOT lawyers say such a statute would probably run afoul of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That clause says that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Truckers could make the argument that making them pay to pass through the Austin area while letting everyone else drive free would violate that clause.

Now I admit I haven't done any legal research here.  But I'm pretty confident truckers won't have an equal protection claim.  Laws treat people differently all the time.  That's the essence of law.  The courts have understood this for a long, long time, and therefore have limited equal protection challenges to laws based on a suspect classification like race or a quasi-suspect classification like sex.  Hence a law that discriminates between whites and African Americans will violate African Americans' right to equal protection unless the law is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest and there is no other way for the government to accomplish this compelling interest.  This is an essentially impossible standard to meet.  Off the top of my head, I can't name any instances approved by the courts.   Quasi-suspect classifications -- those based on sex, for example -- are not subject to quite as demanding an analsyis, but court treat these skeptically, too.

But if a law does not discriminate on the basis of a suspect classification, then  courts will uphold the law as long as it is "rationally related" to a legitimate government interest.  This is con-law speak for, "Congress [or state], do whatever you want to do."  

Truckers are not a suspect classification.  We impose all kinds of unique regulations on them.  The Texas Legislature or any other government can treat truckers differently than ordinary drivers as long as the rules have a rational basis.  

The basis for a ban here is obvious and sensible.  Trucks cause more congestion than cars.  They take up at least twice as much space, and they stop and start more slowly.  Moving the tractor-trailers to another road would ease congestion.  The state has a legitimate interest in clearing congesiton.  Truckers are the most logical place to start. 

The truckers' better objection is practical rather than legal.  As Lopez points out, many trucks are not passing through.  We want trucks making local deliveries to use  efficient routes, including I-35 when necessary.  But this means our ban would have to distinguish between local traffic and through traffic.  I'm not sure how the highway patrol could enforce that.  

The best solution, of course, is to charge truckers to drive on I-35.  Through trucks would have the incentive to switch to SH 130.  Locals would not.  We'd get the optimal result with minimal enforcement costs.  Funny how prices work.

The Texas Triangle

Ryan Avent writes about Texas's strong growth, and the possibility that this strong growth will beget more growth:

Austin’s strength is pretty remarkable, as well, though I shouldn’t be surprised given the way Texan metropolitan areas have held up, in terms of home construction and prices at least, throughout this crisis. Interstate migration doesn’t necessarily imply anything about preferences; as I’ve mentioned many times before, housing supply restrictions in high demand markets make housing there unaffordable, diverting people to places with loose supply and low home prices (Texas!). But agglomerations are powerful, and whatever advantages a growing place began with, it will eventually develop a serious attractive force when it reaches a large size.

It’s surely a coincidence, but California’s population loss in 2008 due to domestic migration was almost exactly the same as Texas’ gain due to same — about 140,000. With economies in California, Arizona, and Nevada withering, it’s not difficult to imagine a shift in population taking on its own momentum. 

Agglomerations are indeed a powerful thing.  A growing population fuels demand for more specialized services, which spurs the development of larger, more sophisticated and more efficient industries, which in turn attract more people.  On the supply side, a growing city means a deepening labor pool, which makes the city more attractive to employers.

For the four large Texas metropolitan areas, the interesting question is, "What is the agglomeration?"

There are two possibilities here.  One is that Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are just four large, independent metropolitan areas, each an independent agglomeration.  If this is the case, the growth of one does not particularly benefit the others.  On the contrary, the growth of one could hurt the others if they are competitors.  If Houston and Dallas were vying to become major banking centers, for example, then a bank gained by Dallas would strengthen its banking industry in absolute terms and relative to Houston's.  Perhaps more importantly, a banking industry split between two competing cities would not enjoy the economies of scale or increasing returns of a banking industry concentrated in one or the other.  

The other possibility is that the four metropolitan areas collectively comprise a single agglomeration.  Texans have started talking up that idea the last few years (although most refer to it as the "Texas Triangle" rather than the "Texas Agglomeration").

Fortunately for Texas (if not for its rivals), the latter appears to be the case.  I just stumbled upon a 2004 report from the Dallas Fed's Houston branch (!) which looked at the four cities' concentrations of industry and concluded that they are complements, not competitors:

The Texas Triangle cities developed as economic complements, providing unique goods to the other Triangle cities and importing goods that represented strength elsewhere. Why is this important? First, it means that the Texas Triangle is in fact a megalopolis in the sense that we can add the pieces together with a minimum of duplication. It is spread over a triangular area of roughly 250 miles on each side. Second, it implies that despite traditional rivalries and competition among these cities, especially Houston and Dallas, they don’t really overlap much in their economic roles. We could isolate only a few areas where meaningful rivalry might take place—oil and gas extraction and semiconductors (Austin and Dallas) and heavy construction (San Antonio and Houston).

By and large, however, one or two Triangle cities have such a secure niche in each export industry that others are unable to compete effectively. Given the lack of competition across cities, a cooperative effort at industrial recruitment and economic development programs makes sense, even though the cities are spread over an area as large and diverse as the Texas Triangle.

Put differently, the four Triangle cities export goods and services to one another.  They largely export different goods and service, which means that Houston benefits when Dallas grows and vice versa.  Houston's growth provides Dallas firms a larger market for their "exports," and a growing cluster of Dallas firms provide Houston with more specialized goods and services.

All four metropolitan areas are among the fastest growing in the country.  Housing is cheap in all four metropolitan areas (although not in Austin proper), and cheap housing and lots of jobs explain some of that rapid growth.  But it is probably also the case that each city is growing rapidly because the other three cities are growing rapidly, too.  

My Alan Dershowitz moment

Tom Kirkendall and Scott Henson cover the DOJ report detailing the Harris County jail's deplorable conditions.

Reading their posts, I was reminded of my own experience with the jail's shoddy policies -- as an attorney, fortunately, rather than as an inmate.

Way back when I was a cub lawyer in Houston, a partner in my firm was appointed counsel for a Harris County jail inmate who had filed a pro se civil rights lawsuit.  The partner promptly appointed me. The client was a Muslim who wanted to observe Ramadan, which required him to fast during daylight.  The jail fed inmates during the day, though, and refused to bend the rules to accommodate this inmate.  It thus gave him a blunt choice:  forget about Ramadan, or starve yourself for a month.  The jail also refused to let his imam drop off a Koran; it required inmates to order all books straight from the publisher.

By the time we were appointed, the federal judge, Sim Lake, had already entered a temporary restraining order requiring the jail to feed our client before sunrise and after sundown.  Our job was to prepare for the permanent injunction hearing.

So I deposed Harris County Sheriff Johnny Klevenhagen.  This was only my third deposition, and I must not have done it right, because I pissed off Klevenhagen so badly that he walked out midway through the deposition.  And did not return.  The county attorney and I just stared blankly at one another.  He shrugged.  I left.

To this day, I don't know why Klevenhagen got so mad.  (Really, I do.)  The line of questioning was innocuous enough:  "Q.  Don't you have inmates who spend all day at court?  A.  Yes.  Q.  Don't you have to feed them?  A.  Yes.  Q.  How do you do that?  A.  We prepare sack lunches for them.  Q.  You mean, sandwiches in plastic bags and such?  A.  Yes.  Q.  Well, why can't you set aside a couple for my guy to eat?"  And he walked out soon thereafter.

We had a status conference with the judge a few days later.  I told him about the deposition and the sheriff's answers (and sudden departure).  The judge listened patiently and then turned to the county attorney.  "You know, I'm not going to tell you how I will rule, but you need to settle."

And so the county promised to feed my guy before and after sunrise, let his imam give him a copy of the Koran, and kicked in $5,000 for his trouble.

I'd like to chalk this up to my Dershowitz-like skills but, really, this was a no-brainer.  The standard, if I recall, required the jail to balance its administrative convenience and security concerns with the inmate's legitimate religious interests.  Since feeding my client created no inconvenience or security concerns, the jail had no excuse.  It was not a close call.  The county attorney knew it, but had to put up a fight because that's what his client told him to do.

I wasn't really surprised, then, to see that the Harris County jail still can't get things right.

Affordable housing densities

Austin's freshly minted Comprehensive Housing Market Survey has lots of interesting tidbits.  One is this map depicting Austin's concentrations of housing affordable to households earning between 51% and 80% of median family income.  (The darker the color, the greater the density of affordable housing.)

I suppose this is no real surprise, but the degree of segregation still is striking.  Most cities have pockets of affordable housing concentrated near the city center.  Inner city neighborhoods have high concentrations of old housing, and old housing tends to be cheap housing.  Mass transit is usually better in central cities, too, and the poor need good mass transit.  And, finally, central neighborhoods are usually quite dense, which means lower land costs per unit.

Central Austin, though, has very little affordable housing.  Even central east Austin, historically a repository of cheap housing, now has only a moderate density of affordable housing.  Affordable housing in Austin instead has been relegated to large, deep pockets in the older suburbs to the north and south; these, incidentally, contain some of the densest census tracts in the city. 

A couple of those who commented on my post on the city's affordable housing investment in the Village on Little Texas pointed out that there is already a lot of affordable housing in the area.  This map confirms the point.  I've marked the site of the Village on Little Texas with a light green arrow.  It is in, or at least on the fringe of, one of the largest pockets of affordable housing in Austin.

It's fair to ask whether the city should invest millions to subsidize a relative handful of affordable units in an area that already has market-rate affordable units.  Particularly such steep subsidies.  The city needs to step back and sort out its priorities.  

The state of the art in toy packaging

Toy packaging has gotten awfully sophisticated when the manufacturer has to provide instructions for removing the toy from the package.   

I suppose this is better than those infernal wires.  I always spend five minutes twisting them one way and then the other before getting up to find the wire cutters.

Liveability rankings are bunk

Someday I will make my own list of the ten dumbest "Best Cities" lists.   This Economist ranking of the "most liveable" cities will make the cut.  (I'll put it on my list even though I haven't read the full report and don't intend to -- the Economist is asking $250 for it.)

From the summary:

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual's lifestyle in 140 cities worldwide. Each city is assigned a score for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. The categories are compiled and weighted to provide an overall rating of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.

The top cities are Vancouver, Vienna, Melbourne, Toronto, Perth, Calgary, Helsinki, Geneva, Sydney and Zurich.  According to Richard Florida (whom I sure was sent a copy gratis), Pittsburgh is the top U.S. city, at 29th.

This kind of list is silly because we already have a much more accurate method of gauging "liveability":  just compare prices.

Home prices in a metropolitan area are determined by area wages and amenities.  All else being equal, residents must pay more for home prices when a city offers higher wages.  Ditto with amenities.  If City A is a lot nicer place to live than City B but they offer the same wages, then City A has to be more expensive than City B; otherwise, residents of B would migrate to A until they bid up the home prices there.

We can't measure the value of amenities directly, but we can infer it from wages and home prices.  When a city's home prices are low relative to wages, we know there are disamenities lurking about.  When home prices are high relative to wages, we know the city must be, all things considered, a very pleasant place to live.  (That is, unless home prices are bubbly.  Irrationally high home prices can suggest that a place is more pleasant than it really is.)

The ratio of median home prices to median household incomes (see, too, the linked report) tells us quickly whether a city is cheap or expensive relative to wages.  It is thus a pretty good indicator of city amenities.

In 2007, the median home in Pittsburgh was priced at 2.6 times the median household income.  By comparison, the ratio for Honolulu was 9.1; San Francisco, 8.0; Los Angeles, 7.2; New York, 7.0; Seattle, 5.2; Milwaukee, 4.0; Austin, 3.3; Houston, 2.9.  The cheapest was Youngstown at 1.8.  Pittsburgh's companions include Rochester, Buffalo, Vincent, St. Louis and Atlanta (the traffic really, really sucks in Atlanta).

Pittsburgh is cheap relative to wages.  That tells us a lot about how pleasant it is to live there.  Perhaps the Economist ignored weather.

Some of these ratios have doubtless been inflated by the housing bubble. I otherwise would have a hard time understanding why Providence's ratio is 4.4 while Denver's is 3.7. But the bubble would not have artificially deflated home prices in places like Pittsburgh and Youngstown. On the contrary, the easy credit of the mid-2000s likely propped up home prices there like everywhere else.

If we look at consumer preferences as revealed by price, Pittsburgh is not the most attractive or pleasant city in the United States.  It's not even close to the top.  And if "liveability" does not mean "attractive," then what do we care?  Otherwise, the Economist is just quantifying a random combination of factors that it thinks are important but which do not necessarily matter much to city residents.

I do not question that Vancouver and Perth are highly desirable cities.  (This is hearsay; I haven't been to either).  But if the Economist's methodology doesn't get things right in the U.S., I have no reason to believe that it gets things right anywhere else.

Plazas

The national Episcopal church has purchased the block bounded by Seventh, Eighth, Trinity and Neches, where it intends to build its national archives.   The building might be five stories tall, with 70,000 square feet of archive space, a garage and "limited" ground-floor retail.  This would be a big improvement over the surface parking lot there now.

But is it necessary to waste space on a plaza?

This part of town doesn't have enough pedestrian traffic to support a plaza.  These things sit empty most of the time; they're dead space.  (Walk by the "plaza" at the JPMorgan-whatever building at 7th and Lavaca sometime.)

It would be nice to see property owners sell off corner parcels like this for separate development.  Most new developments downtown occupy entire city blocks, giving them a squat, blocky look.  Breaking blocks into smaller parcels would yield more attractive buildings.  It also would be nice to get a new alley every now and then.  (Note that the Austonian and Ashton are welcome exceptions.)

I suppose providing joint parking is too much of a hassle . . .