Houston thoughts from someone who lives in DFW (Dallas, Fort Worth: most dangerous, license plates)

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by lepoisson

5. The Houston city limits are HUGE. IAH is in Houston, downtown is Houston, Chinatown is Houston, and the NASA stuff is Houston. You can drive for an hour and still be in Houston. In Dallas I could have been 2-3 towns over in that time.

This is one thing I hate about Houston
I lived in St. Louis and I loved the fact that there's about 100 different towns of about 10-50k people.

Houston is very big and on top of that, it has tentacles called ETJ (Extra territorial jurisdiction)
that allow Houston to tax business/shopping areas way outside of Houston.
Police in the county is divided into 4 precinct, each precinct has about 1.2 million people.
We have ISD (independent school district), they have no relation to town, zip code, or anything.
You also have MUD (Municipal utility district) ... I'm sure you already guessed, have no relation to any of the other things mentioned.


Here's my issue with all of this
In the suburbs you basically feel like you have no local government representation
because everything is separated and has no relation to the other.

[As Above So Below...]

Originally Posted by lepoisson

The area around the giant eyeball in Dallas has a decent amount of people at night. They've done a lot of work to revitalize that area and bring people downtown. Downtown Dallas also seems a lot smaller of an area than downtown Houston, so I suspect that also has something to do with the amount of people.

Maybe I was in the wrong area in Houston downtown, but the area around Phonecia was a deadzone on Saturday night. I drove down Main St and really didn't see that many people either. I did a search for "bar" in Google Maps and like 5 places came up.

Like others have said, neither downtown is great and both are lackluster compared to downtowns like NYC and Chicago.

The area of Downtown Houston where you have a lot of foot traffic and nightlife isnt there. Its along Main between Rusk and Franklin. That area, IMO, is more vibrant than Downtown Dallas. Honestly, Downtown Fort Worth has traditionally been the best of the three though.

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by Dopo

This is one thing I hate about Houston
I lived in St. Louis and I loved the fact that there's about 100 different towns of about 10-50k people.

Houston is very big and on top of that, it has tentacles called ETJ (Extra territorial jurisdiction)
that allow Houston to tax business/shopping areas way outside of Houston.
Police in the county is divided into 4 precinct, each precinct has about 1.2 million people.
We have ISD (independent school district), they have no relation to town, zip code, or anything.
You also have MUD (Municipal utility district) ... I'm sure you already guessed, have no relation to any of the other things mentioned.


Here's my issue with all of this
In the suburbs you basically feel like you have no local government representation
because everything is separated and has no relation to the other.

The bolded isn't true. There are 4 County Commissioner precincts, but they aren't related to law enforcement. There are 8 County Constable precincts that ARE related to law enforcement, but shouldn't be. The Constable precincts also serve as boundaries for Justice of the Peace courts. The defined role of County Constables is to serve papers, and that's the role they should be performing.

The main law enforcement in the County is the Harris County Sheriffs Office, which provides policing in the unincorporated areas . HCSO should also provide policing in the incorporated areas, since we pay the same taxes, but they refuse to do so.

[SanJac]

Originally Posted by stoneclaw

Dallas had a headstart on Houston on urban planning and walkable development

This is true because the Downtown Dallas office vacancy rates have been historically bad so they addressed the problem sooner than Houston.

This was just published this morning:

"Houston ranked behind only Atlanta and Los Angeles in the number of apartment units built downtown over the past decade. Since 2013, developers have constructed 15,600 new units within the urban core of Houston."

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...ate=2022-09-20

[DaBears02]

Originally Posted by stoneclaw

Dallas had a headstart on Houston on urban planning and walkable developments, but a few things that kept Houston in range are its stadiums being downtown, and multiple business clusters inside the loop. That's how Houston's puny one- horse rail line has managed to stay the course with the ridership numbers over Dallas.

OTOH, I think Dallas's consistency of walkable areas close by and sheer number of transit lines tie everything together better overall to create a true urban oasis over Houston. That's the main thing that hurts Houston is the lack of lines and transit connections.

It's hard to believe the OP didn't see any people around downtown on a Saturday night. If one is not familiar with downtown, it's easy to get that impression. But the OP claims he went to Main Street and my thing is, did he go in the heart of it?

I think personally Houston has a better/more liveable downtown than Dallas (more amenities, a grocery store, more apartment construction, more bars and restaurants that are open after 5, etc.) but I do agree with Dallas' core having a better urban experience. I think their neighborhoods in the core just connect much better whereas the connections between our neighborhoods are much more patchy. I dont think DART is really helping Dallas in this department though, since a ton of their stations are not too accessible and are located along freeways, freight ROW, big surface lots, etc. Why the lines there do a weird v shape around uptown instead of running right through the middle of the neighborhood like the red line in midtown is beyond me.

[dallasboi]

Originally Posted by SanJac

This is true because the Downtown Dallas office vacancy rates have been historically bad so they addressed the problem sooner than Houston.

This was just published this morning:

"Houston ranked behind only Atlanta and Los Angeles in the number of apartment units built downtown over the past decade. Since 2013, developers have constructed 15,600 new units within the urban core of Houston."

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...ate=2022-09-20

Urban Core and Downtown are two different things.....New units and Total units are two different things.

[NigerianNightmare]

Originally Posted by SanJac

This is true because the Downtown Dallas office vacancy rates have been historically bad so they addressed the problem sooner than Houston.

This was just published this morning:

"Houston ranked behind only Atlanta and Los Angeles in the number of apartment units built downtown over the past decade. Since 2013, developers have constructed 15,600 new units within the urban core of Houston."

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...ate=2022-09-20

I hate article titles like this because how are you gonna say, number of apartments built "downtown", then say, Houston built 15,600 apartment units within it's urban core. Knowing damn well that if Downtown added 15,600 apartment's it would be competing with NYC, or maybe Chicago/Philly in 2020.

[SanJac]

Originally Posted by NigerianNightmare

I hate article titles like this because how are you gonna say, number of apartments built "downtown", then say, Houston built 15,600 apartment units within it's urban core. Knowing damn well that if Downtown added 15,600 apartment's it would be competing with NYC, or maybe Chicago/Philly in 2020.

I realize that Houston Business Journal is behind a paywall. Here's a link to the original article which is free. You and Dallasboi can cry directly to the author... I don't see Dallas mentioned at all... I did see Plano listed for storage...

https://www.storagecafe.com/blog/sou...-construction/

[dallasboi]

Originally Posted by SanJac

I realize that Houston Business Journal is behind a paywall. Here's a link to the original article which is free. You and Dallasboi can cry directly to the author... I don't see Dallas mentioned at all... I did see Plano listed for storage...

https://www.storagecafe.com/blog/sou...-construction/

Dallas wasn't mentioned because we've basically reached 20k downtown so right now building apartment units is at a trickle for actual Downtown.....But it's definitely about to pick back up with all the new development that's about to break.

[NigerianNightmare]

Originally Posted by SanJac

I realize that Houston Business Journal is behind a paywall. Here's a link to the original article which is free. You and Dallasboi can cry directly to the author... I don't see Dallas mentioned at all... I did see Plano listed for storage...

https://www.storagecafe.com/blog/sou...-construction/

I'm a Houston fan and stan, it's just the unnecessary lying by conflation that goes on in all of these articles. This just doesn't apply to Houston, but to all of the cities in the list.
They define the urban core as 77007, 77002 and 77003. Which in my opinion is to big for downtown, especially 77007, but way to small for the urban core which should include, 77006, 77010, 77004, 77019, 77030, 77005, 77098 and 77046.

You can't define that list of zip codes as either really, especially when 77010 which is a downtown zip code isn't included in the analysis. Or 77006, which is more in the core than 77007. Not to mention the zip codes for Greater East End, Near Northside and Fifth Ward which will eventually get folded into the core.