There's also an awfully short list of places in the US that sprawl more than Houston.
I'm not arguing that sprawl is inherently bad, but it definitely does add the need to own a car (for most people) and spend a lot of time in it (ditto).
As someone who lives in Houston, the simple reason there is sprawl is because its flat and land is cheap. This makes it easy to live on large lots or on small average. It's also hot, so people spend more time indoors and drive everywhere.
Lived in Houston most of my life, and in places with public transit (good and bad) other parts.
My perspective: sprawl fucking sucks. That's what this is about - not just driving, but what a city built on driving leads to: sprawl. 45 minute commutes to college from Clear Lake while I'm doing nothing but kinda listening to an audiobook or something. So demotivating. Not really being able to hang with my classmates after school cause I can leave at 4 and get home in 45 minutes or 6/7 and get home in 1.5-2 hours.... or just wait until 9, 10, which fucks me cause the next morning I need to be on the road at 6:30 sharp if I want a "reasonable" 45 minute commute. Oh, and when I turn up to school, better leave 20 minutes to an hour to find parking. That's not hyperbole, parking was that bad at University of Houston.
Compared to the train I used to take to Mountain View - my "worst" commute from my time in the bay area. Still a "long" trip, but I'm sitting on a train reading, playing a video game, or sleeping. Traffic is not a consideration. I can go in rush hour or whenever, I'll still get there at the same time. I get off the train and bicycle to the office, leave my bike downstairs and that's it. No idling in the parking lot shitting out CO, waiting for someone to walk into the parking lot so I can offer them an AC ride to their spot in return for the ability to park in it when they leave.
Growing up in that sprawl was painful. Our suburbs were spread out not too bad, but enough to suck hard. One of my best friends was a good 3 miles away in a different suburb (so I had to go the long way round to actually get to an entrance. Sometime's I'd toss my bike over the 10 foot sound barrier thing and try to scale it but stopped after spraining an ankle). Bicycling there would take 20 minutes if there were bike lanes, but there weren't, there were "sidewalks" with giant roots pushing the concrete up that were too big to hop on the bike, or there'd be massive puddles in the dips or dirt and sand ready to slip me up, so I was on/off/on/off the bike, waiting 5 minutes at an intersection for a walk signal and still keeping my head on a swivel because nobody expects someone to actually walk in the burbs. So, it'd take me like 50 minutes to get to my friend's house. If it wasn't so hard, I think I would have hung outside more with my friends, and played less videogames. I distinctly remember chatting in WoW about how we'd consider hanging out, and then say "nah don't wanna bike an hour" and just play more WoW.
Then when you finally do get a car, it's not that much better. First spend 45 minutes driving a pentagram across the suburbs picking everyone up, then drive another 45 to get to the city or wherever. It just sucked!
So, I don't know about cost, I don't have the math for it, but it was terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE and I hated it growing up. The convenience of living in a mildly walkable city like SF with even the mediocre (from int'l standards) public transit they have here is to me leagues better than the bullshit I put up with in Houston. And then you go to a city like Taipei and see what this world is capable of creating... it's a dream.
As a Houston native I strongly disagree. You spend a huge % of life in a car there, and not in a fun way driving down twisty roads either. That is much more unpleasant than being cramped in NYC for many, where at least you can walk everywhere.
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.
Houston, like many American cities, massively subsidizes sprawl and an auto-centric (or auto-only) lifestyle. They may not have zoning, but they do have things like parking minimums throughout much of the city. And in their favor, it is a place where many people can afford to live, something that can't be said of places like the San Francisco bay area.
Where I lived in Italy, I could walk to:
* My kids' schools
* A small grocery store
* A cafe
* A takeout pizza place
* Our doctor
* A tram stop
* A small park
With a bike, many more places were within easy reach. How many places in the US allow so many different things so close together?
I have to respectfully disagree as someone who has lived in Houston for more than a few years. The density in Houston is bimodal because the traffic makes commuting so painful.
There are huge numbers of zero lot line 2-4 story townhouses being built within say 5 miles of downtown. 4-6 houses on 1/4 acre so not a lot of room to waste.
And then once you get past say 5-10 miles from downtown the sprawl is undeniable.
But to paint Houston as all sprawl just isn't honest.
Houston has zoning laws - they mandate parking for example. The laws are generally more lax than other places, but some of their mandates encourage sprawl.
So Houston is the (a?) poster child for sprawl. But Houston now has really nice toll roads, and this greatly ameliorates any difficulty in getting around by quite a bit.
Developers do what they can in the tax and legal climate they operate in. Incentives are always extremely difficult.
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.
Houston is only a "cheap" city if you look at housing costs but not transportation costs. The ridiculous sprawl of Houston increases transportation costs so much that it is actually less affordable than "expensive" cities like New York City.[0][1] This doesn't even take into account the externalities of the higher emissions that come from living in a car-dependent place.
Houston's parking minimums are absolutely the main culprit for the amount of sprawl it has even in its downtown areas. Every single business needs a parking lot so everything is in a strip mall and therefore unwalkable.
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.
If this is the Strong Towns YT video talking about how Houston is basically a dystopia, not all of Houston is like this. There are many walkable neighborhoods in this city. Examples: Downtown and Midtown Houston, Downtown Woodlands, Downtown Conroe, some parts of Sugar Land, Downtown Galveston, etc.
There are also (many) more suburbs with housing across all price points that are primarily accessible by car, and the families that live there that are happy with this arrangement.
As someone who lived in NYC and now lives in Houston, I much prefer the latter.
It would be cool if there were more trees or a sweet bar along my walk, but I still try to walk two miles per day.
Public transit was cool (and I was a HUGE fan of the NYC Subways), and I wish we had a commuter rail station somewhere, but I much prefer the privacy and freedom of my own car.
Also, public transit in Manhattan is much more convenient than public transit in South Brooklyn or Forest Hills, where you're usually looking at a 30 minute trip minimum to get _ANYWHERE_. (I owned a car in NYC and all but stopped taking public transit once we got it.)
I like a lot of things about Houston and Dallas, but one thing I particularly like is that you don't _have to_ live the urban experience if you don't want to. We have something for almost everyone. I personally don't think that urbanization should be foisted on everyone.
Houston also famously has no zoning laws, which massively exacerbates problems associated with sprawl.
In my experience the opposite is true. With relaxed zoning it's easier to live closer to work, and more likely that common destinations like grocery stores will be conveniently nearby.
But that city also has massive sprawl, so it's kind of tough to point at as an example for more coastal folks. Certain areas may showcase how things could be, but it's still a very car-centric city.
I'm not arguing that sprawl is inherently bad, but it definitely does add the need to own a car (for most people) and spend a lot of time in it (ditto).
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