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Dallas is the epitome of sprawl with McMansions and Office parks. I have been to the city 6 times and it looked like nothing but endless office parks and suburbia with McMansions.
Atlanta made some good strides in walkability with projects like the Beltline. Some of the suburbs like downtown Alpharetta and the mixed use developments like Avalon and Halcyon have impressed me. The traffic situation in Atlanta will force more vertical and more mixed use live work play developments in the coming decade.
Houston falls somewhere in between, not as bad as Dallas but still feels sprawled out compared to Atlanta..
Urban Area density
Atlanta land area=2645 sq mi 1707 ppsm
DFW land area= 1779 sq mi 2879 ppsm
Houston land area= 1660 sq mi 2979 ppsm
Atlanta wins in the sprawl and looks rural once in many places outside of the core.
Avenida is now complete, you might want to take a look! All the retail space has been built out and open for business, which mostly consists of restaurants. Like their Dallas sister station in Victory Park, Channel 11's Downtown studio is in use every weekday for their noon newscasts. They often go outside in the Plaza during the newscast for a Today Show-style view of the plaza.
There have been 3 buildings in the latter half of the decade. Two have opened, the Capitol Tower (new Houston offices of Bank of America) and 609 Main. Texas Tower is under construction.
Atlanta is just a train station. It has been lagging in skyscrapers, especially in its Downtown and developers mostly prefer Midtown. Decatur, the real anchor for the metro, is underserved by the freeway system and very isolated, making any CBD development impossible.
Dallas has mostly abandoned the core to center around Legacy as the northern sprawl moves to Oklahoma.
Atlanta, Dallas, D.C., and S.F. have made the mistake of using the subway for long-distance service better served by commuter rail like Chicago's Metra. Many people confuse the light-rail with commuter rail to the suburbs when they advocate the lines to be extended metro wide. That would turn it into an over-glorified express bus!
Luckily Houston has been using P&R buses for suburban routes. The ridership to Downtown is almost at capacity, so it is time to convert some routes to higher-capacity commuter rail and reuse the buses to serve new P&Rs between the rail lines. For example, I-10 and the Westpark TW would have commuter rail stops and reuse the P&R buses for service terminating in Cinco Ranch near LaCenterra.
There was flash flooding during last year's Independence Day celebrations. If the flash flood came through the bayou a few hours later, the park would have flooded and many people would have drowned.
I hope Dallas's floodplain park doesn't have flash flooding during a similar event, because there would be more fatalities with a wider river than a mere bayou. Might be a mistake to follow Houston in this regard, since the landscaping has to be redone in the aftermath of a devastating flood. Sadly, the re-landscaping after Harvey had been finished a few months prior.
"Dallas has mostly abandoned the core to center around Legacy as the northern sprawl moves to Oklahoma."
How many more times are you going to push this false narrative? How many times will it be necessary to correct you?
That’s why i didn’t respond. Kerrtown said this in the Texas forum and they told him/her that was false and he still says that Dallas has abandoned their core.
Atlanta is just a train station. It has been lagging in skyscrapers, especially in its Downtown and developers mostly prefer Midtown. Decatur, the real anchor for the metro, is underserved by the freeway system and very isolated, making any CBD development impossible.
Atlanta is just a train station. It has been lagging in skyscrapers, especially in its Downtown and developers mostly prefer Midtown. Decatur, the real anchor for the metro, is underserved by the freeway system and very isolated, making any CBD development impossible.
This doesn't make any sense. The City of Atlanta is the anchor for the metro. Decatur is a small city connected via MARTA with an amazingly walkable downtown. It isn't on Atlanta's level in terms of importance.
Skyscrapers in and of themselves don't increase walkability. They have to have their base designed in a way that enhances and engages its surroundings. I don't care if Atlanta never builds another skyscraper. That's mostly just for ego than out of need for sunbelt cities. There is so much available land to build on that can activate the streets much better. Downtown isn't building as much as Midtown but it is more classically urban which is why it is used as stand-in for NYC in movies. Downtown doesn't need more skyscrapers. It needs more buildings with people living in them.
Houston's downtown seemed a bit more walkable and much more organized than Dallas which has multiple one way streets going in the same direction in some areas. As far as Downtown Dallas being completely neglected? This is false. Deep Ellum has massively improved and looks fairly comparable to Midtown Atlanta (minus the building height) currently. Houston to me feels more centralized than DFW however. In terms of walkability? I'm unsure, haven't had the chance to walk through Houston or Dallas. I think Houston will beat Dallas mainly because the street car downtown is pretty effective. I haven't seen the metrics of Atlanta's street car ridership but it does look like it could compete with it. Houston is also seemingly more busy in the core with pedestrians, strictly in the downtown area that is. Outside of there it changes fast, so Atlanta wins because the beltline area and also MARTA rail.
Speaking of this, I finally had a chance to ride DART. It wasn't -terrible- but its true that it seemed a bit lacking in ridership, although admittedly I don't think its because of connectivity but more-less there were a ton of rift-raft as well as potential thugs using it. In S.Dallas it was pretty slow. In N.Dallas it moves almost as fast as MARTA rail in some areas. The grade crossings in N.Dallas were minimal but were present. I personally don't see anything wrong with DART in comparison to any other major metro system outside of them using lightrail instead of heavy rail but more so that, citizens are plainly married to their cars in DFW.
Urban in the metro:
Houston > Dallas > Atlanta
Outside of downtown, Houston retains a fairly strong density within its sprawl. Dallas does as well where as Atlanta's drops significantly once you leave I-285 and becomes increasingly more sprawly / spread out - making walking more and more difficult. Note that Houston and Dallas however aren't really walking champions in their greater metro - its just their infrastructure can be more easily adjusted toward it than metro Atlanta's can due to the density. Dallas is sprawled with a plethora of apartments and high density living nodes as well as single family homes, especially in N.DFW metro. Those nodes can also become increasingly more walkable as well, think of miniature Avalon's/Downtown Alpharetta's scattered all over the place...but with the right mindsets it could logistically become walkable.
I think what holds DFW back isn't the infrastructure but people much prefer their cars in that metro.
Last edited by Need4Camaro; 01-10-2020 at 08:59 AM..
Houston's downtown seemed a bit more walkable and much more organized than Dallas which has multiple one way streets going in the same direction in some areas. As far as Downtown Dallas being completely neglected? This is false. Deep Ellum has massively improved and looks fairly comparable to Midtown Atlanta (minus the building height) currently. Houston to me feels more centralized than DFW however. In terms of walkability? I'm unsure, haven't had the chance to walk through Houston or Dallas. I think Houston will beat Dallas mainly because the street car downtown is pretty effective. I haven't seen the metrics of Atlanta's street car ridership but it does look like it could compete with it. Houston is also seemingly more busy in the core with pedestrians, strictly in the downtown area that is. Outside of there it changes fast, so Atlanta wins because the beltline area and also MARTA rail.
Speaking of this, I finally had a chance to ride DART. It wasn't -terrible- but its true that it seemed a bit lacking in ridership, although admittedly I don't think its because of connectivity but more-less there were a ton of rift-raft as well as potential thugs using it. In S.Dallas it was pretty slow. In N.Dallas it moves almost as fast as MARTA rail in some areas. The grade crossings in N.Dallas were minimal but were present. I personally don't see anything wrong with DART in comparison to any other major metro system outside of them using lightrail instead of heavy rail but more so that, citizens are plainly married to their cars in DFW.
Urban in the metro:
Houston > Dallas > Atlanta
Outside of downtown, Houston retains a fairly strong density within its sprawl. Dallas does as well where as Atlanta's drops significantly once you leave I-285 and becomes increasingly more sprawly / spread out - making walking more and more difficult. Note that Houston and Dallas however aren't really walking champions in their greater metro - its just their infrastructure can be more easily adjusted toward it than metro Atlanta's can due to the density. Dallas is sprawled with a plethora of apartments and high density living nodes as well as single family homes, especially in N.DFW metro. Those nodes can also become increasingly more walkable as well, think of miniature Avalon's/Downtown Alpharetta's scattered all over the place...but with the right mindsets it could logistically become walkable.
I think what holds DFW back isn't the infrastructure but people much prefer their cars in that metro.
While I agree with all of this post, the last sentence caught my eye in particular.
I think for DFW, the layout of the region and their success in getting large road infrastructure projects is ironically why public transit doesn't work well there. In most cases, its simply too easy to use your car to consider public transit, exceptions being certain large events. The road system has a lot of capacity and even through the growth, it seems to be holding up pretty well. Then consider that most people live in single family housing that is fundamentally difficult to connect to robust public transit, as well as the long distances and sprawl (and the weather) and it's tough to get people out of their cars. In Houston, it's a similar situation for the most part.
Atlanta is different because its regional road and freeway network is so insufficient for the area's needs that it almost has to have some better public transit (which, for all of its flaws, I would consider MARTA better than both DART and Metrorail).
Atlanta is just a train station. It has been lagging in skyscrapers, especially in its Downtown and developers mostly prefer Midtown. Decatur, the real anchor for the metro, is underserved by the freeway system and very isolated, making any CBD development impossible.
Huh???
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