I don't know if it's Stockholm syndrome or not, but every one of my friends that are from Houston prefers the way they do it compared to every other city (like Dallas where I live).
I mean it seems like Houston does get a lot right. The off-street parking and mega blocks though are really where it gets it wrong. That said, how much do people actually want to walk around in Texas? It's fucking hot down there most of the year say compared to Boston or NY which are only really unbearable for small portions of the year. I was in Austin a month ago and I was really unhappy walking half a mile in the heat compared to say Boston where I'll walk two or three miles to cross the city and not even think about it.
(Texan here) -- if we had some decent shade and short distances to walk, it'd be a lot better. You get used to the heat after a while; also if walking culture took off people would adapt to a more traditionally Mexican schedule of not being out right smack in the middle of the day.
Texan here, myself and several people I know never got used to the heat. It will never be acceptable for me to want to walk to lunch, even 10 minutes away, when it means coming back drenched in sweat and smelling terrible.
If you smell from the sweat of a lunchtime walk, I would suggest a different deodorant, seriously. I have sensitive skin and can't wear the kind of antiperspirant with aluminum in it. It took me until relatively late in life (early 30s now) to find the combination that works for me: crystal rock deodorant plus one of the "natural" spray kinds.
As for the sweat, a good wicking t-shirt will let it evaporate quickly, or if you need to wear a button-up shirt, a good cotton undershirt will keep your outer shirt nice and dry (usually).
I'm from Houston and lived there until moving to NY for college... it's one thing to "get used" to the heat, it's another to be able to walk a decent distance every single day in it. Even here in NY some summer days were pretty terrible.
Even if you get to the point where the heat doesn't bother you, it doesn't stop the heat from making you sweat and smell. I didn't mind going for a walk (or run) on Houston summer afternoons, but there's no way I could walk >.5 miles or bike to work without a shower at the destination.
And, you get used to the heat. I spent many years in Texas; Houston and Austin (about 20 years, in total, across both cities), I really don't mind the heat. I prefer it over cold, anyway. And, there's a certain style of living that is/was pervasive in Austin; do stuff early in the day or late in the day. Hang out inside during the heat of the day. Lots of bars and restaurants have outside patios, which are open nearly year round; many have misters to keep it cool. The only things most people do outside during the heat of the day are swimming or tubing or stuff in the shade (and there's loads of shade along the river and green belts).
(current occupant of Houston here) The thing is that the heat isn't the whole thing, it's also the humidity. We had a few weeks last month or two that had a heat of 90F with heat index of 107F.
Humidity is the big difference, and with Texas as large as it is you can't just assume that somebody from say DFW or El Paso or Brownsville or Austin will experience the same weather as somebody from Houston given the same wall temperature.
Really? I just moved away from Houston and in my 2+ years there I never found a single person who thought the land use regulations were effective. Many friends who were life-long Houstonians routinely referred to it as "the worst run city in America."
I lived in north-east Houston just outside Beltway 8. Hundreds of new homes were being built along West Lake Houston Parkway, with no apparent plans for upgrading traffic. It was a real mess and will only get worse.
At the risk of being a jerk, Houston proper is basically just inside 610 with maaaybe a dispensation for inside the Beltway. Outside that it's basically just suburbs and exurbs.
I lived in Houston for several years, and there's a lot of great things happening there. I've always liked the lack of zoning, while also hating how common and strict the private covenants are (I never knew why they were more onerous in Houston, but knew they were).
I also think Houston is well-placed to become one of the truly great American cities with only minor shifts in policy.
Those huge roads? Shrink the lanes and paint on bike lanes (which is effectively free, since the lines are repainted every few years anyway), and you've got green urban transit options everywhere. It's already relatively safe to bike most places in Houston, certainly in all the neighborhoods, because the roads are big enough to accommodate bikes even without lanes specifically marked. I used to bike to class when I was in college...about 10 miles each way. None of it was particularly hairy or scary, even compared to "bike-friendly" towns like Austin.
There's also a surprisingly large amount of green and park space in Houston. The bayous that are concrete-filled could be ripped up (some parts of the Houston bayou system were concreted over in the 70s and 80s, as a failed attempt at flood management), and turned into hike/bike trails (they already get used that way...there's dirt foot paths along the top of every Houston bayou I can remember).
The train and bus system needs massive improvement (or, it did when I last lived there or visited), and the car culture needs to be killed, as this author notes. But, there are some very good, very walkable neighborhoods in Houston. I couldn't afford to live in them, but I enjoyed the street festivals and such that happened in them. Again, some minor tweaks to policy could allow more of those neighborhoods to thrive. The lack of zoning means that retail and restaurants often exist right along side neighborhoods; which is the ideal for a walkable neighborhood.
Traffic is obviously a huge problem for Houston, but that's true of every major American city. It was particularly pronounced while I was living there, as two of the biggest highways were under construction for several years (also common in growing cities).
In short: I'd love to see Houston get more of these things right. It was a good city that treated me well. My first attempt to get a real job turned out great, the cost of living is on the low side given the scale of opportunities available and the benefits of living in such a big city (great art scene, great music scene, great food, etc.). I moved to Austin after a few years in Houston, and while Austin also has a lot going for it (I would even say it's the first and only city I've ever really loved), it has felt like it's been going the wrong direction the whole time I lived there and the years when I didn't. Every once in a while, it'll get something right (like going to a 10-1 district-based city council instead of at-large, or being pretty good about bike lanes and bike safety), but on the whole the things that make Austin great are in decline. Artists and musicians are leaving because they can't afford it, black and brown folks have been pushed out to Round Rock or Georgetown or other surrounding cities again because they can't afford it, and music venues are shutting down left and right because they can't afford it and the new (very wealthy) downtown and surrounding area residents don't like the noise. My desire to live in or visit Austin has dropped to almost nil in recent years.
Your comment is basically "Houston would be great if it did a whole lot of things that there is t a snowballs chance in hell happening." If you can talk about "killing car culture" in Houston with a straight face it's hard to take the rest of the comment seriously.
I agree. If you go a few hundred beyond downtown/Museum District/Heights/Montrose area, it's impossible to live without a car (even in those areas it's not that easy).
I know it's not fair because it's technically not Houston, but the city will always be synonymous with sprawling, McMansion-filled suburbs with a Walmart (and a Target in front of it), and a mall every few miles.
Which is true of every major city. NY and SF would be great if they would address the cost of housing; no chance in hell of that happening, as far as I can see. Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas also have the car culture problem on a massive scale but don't have the benefits Houston has (that whole lack of zoning thing leading to some potentially great neighborhoods).
At some point, we're all going to have to agree that cars are trying to kill us and take the necessary steps to resolve that problem. The cities that figure it out first will be the next great American cities, I would guess.
NYC has affordable housing. Manhattan increasingly doesn't, but so what? We have plenty of transit options from the other boros to Manhattan.
NYC's biggest current problem isn't affordable housing, it is that transit capital projects are grotesquely expensive because of a combination of: diffusion of political responsibility, a broken bidding process, and very strong construction unions. What we have is great, but without the ability to undertake new projects, including rehabilitation, without spending much more time and money than any other city in the world, it will eventually be a big problem.
When did that happen? I tend to check housing prices when I pass through cities I really like, and the only reasonably priced housing (compared to almost every other major city, except in California) I found back in ~2011 was in Long Island.
Yeah, funny post. It's not going to happen. Houston has never had a culture of proactive urban planning and intervention. I grew up there and the city always had a vibe of people just living there to make money and one day leave. In my 30 years all that happened other than freeways and road expansions was Discovery Green and Buffalo Bayou park trail expansions.
As the article points out, Houston is proactive about urban planning, when it comes to cars. The city requires, by law, parking (and huge roads). Miles and miles and miles of parking. Veritable oceans of parking lots. All mandated by the city. That's intervention and that's urban planning. It is bad urban planning, but it is urban planning nonetheless.
So...yeah. I agree it's unlikely to happen any time soon. But, that's true of every city I've lived in: The things that most need to change have the most political pressure not to change, and so they won't, and that aspect of the city will continue to suck. SF won't change the things it needs to change to resolve its housing crisis; Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, won't do anything to change their car addiction; etc.
So, I probably agree with you. I wish for a better Houston, because there's a lot of like about it, but I don't have high hopes of it actually becoming a better Houston.
I dislike the lack of zoning in Houston. It means you want to buy a home, but it's right next to a strip club, so it ruins the deal. You want to live in a nice and expensive neighborhood, but then a developer comes in and builds a 6 story apartment building right next to your two story house. And the lack of zoning means the traffic on the street of that apartment complex becomes horrific because there's now twice as many people living on that block.
You see a lot of mixed-income neighborhoods in Houston - places where people are building $700,000 homes where 80% of the same street are 1000 square foot shacks with people living in them making $20k a year. Luckily for them, their lots are worth half a million dollars. I don't know if this is the result of the lack of zoning, but I don't see this happening in other cities in Texas, so I have to think it's somehow related.
Yeah, it's awesome having neighbors that leave garbage everywhere, don't mow their lawns, smoke copious amounts of weed on their porch, are constantly calling the cops, revving their shitty Civics with the exhaust cut off at 4AM on a Sunday, and park 4 rusted out cars on the curb outside their home.
You might say "So don't buy a home there" or "So buy a home in an HOA". The point is that there isn't housing available in those areas nearly as much as there is most everywhere else, meaning people start to gentrify crappier blocks because they house the want at the location they want just doesn't exist.
>You see a lot of mixed-income neighborhoods in Houston - places where people are building $700,000 homes where 80% of the same street are 1000 square foot shacks with people living in them making $20k a year. Luckily for them, their lots are worth half a million dollars. I don't know if this is the result of the lack of zoning, but I don't see this happening in other cities in Texas, so I have to think it's somehow related.
This is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of thing. If neighborhoods are income-segregated, there is no end to opinion pieces about this awful late-capitalist crypto-apartheid. If neighborhoods are mixed-income, then the hand-wringing is about rich people living behind walls next to a shanty town.
There's clearly a correct answer here: repeal segregation laws. Why on earth is my government forcing lower income families out of neighborhoods they want to live in?
> Luckily for them, their lots are worth half a million dollars.
Not so luckily. Texas has no state income tax and gets most of it's money from property taxes. Those land-wealthy people making $20k a year likely have a $12k tax bill (there are things like homestead exemptions which can help .. but still)
It is strange the zoning laws. Here is a sex shop right by the galleria. which is an upsacle mall. you can see the dillard's in the background. there is a neiman marcus across the street.
This is a terrible thing that cities badly need to get away from.
Going further cities need to get away from mandating parking period.
There's a 400+ unit condo building that was approved in my town in 2014 and it's still under construction because of course every unit needs parking and they're building a massive underground parking lot. The fact that this building is on a major bus corridor, less than a 10 minute walk from existing rapid transit and it's adjacent to a future site for rapid transit expansion is ignored. There's honestly no reason to build so much parking here and yet the rules mandate that we must add parking everywhere. This increases the costs of housing as well and people must pay for this regardless of whether they use it or not.
You are clearly not from Texas. Nothing is 10 minutes away. Public transit is a joke. I realize this is a chicken/egg situation, but it's probably not changing anytime soon here.
Honestly, it's not an issue (in Houston) at all. I like driving and the fact that everywhere has parking is perfect. If I'm going out I just pay for the uber and call it a night. It's cheap enough down here anyways.
First, we have some of the cheapest housing in the US.
Second, the law will Have to change in the next 10 years.
Third, if we do it right, Houston can become the city with the most green space in the country if we require that 1/2 of any replaced parking lot just become semi-public green space.
That's cool, but making people travel through lots of green space still has the net effect of reducing the ability of transit to serve customers and forcing longer commutes.
I'm glad housing is apparently affordable there. My views are probably affected by my experience growing up in California.
It's hard for coastal people to understand how cheap land and housing is in the interior of the U.S. What constitutes a down payment for a tiny home on the coasts will buy a virtual mansion with a ranch just outside of Houston. There's almost zero economic and social pressure to create the kind of cities we're used to on the coasts (or in Europe or Asia for that matter).
The point is that you're pretty much forced to partake in automobile ownership because everyone else decided buildings should have to be spaced ridiculously far apart. This is either directly, through density maximums, or indirectly, through zoning and parking requirements. Houston may have cheap housing, but it also appears to have much higher commute costs than most US cities.
Anyway, I don't think we even disagree, really. I like green space too. I just hate laws that pretty much force everyone to have a horrible commute because living close enough to your job to walk or cycle, or having enough people in the same space to support transit, is almost illegal.
It's really hard to reconcile the differences between dense walkable cities where streets were laid down long before the car existed and living and Houston where land is (dirt) cheap, the city didn't really begin growing quickly until the 1960's when A/C made life bearable and after a series of hurricanes in the preceding decades made the port of Galveston less and less attractive idea, the shifting of oil companies from Lake Charles to Houston, a constant stream of low cost workers from Mexico, international oil money. Houston is as unique as Silicon Valley.
People who talk about making Houston walkable or changing the setbacks and lot requirements are just fooling themselves. Houston has a character and plenty of people like it. They get offended that you might want to make it any more like Boston, NY, Chicago or DC.
I'm personally glad to be leaving Houston for one of those dense walkable cities, but I'm giving up a nice big house that was very inexpensive, the ability to be lazy and drive anywhere, the discretionary income to own a nice car, and great food. What I gain is personal but having grown up in Texas I do not expect people there to want anything but what Houston is. It didn't get to be like it is because people hated it. Keep in mind, all those neighborhoods, stores, and office parks are there because individuals and businesses voted with their dollars and they continue to do so.
To be honest on-street parking is even worse. It's dangerous and often less efficient in practice.
I think it would be nice in some cities to have every second north-south going street reserved for pedestrians and bicycles and every second for cars. Same for west-east going streets. Notice the pattern here? There are some very limited examples of this in Helsinki and Oulu.
Usually pedestrians, restaurants and cyclist just love it. Car people don't mind, as it can curb down traffic in the morning. Less cross sections is often less traffic jams.
But if there is on street parking, this will never happen. You simply need every possible way for traffic as all roads are decimated into part time parking lots.
> It's dangerous and often less efficient in practice.
Do you have a cite that says it's particularly dangerous on an absolute scale (rather than just "more dangerous")? On-street parking is almost always more efficient because the road does double-duty as an access path, whereas parking lots need empty lanes to access cars.
>Do you have a cite that says it's particularly dangerous on an absolute scale (rather than just "more dangerous")?
I don't have source. Just a reasoning. Kid might run to the street from behind a parked car. Also cyclist sometimes bump into someone coming out of parked car.
> On-street parking is almost always more efficient because the road does double-duty as an access path, whereas parking lots need empty lanes to access cars.
Car needs about one 1,5 car lenghts behind to back away form a lot. That doubles as 1,5 car lengts for the opposite car and as access path.
Theoretically on-steet parking only needs 0,5 car lenght in front and 0,5 car lenght in back. But this rarely happens as there are no marked lots. In practice the empty space between cars ranges from 0,3 to 1,4 and tends towards bigger. Because people want to park loose when there are not much cars and when the street fills it doesn't even out.
What impresses me is how brown the city of Houston is. Everything looks dead or dying like a zombie apocalypse. Seriously, will that city even be viable in 20 years?
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