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Yeah its pretty much sprawl Houston has pretty much annexed itself to the fourth largest city in the Nation. Probably one of the few Large Cities where you can buy a half acre lot and build a brand new home on it.
The last time Houston annexed was Kingwood, Texas in 1996 adding a whopping 6,000 people to its at the time 1.6 million population. Now its well over 2 million.
For being the "4th largest city" Houston to me feels underwhelming for being the 4th largest, when I went downtown it felt like a ghost town when it came to pedestrians, sure it has massive highways but I tend to judge a city by its streets not by what I see on the highway. I feel SF, DC, Phila, Boston, even Miami all felt larger than Houston, the 4th largest city this country has, how could this be?
Houston is definitely "big." It will take you an hour plus to drive from one side of the metro to the other. It seems you may be confusing size with street "vibrancy," for lack of a better term. The cities you are comparing it with feature quite dense, lively and pedestrian-friendly downtowns. New Orleans is the same, but I feel it is considerably smaller than Houston. As has been pointed out, Houston is a car-centric sunbelt city, with a development pattern more similar to that of cities such as Dallas, Phoenix and the like - all big cities to me.
Also Uptown, and Midtown do have more going for them, but still far from ''live''. I think Houston should look to Atlanta to see how they can change that.
I've never been to Houston. Is downtown/midtown Atlanta more lively?
The last time Houston annexed was Kingwood, Texas in 1996 adding a whopping 6,000 people to its at the time 1.6 million population. Now its well over 2 million.
I think it added more like 46,000, and today Kingwood has a population of around 81,000.
I agree, I think Houston should stay like it is. The sprawl is obviously not stopping the thousands that move there a year. It just sucks for the poor environment...
I agree, I think Houston should stay like it is. The sprawl is obviously not stopping the thousands that move there a year. It just sucks for the poor environment...
This probably has a lot to do with companies looking for inexpensive real estate and moving their employees, instead of people simply choosing to live there.
I only drove through it on the freeways, but it felt "big" from the freeways. It is low density, but it felt like a big city with highrise clusters in many locations. Definitely doesn't feel as big as NYC / LA / Chicago, but it seemed like a bigger place than Boston, where I was coming from.
For being the "4th largest city" Houston to me feels underwhelming for being the 4th largest, when I went downtown it felt like a ghost town when it came to pedestrians, sure it has massive highways but I tend to judge a city by its streets not by what I see on the highway. I feel SF, DC, Phila, Boston, even Miami all felt larger than Houston, the 4th largest city this country has, how could this be?
Could be because the definition of city proper is arbitrary and almost meaningless haha. San Francisco, DC, Boston etc are centers of much larger regions than Houston. Houston got to be number 4 just by annexing a ton of land, look up the land areas and density on wikipedia. The downtown has more parking lots than buildings, it is purely a business district. That being said, it still feels pretty darn big. But you are correct, many of the sprawling cities in the middle of the country lack urban characteristics, unless they are older cities like Chicago. Tall buildings do not equal urbanity.
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