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Great pics Danny. Houston does not have the uniform density of Dallas in one area yet, but that is slowly changing. No zoning plays a part, no doubt.
I am not Danny lol
Dallas has the more urban neighborhood built out between it, Atlanta, and Houston with its uptown which looks very compact like the med center in structural density except its made for residents and entertainment. Kudos to Dallas.
I don't know if these have been posted yet, so I thought I'd share. Some members here have referenced this site already. I think this is the best source we have statistically and visually of what the density population is within each city and metro.
I know these numbers are from the 2010 Census in which some cities claim is not an accurate representation of their population, but like I said, it is the most comprehensive source we have at the moment. Its a nifty site for those that have an interest in geography. The site tracts growth rates, racial diversity, density, and housing occupancy/vacancy. Anyways I tried saving you guys the trouble of navigating through the site, so here is an image of the population density in their respective cities that I cropped out. They all should be to the same scale. Look at the map legend on the left for what the colors represent.
My take on these maps is that Houston has the most areas with the density over 5,000sq/mile, with Dallas having the 2nd most, and Atlanta having the least. It even appears that way in the same order when you cut the boundaries to within 5 miles of the radius from the CBD. Atlanta's Midtown has the highest density in their tracts with one topping out over 21,000sq/mile (Houston has one over 39,000 by downtown but its just one tract, not really consistent). But after that, the density falls off outside of areas in and around Buckhead. Dallas has a nice area of consistent density North of Downtown, with Uptown tracts ranging from 9000 to 12000 sq/mile. Dallas has another area of consistent higher density to the southwest of Downtown. Finally, Houston has higher densities west of downtown especially consistently around Midtown and the Montrose area. Its kind of scattered east of I-45 and 288 (for those not familiar, those freeways bisect the 610 in half). Houston's areas with the highest density are not near downtown, but in the Southwest and west of the Galleria area, which you notice on the map with the darker shade of purple.
To answer the topic question, I think all cities within their central core have the ability to become more dense and urban down the future. It won't match the Northeast in density and urban footprint probably ever in my lifetime, but as someone earlier mentioned, at least could mimic Seattle in which their CBD and surrounding areas are dense and vibrant. While Houston has the most areas with the higher densities, it also has the worst central area rapid transit. It has more light rail being currently built, but its still behind the other cities and the least progressive about it. Atlanta is the exact opposite with not much areas besides Midtown having higher density but it has the best mass transit currently and going forward. Dallas is somewhere in between the other cities. I think Midtown Atlanta is the best urban district out of the three and still has the best potential. Dallas is making strides by connecting their downtown and uptown together with a park being built over a freeway. I think Houston's downtown will not get much more vibrant despite the success of Discovery Green until it either alters the elevated highway ring surrounding the CBD or at least gets more permanent residencies on the vacant lots. However, judging by the growth rates in the last decade if it stays constant, almost every tract west of I-45 and 288 will have a density over 5,000 people per square mile by the end of the decade besides areas like Memorial Park, River Oaks, and Reliant Park. By that time, it would have a huge consistent area of density by the core, with better transit finishing the recipe for a nice (somewhat) urban area.
I haven't seen any pictures for Houston yet which is shame, so I'll post some for it.
Houston is still maturing, it has lots of dense areas around downtown, Midtown, medical center, Neartown but also has a lot of dead zones too such as northeast of downtown, east of downtown, and southeast of downtown that still have empty lots or warehouses not being used presently but those seem to be quickly dissolving and becoming multifamily complexes all over. Houston still has some work to do but like I mentioned earlier its still a young and maturing city and will take time.
Dallas looks like its building highrises whereas Houston is building mid rises and low rises with plenty of townhomes wall to wall with one another. Different type of style for both respectively towards infill in city's.
Some Houston shots
Midtown Houston right across the freeway from downtown Houston-
Dallas has the more urban neighborhood built out between it, Atlanta, and Houston with its uptown which looks very compact like the med center in structural density except its made for residents and entertainment. Kudos to Dallas.
You're entirely correct ... Dallas has a much more dense and urban environment than Houston or Atlanta.
Houston CBD is being strangled by it's own freeway loop surrounding it ... It is like a noose around it's neck.
In total contrast, the reason Dallas is more dense and urban in it's core is it's explosive organic growth spilling over it's Downtown (traditional CBD) freeway loop into immediately adjacent areas of Uptown, Victory Park, Deep Ellum, Baylor, Cedars/South Side, Design District, North Oak Cliff, and the newest urban frontier of West Dallas (the Calatrava Bridge extends Woodall Rodgers Freeway to it).
West Dallas is an extremely compact area just immediately to the west of the CBD already zoned for skyscraper growth and density of 31,000,000 sq ft with 24,000 new residents. It is destined to become Uptown on steroids in the very near future.
You will love Dallas and Uptown when you visit.
More super cool pics of Uptown, Dallas Galleria, Preston Center, and the High Five, Stemmons Corridor, and Central Expressway corridor coming tomorrow!
Last edited by skys the limit2; 09-05-2011 at 01:55 AM..
You're confused about the discussion. Downtown Houston is being strangled by it's elevated freeways surrounding it.
Dallas' central core kicks Houston's butt.
Houston may have more areas with higher density, but this poster does have a point. While Houston has more tall buildings, central Dallas' urban environment is a lot more impressive than what Houston has. Dallas is built more to human scale. You see a lot more areas with restaurants and store fronts built to the street in Dallas than what you find in Houston which tends to contain more small strip centers throughout its neighborhoods. Houston while having more dense areas feels more car dependent. I live in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas which is north of Uptown and I only have to drive to work and can walk to everything else I need.
Houston may have more areas with higher density, but this poster does have a point. While Houston has more tall buildings, central Dallas' urban environment is a lot more impressive than what Houston has. Dallas is built more to human scale. You see a lot more areas with restaurants and store fronts built to the street in Dallas than what you find in Houston which tends to contain more small strip centers throughout its neighborhoods. Houston while having more dense areas feels more car dependent. I live in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas which is north of Uptown and I only have to drive to work and can walk to everything else I need.
Depends on which neighborhood. Midtown has nothing of the sort, east downtown, TMC, etc.
Houston is actually far denser on average than Dallas. I know this because we sell shopping centers in both cities and have to run radii demographics metrics. Houston is consistently dense. Its biggest problem is that outside of the Medical Center and surrounding West University neighborhoods, it is an ugly cluster****. The no zoning works to ensure outside of minor regulations in certain areas that on a road like Westheimer, where rents can exceed $100/SF (practically higher than anywhere in Dallas or Atlanta), you might have a strip club next to an apartment complex next to an office complex, etc. Wild West Club is a few blocks south on Richmond, and is on an even worse street, lined with townhomes and industrial use buildings and just about everything. In between are houses ranging from lower middle class crappy things to $750K-$1.2M homes. It's all a mess, imo. Nothing is really walkable, either. The density is there, but the environment is so hostile to pedestrians I wouldn't know where to start. The major plus is that Houston has one of the best gridded street systems in the entire country and can use that to mold itself however it wants whenever it so chooses to (and it's completely flat and near water/ports).
Dallas, which I have personally been to twice (and stayed in Uptown, Downtown, and in Irvine) is vastly different from Houston in that it has that flat TX brown look mixed in with clean colors and pristine buildings and appearances. The density on average is much higher than Atlanta's, but lower than Houston's. Dallas's downtown was deader than my hometown of Jacksonville's the last time I went, which was '08, so things may have changed, but it was pretty sad for such a large city. Uptown was billed as *the* place to be, and I stayed at the ZaZa hotel (which also has a location near the medical center in Houston). It was a tacky yet fun hotel, but the area had a long way to go. I know a few more buildings have been completed since then, but they were all UC when I was there. The problem with Dallas is that even though it has beneficial neighborhoods like Uptown and Deep Ellum immediately adjacent to Downtown, the way these areas are developed promotes more isolation, more driving, and less walking. Ellum is walkable, but not "dense." It is cool, but I prefer Atlanta's many warehousy areas, which are older and denser and more numerous. Uptown had nice sidewalks and nice shade cypress trees, but everything was kind of its own secluded development.
Atlanta is the least dense of the 3 cities, by far. It has the densest neighborhood of them all, though: Midtown. It is also the most maturely developed, more classically developed like a northern walking city. It is smart to try to focus develop on a spine rather than willy nilly here and there. Even Chicago develops along a spine, and so does Philly to an extent. Manhattan is also not as wide in person as one might think from pictures or movies.
Atlanta's density also suffers because in the city there are wide swaths of zero development, unlike in Dallas and Houston. Atlanta is not a "block" city where every bit of land can be developed. The original city planners could never figure out the hills and creeks, and so laid out the city in patches. There will be patches of density of between 5,000 and 7,500 ppsm surrounded by borderline forest land. What Atlanta also does well is integrate everything it can into small compact areas that are already seeing development, and outside of Buckhead, most everything addresses the street, making the area more pedestrian friendly. Whereas Houston's Galleria has become a hot mess (albeit great from a panorama perspective), Atlanta's Buckhead has tried for walkability and has a spine street (Peachtree) and a village area on a grid. Whereas Dallas's Uptown has become a sea of gated/walled off high rises complete with CIRCULAR DRIVEWAYS (even my company's building in Uptown has a circular driveway!), Atlanta's Midtown has begun to form as a walking destination with more of a mix of uses. Whereas Dallas puts many of its conventions, convention centers, the WTC, and trade marts outside of Downtown along expressways (and let me add hotels to that list), Atlanta puts all of that downtown on 17 city blocks and doubles it in size. Whereas Houston and Dallas each have one or two great universities and maybe a small campus in the general downtown area, Atlanta is a huge university city, with a full 2 large, highly ranked universities IN the core. Downtown has 35,000 student GSU, fully integrated into downtown buildings. Midtown area has Georgia Tech, one of the best universities in the country, partially integrated into Midtown buildings along 5th and bringing 20,000 wealthy grad and undergrad students from around the country/world to the core. Emory has a teaching hospital in Midtown/Downtown, too (though Emory itself is like a larger Rice or SMU in an inner ring suburb...Decatur).
Basically, Atlanta is a far smaller metro with far less density than Dallas or Houston, but its core areas are developed much better than those in the TX cities. I'll add that I think Atlanta already looks more like an urban city, with more warehouses, brick stacks, and old city appearances than what I see in TX. It actually used to be a rust belt city, and that element is still here today. And in terms of development, Atlanta is less of an office market than either Houston or Dallas (though Atlanta's best office buildings sell for more than the best buildings in Houston, ironically), but Atlanta is a much more advanced city in terms of high rise living, the hotel market, urban retail market, and the nightlife/entertainment industry. It has more of a city pulse, and always has.
What Atlanta does not have on Dallas or Houston in terms of population, average density, metro GDP, F500 companies, number of billionaires, etc etc it makes up for in terms of its urban neighborhoods, walkability, transit, nightlife, universities, parks, liberal citizens, history, and scenery. It will always be a bigger destination for gays, elite college students, and celebrities, 3 populations that are a must have for any thriving urban city.
Houston is actually far denser on average than Dallas. I know this because we sell shopping centers in both cities and have to run radii demographics metrics. Houston is consistently dense. Its biggest problem is that outside of the Medical Center and surrounding West University neighborhoods, it is an ugly cluster****. The no zoning works to ensure outside of minor regulations in certain areas that on a road like Westheimer, where rents can exceed $100/SF (practically higher than anywhere in Dallas or Atlanta), you might have a strip club next to an apartment complex next to an office complex, etc. Wild West Club is a few blocks south on Richmond, and is on an even worse street, lined with townhomes and industrial use buildings and just about everything. In between are houses ranging from lower middle class crappy things to $750K-$1.2M homes. It's all a mess, imo. Nothing is really walkable, either. The density is there, but the environment is so hostile to pedestrians I wouldn't know where to start. The major plus is that Houston has one of the best gridded street systems in the entire country and can use that to mold itself however it wants whenever it so chooses to (and it's completely flat and near water/ports).
Dallas, which I have personally been to twice (and stayed in Uptown, Downtown, and in Irvine) is vastly different from Houston in that it has that flat TX brown look mixed in with clean colors and pristine buildings and appearances. The density on average is much higher than Atlanta's, but lower than Houston's. Dallas's downtown was deader than my hometown of Jacksonville's the last time I went, which was '08, so things may have changed, but it was pretty sad for such a large city. Uptown was billed as *the* place to be, and I stayed at the ZaZa hotel (which also has a location near the medical center in Houston). It was a tacky yet fun hotel, but the area had a long way to go. I know a few more buildings have been completed since then, but they were all UC when I was there. The problem with Dallas is that even though it has beneficial neighborhoods like Uptown and Deep Ellum immediately adjacent to Downtown, the way these areas are developed promotes more isolation, more driving, and less walking. Ellum is walkable, but not "dense." It is cool, but I prefer Atlanta's many warehousy areas, which are older and denser and more numerous. Uptown had nice sidewalks and nice shade cypress trees, but everything was kind of its own secluded development.
Atlanta is the least dense of the 3 cities, by far. It has the densest neighborhood of them all, though: Midtown. It is also the most maturely developed, more classically developed like a northern walking city. It is smart to try to focus develop on a spine rather than willy nilly here and there. Even Chicago develops along a spine, and so does Philly to an extent. Manhattan is also not as wide in person as one might think from pictures or movies.
Atlanta's density also suffers because in the city there are wide swaths of zero development, unlike in Dallas and Houston. Atlanta is not a "block" city where every bit of land can be developed. The original city planners could never figure out the hills and creeks, and so laid out the city in patches. There will be patches of density of between 5,000 and 7,500 ppsm surrounded by borderline forest land. What Atlanta also does well is integrate everything it can into small compact areas that are already seeing development, and outside of Buckhead, most everything addresses the street, making the area more pedestrian friendly. Whereas Houston's Galleria has become a hot mess (albeit great from a panorama perspective), Atlanta's Buckhead has tried for walkability and has a spine street (Peachtree) and a village area on a grid. Whereas Dallas's Uptown has become a sea of gated/walled off high rises complete with CIRCULAR DRIVEWAYS (even my company's building in Uptown has a circular driveway!), Atlanta's Midtown has begun to form as a walking destination with more of a mix of uses. Whereas Dallas puts many of its conventions, convention centers, the WTC, and trade marts outside of Downtown along expressways (and let me add hotels to that list), Atlanta puts all of that downtown on 17 city blocks and doubles it in size. Whereas Houston and Dallas each have one or two great universities and maybe a small campus in the general downtown area, Atlanta is a huge university city, with a full 2 large, highly ranked universities IN the core. Downtown has 35,000 student GSU, fully integrated into downtown buildings. Midtown area has Georgia Tech, one of the best universities in the country, partially integrated into Midtown buildings along 5th and bringing 20,000 wealthy grad and undergrad students from around the country/world to the core. Emory has a teaching hospital in Midtown/Downtown, too (though Emory itself is like a larger Rice or SMU in an inner ring suburb...Decatur).
Basically, Atlanta is a far smaller metro with far less density than Dallas or Houston, but its core areas are developed much better than those in the TX cities. I'll add that I think Atlanta already looks more like an urban city, with more warehouses, brick stacks, and old city appearances than what I see in TX. It actually used to be a rust belt city, and that element is still here today. And in terms of development, Atlanta is less of an office market than either Houston or Dallas (though Atlanta's best office buildings sell for more than the best buildings in Houston, ironically), but Atlanta is a much more advanced city in terms of high rise living, the hotel market, urban retail market, and the nightlife/entertainment industry. It has more of a city pulse, and always has.
What Atlanta does not have on Dallas or Houston in terms of population, average density, metro GDP, F500 companies, number of billionaires, etc etc it makes up for in terms of its urban neighborhoods, walkability, transit, nightlife, universities, parks, liberal citizens, history, and scenery. It will always be a bigger destination for gays, elite college students, and celebrities, 3 populations that are a must have for any thriving urban city.
Atlanta is not a far smaller metro area than Dallas or Houston. Sure, it's the smallest in population, though not by a substantial amount, relatively speaking.
Physically, all three metro areas are roughly the same size, in terms of developed land area.
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