Enter the new-urbanist types who demanded that Houston be laid-out under a plan, using seemingly benign terms like "form-based codes" and "smart-growth" which were really just keywords for "mechanisms to keep property values inflated to keep out the riff-raff.
The problem with this idea is that it also makes it more and more difficult for those uber-quirky, hotly desired Mom and Pop shops that the new-urbanists love so much to make a go of it.
Case in point.....
Boneyard Drinkery to close after November 30, 2014. Syd Kearney, Chron.com
The reason? The property that the bar has been renting has been sold. Relocating is off the table because of the 'outrageous increase of property value' the last couple of years, according to its Facebook page.
Now, new urbanists such as Houston Tomorrow and Peter "plan" Brown would argue that these property values are not being driven by their plans to bring about Houtopia, but by a city that is beholden to developers and allows for land speculation.
There is a little bit of truth to this but it's the planning and attempts to create "most favored" status on certain areas that has led to these big increases in the first place. Instead of growing organically, and where the market might suggest it's needed, Houston's business climate is now being encouraged to move into certain corridors which allow for speculators to run amok.
The more quirky and independent we try and force Houston to be, the more we lose the quirky and independent soul that drew us all here in the first place. What we're going to end up with is a very segregated inner-loop where everything looks pretty much the same. Yes, in legal terms the businesses in question might be 'independent' but in reality they're just going to be carbon-copies of one another.
We've seen this before in the mirror-image wine bars that sprung up (and then petered out) around the city and we're seeing it again in bars restaurants and craft-beer establishments. Unsurprisingly then, we're also seeing them fade away.
This cycle will continue as long as Houston is being planned by people with homogenous tastes and food-borg like sensibilities. That should make you sad.
