storytelling. yes. thank you so much for being here. thank you all for coming to the 10th annual san antonio book festival. i see some familiar faces out there who i know have been supporting this thing since the beginning. so thanks, especially to you all. my name is dan goodgame. i'm the editor in chief of texas monthly and i am the first of those in the 50 year history of the magazine to live in san antonio. i'm very proud of that. it is my honor and privilege. thank you. it's my honor and privilege today to moderate a panel with the honorable henry cisneros sarah below former mayor and former cabinet member is secretary of housing and urban development and one of his co-authors david hendrix. who's a long-time columnist and writer for the san antonio express news who thought he was retiring four years ago, and then henry told him otherwise now before we get started, i want to thank first of all the central library for making this possible and so our sponsors in this venue the han holt family henry and david are going to show a brief slide presentation to summarize. you know, the book's themes. so we'll start with that and then i will ask a few questions to get the party started and then we will turn it over to questions from you all after this conversation. the authors will be available to sign books in the nowhere book shop tent which is just across the street to the east of the library. so this is what you're looking for. you'll get a chance to do that afterwards. so gentlemen start your engines. then thank you very much and it said that every texan has two homes where they live and san antonio, so you're the proof of the way that all works. thank you for the opportunity to be here. and i also want to thank the san antonio book festival and all the folks who have created it. it's a wonderful tradition in our city. it's usually held on the hottest day of the year and it seems like it's keeping up. with that reputation, it's very hot out there. for years i have been working in austin san antonio including during the time. i was mayor. and a lot of time in the other texas cities. then when i became secretary of housing and traveled to 200 different american cities and every one of the 50 states you begin to pick up patterns and trends and one of those that jumped out at me was that there is emerging in texas in these places dallas, fort worth and the north houston galveston in the southeast and austin san antonio in the southwest of this triangle. a mega complex of cities that can hold their own in the country and indeed our gravitating to that kind of pinnacle role that great metros play in the world. the singapore's in tokyo's and frankforts and milan's in london's etc and in this this triplex of metropolitan and economic strength. is a coming reality that we in texas haven't fully appreciated. nor have we interpreted in the sense of what does this mean for the future of texas? we'll talk about that in a moment. i had worked a long time with david hendricks who covered city hall in my time then later went to the business section of the express news. he was business editor there for a time covered austin and when he left the paper and i've been working on several research projects. it just seemed logical to ask david to come over and he said he would do it part-time and that grant grant that gravitated to 75% time and 100% time in due course, but we wouldn't have done been able to do this project without david and you'll see up here the names of two additional people. to additional people column clark who is of us at smu and with the bush school bush center in dallas and william fulton who at the time of our writing was the director of the kinder center at rice university in houston. so we had you know anchors people in each of the parts of the metro of this texas triangle. let me just give you some numbers here real quickly. i'll be briefing going through this because it is numbers, but this is an amazing thing. few texans, i think understand 66% of the population of texas lives in just the 35 counties that surround the triangles metros. so if you take all the counties that constitute the dallas metro area and that constitute the houston metro area and the san antonio metro area. that's 35 counties out of 254 in the state. that's 14% of the counties, but they the population of them is 66% of the people of texas and those folks produce 77% of the gdp of the state. so they battle above their weight in the sense that 66% of the people produce 75% of the economy, and that's because the economy of texas is transforming itself from the land of wide open spaces and ranches and and oil wells being the dominant economy two the port of houston and its role the medical center in houston the airport in dallas and airports in houston the cybersecurity and biomedical here the computer technology and and other similar new media in austin you put that together that that's that's the coming global economy. that's the national economy and it's well represented in texas and that suggests some this growth this is a ranking of something that has happened. only two times before an american history. you see three texas cities ranked in the top 10 houston are number four san antonio number seven and dallas at number 9. that's an interesting phenomenon. it happened once in new york when there was the independent city of brooklyn and new york city and buffalo you see it in california right this minute when you have los angeles and san jose and san diego in the top 10, but if you'll take a look at this what you see is austin sitting at number 11 and frankly. we believe looking at the census numbers, it's probably already passed san jose but certainly will and that will be a phenomenon that has never occurred in american history for cities in the top 10 and when you put fort worth there at number 13 and growing it's a pretty impressive thing what it says is that texas is and urban state for anybody who doubted it. in a moment, i'll show you that in addition to these metros. there are 25 metros in texas overall, midland and texarkana and laredo and corpus christi and el paso. and those 25. are second only to california's 26, so if there's any doubt of texas as a state being pulled by the economy of its cities driven by its metropolitan reality these numbers sort of spell it out. texas triangle is home to 49 of the fortune 500 companies. that's one tenth of all the fortune 500 in one state dallas fort worth has 23 houston has 22 and austin san antonio have four austin gaining recently major moves like oracle headquarters and teslas major presidents. this is a pretty dynamic indication of where we are. the texas triang if measured as a country would have a gdp as the 15th largest economy in the world just those 35 counties so they count in global terms, texas has a whole has a an economy as a number 10, but you can see with the size of the triangle economy that that's a big part of this. this is interesting the dallas, fort worth msa alone has an economy about the size of sweden's. the houston metropolitan area has an economy slightly larger than belgium. and austin, san antonio together have an economy about the size of egypt. so you have major economic forces the size of those countries within about 200 miles of each other in this triangle. this is an interesting aggregation of places. there are other big cities close to each other in america like new york and philadelphia for example or baltimore in washington. but nowhere, do you have three major metro areas within the same state operating under the same regime of state laws and and a policy requirements and so forth with the potential to really harness that and and and support the growth of these. metropolitan areas that are the golden goose for texas today and only will become more so in the future the cities of texas are linked to global commerce, every one of them is ranked in the top 50 exporting places oil and petroleum exports from houston technology through the port through the airport in dallas and out of san antonio relationship with mexico that is of longstanding. i mentioned earlier 25 msa's second only to california's 26 and msa is any metro area that has more than 50,000 people and there you see from dallas. worth at 7.4 million all the way to texarkana at 97,000 are 25 places that create urban texas as we know it. that's 85% of the population of texas in its urban areas. it leaves 15% rural yet just to show you the size of what we're dealing with that 15% is roughly the size of the entire state of oklahoma in the 15% that is our rural population and it is also the largest rural population. in the country more people living in rural areas and it's only 15% of our population. this will be the last slide, but it shows you where we're headed. you see the texas population today is about 29 million, but by 2050 which is less than 30 years from now about 47 million the population i mentioned is over 66% in the angle in the 35 counties of the triangle, but by 2050 it'll be about 75% of the population of texas living within those 35 counties are closed by saying well, i hope we have time to explore what this means. i think it means a lot in terms of our econom. who's what's pulling the the state economy and therefore what ought to be supported. it also means preparing the infrastructure to make these metropolitan areas work. traffic congestion roadways educational support a critical infrastructure of water and power ports and airports that keeps this going we're living in a metropolitan nation. in a world where more people now live in urban areas than ever in the history of mankind and these pinnacle places pull the world economy along and texas is going to be a player. because of the texas triangle so those are those are dan some opening kind of points. i want to credit david with a lot of the research that went into this and ask him if he has anything he wants to say about this before we proceed if that's fair. no, these are the high points and we're trying to change the image of texas everyone around the world think it's just ranch land and oil fields, but it's really a highly intricate to verse urban economy. joe cochin is a famous urbanologist in who lives in california and he calls the texas triangle. he calls it a great urban story. well, thanks david. thank you henry. i think y'all in the book make a really strong case for the power and the potential of the texas triangle with that raises the question, which you also mentioned the book of why so many of our artificials and our legislature seem to be at war with the cities and the elected officials the cities have chosen and with choices voters have made at the ballot box about things like bonds. yeah. i mean the state seems to want a micromanage everything to from whether cities can ban plastic trash bags to whether we can put bike lanes on lower broadway. so, how can we advance the potential of this? well political situation i think that texas has been in a period of sort of economic. i'm sorry political transition and therefore instability, but in recent years we've seen the dominance of red texas republican, texas and it i think they feel that there is a some value in holding the base by going after the cities which tend to be more blue. so recent legislative sessions have seen things like obsession with a bathroom bill or sanctuary cities. restricting the role of local police department. so the cities couldn't use their budget authority to to defund even though none of them intended to but that became a contentious point. and many other things annexation very very opposed to annexation in some measure republican response to the private property movement. that didn't want their land next but annexation has been critical houston and dallas and san antonio would not be this size of places if there hadn't been rational consistent zoning. i mean annexation policies over the years, so i think at the moment that's what's going i think and it's important that we not allow whatever. the they come up with in these wedge policies to damage the impact of of this golden triangle potential and i think what they probably think is that they can separate the politics of the center cities from the suburban areas and the outer counties so that they're not really going to get punished by the cities. my only concern would be that if you undercut the ability of houston and dallas and san antonio and austin and many of these other metros to to grow you're really hurting a very significant segment of the population and secondly your potentially damaging the smooth ability of these places to grow into their full potential but what can the cities in the triangle do to increase collaboration among them without without state collaboration david you want to take a crack at that? there could be a triangle chamber of commerce for example, or a similar type organization that markets the at the three corners of the triangle to the rest of the world for business investment. is there any talk about them? the chambers leaders have met from time to time. there is a functioning collaboration among the leaders of the existing chambers, but i think david's right a structure that was more explicitly of the triangle metros could be very very useful many of the things that make this such a powerful region do need support the port of houston constantly in need of upgrading its infrastructure airports, hobby and george and bush in in houston. love and dfw in dallas our own and now bergstrom which is playing a huge role the bergstrom airport in austin now has direct flights to london frankfort amsterdam. it'll be only a short time i think before we see tokyo and and soul on that list or singapore on list, so there is a need for coherent state policy coherent local identification of priorities. as you suggest did we miss a bit by not building a big airport between austin and san antonio, you know, i i thought for that in my time as mayor and and i had in worked with general mcdermott of usaa in those days. but as i think of it. it may not have been an idea that would work for this reason dallas and fort worth are 30 miles apart and people really kicked and screamed about going 15 miles to the new airport. we're 75 miles apart and you can imagine the concern about having to go 35 miles to get to a flight. i think that and and now it's become a moot question because the land is so covered with with urban development between here and austin and land prices would be untenable that we just have to acknowledge. we're going to be a big metro austin san antonio. in fact, my sense would be everything from i-30 on the east to 281 on the west with heights 35 in the middle is going to build out and you're going to see a big metro from georgetown and pflugerville to floorsville are point south. it's happening. it's happening right before our eyes. and if that is the case if we're part of such a big metro then maybe the model that exists in other places where you have multiple airports within the same metro and the bergstrom airport plays a role. maybe they've absconded with the international role and we play a different kind of role in the southern area of the metro of the big austin, san antonio mega metro and and have a different mission at a minimum. they ought to be about how they're going to split responsibilities. i have worried for a long time that we've not done enough. to make our airport strong. there does seems to be zero political support for a new airport. so i think we're just going to have to satisfy ourselves with building on the present site. enhancing the runways to handle larger aircraft and doing the kind of investment that the city's now proposing to add terminals and gates, but we're never going to have a joint austin san antonio airport in my opinion. so we're sitting here today in san antonio, and i'd like to think a little bit about san antonio's role and in the triangle because it's a little different than the other places. we are the poorest large sitting in the united states as you know out of those 49 fortune 500 companies what two are in san antonio three if you count new braunfels we have what 20% lower a college attainment on average than other other cities in the country relatively high drop out rates. what do we do to help san antonio participate? well, yes, i think the first thing we hire achieving cities. i think the first thing we do is we acknowledge. we're part of the triangle. that is to say we have the good fortune to be a city aligned within this triangle that is growing at this rate and we're going to get our share of the growth. we see that happening now people who are coming out of austin and coming here and coming from other parts of the united states because our land prices are a little less or housing prices are a little less. so that's the first thing frankly. it was part of my motivation for working on this project. i care about san antonio's progress and i think we do best when we align ourselves with places that are on a rising trajectory now in practical terms. what does that mean? we've got to invest in education to raise the quality of the workforce. we've got to deal with our own infrastructure needs. so we have a city that works works internally roadways and mass transit etc. and we got to make sure that the region remains livable, which i don't think we've done enough collaboration with austin to make this a workable metro when i age 35 presently is the only major connection and and people have to drive to austin unable to establish how long it will take because they have to make their way between the 18 wheelers. that's not the spine. of the kind that we need for a long-term workable large metro. david i want to ask you about something you and i were discussing before the session started and i was sharing with you that you know, my wife and i love living in san antonio have been here for 13 years. we my work is in austin. we have a small apartment there. that's not far from my office. my board is in houston, so pretty regularly. we recently bought a nine-person video company in dallas. so i'm up there pretty regularly and you were indicating that you had heard more and more stories about that particularly between san antonio and in austin about people living and working in. oh, yes. well, i mean, san antonio is a 24th largest metro in the country. austin is a few places behind that if they were combined it would be a top 10 metro and that would yield a lot of economic it would bring in a lot of investment if we were a top 10 so what happens so a goal should be is to become one. one single metro like dallas fort worth is and you decides that it's this? i think it's i believe it's a census and what they look at is a statistics of how many people live. what they did in dallas-fort worthy as i saw how many people work lived in fort worth but worked in dallas and vice versa the same thing needs to happen here dallas fort worth has that ratio, but we don't have that yet. that means we need better more efficient transit from one side of this metro area to the other so that this ratio can occur. you know you hearing more of that i guess in your research you finding more people doing that between san antonio. yeah, i think more people are doing it. i think for sure people are doing it within the corridor from san marcos into austin. yeah and new braunfels here new braunfels and come out county are the fastest growing local governments in the country in their size range and san marcos and hayes county are the fastest growing in their size range. so here we have not only two cities that are ranked very highly in job creation between in the last decade. austin was ranked number one. in job creation purpose percentage of job growth and san antonio was ranked number three with nashville. number two so here you have