Does Houston meet my criteria for a place to live? (Austin: environment, skyscrapers)

[DCNative]

Here's my idea of a city that I would want to live in:

Medium-XLarge city with the following:

- Some culture and diversity
- Shopping/restaurant/bar strips where young people like go out and about
- Friendly, open-minded, helpful, mellow, and laid-back people
- Good place for a single male to find women for dates/relationships
- Large numbers of educated and affluent young people
- People who care about their health, exercise, and exercise good hygiene
- Lots of things to do for young/single people (parks, dance scenes, sports bars, gym/sport activity areas such as golf, tennis, swimming, etc)
- Tolerant of different races and religions, progressive without smug and elitist attitudes
- Political climate centering on the moderate
- Affordable cost of living for the young and single
- Affordable real estate for single income earners
- Low state income or sales tax
- Manageable property taxes
- Growth opportunities for environmentally-conscious businesses
- Employment opportunities containing sufficient upside
- Nearby beach (Is Galveston a good beach?)

[texasdiver]

I expect it has pretty much everything you are looking for. But more spread out, not so centrally located like in DC (I lived in Dupont Circle for a year). When you go out at night you won't be walking from place to place or hopping the metro. You'll be driving from place to place. Houston is not a city to be carless.

From my observations, what Houston lacks is decent outdoor recreational opportunities outside the city. Plenty of nice large city parks but you really really have to drive a long way to mountains, national parks or true wilderness. Austin, for example, has a lot more interesting getaways outside the city in the hill country. You actually seem to be describing Austin more than Houston, although Austin is getting more expensive and is probably already full to the gills with environmentally conscious businesses so Houston probably has more business opportunities in that respect.

Also, if you are a DC native, you already know hot and humid. But Houston kicks it up a notch, even compared to DC.

As for Galveson? It is getting nicer and nicer as developers pour money into it, but the really nice beaches are futher south in Texas.

[houstoner]

Yes, yes, it does. I don't know about the taxes and whatnot, except that there's no state income tax, or growth opps for environmentally-conscious businesses.

There's outdoors recreation here, sailing and fishing and boating and camping, and there are state parks near, two that I can think of off the top of my head, one in Huntsville and Brazos Bend... and there are a few lakes around. Just different outdoors stuff than Austin's got. Plus beaches, of course. No mountains, no. I'm not at all outdoorsy so the lack of that stuff doesn't bother me in the least. I prefer manmade beauty. Give me skyscrapers! But I do like greenery.

[Mr. Football]

Just had some people buy a house down in the cul-de-sac who are from DC. They're very excited to be purchasing their first real house (they're originally from Europe). They won't be able to move down here officially till the middle of July, but can't wait to get the heck out of DC.