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Some folks really need to start visiting these cities before saying there isn't anything happening there. Houston (inside loop 610 and Uptown) and Dallas (inside loop 12) have built tons of highrises over the past 10-15 years.
I've visited Houston 3 times in the last 4 years and the high rise living must be spread out or isolated because I didn't see much of it if going by 15 stories. I stayed twice downtown and once in the galleria area. How much are we required to drive around Houston before we respond to this post based on our own perceptions?
For LA, I would consider core areas to be downtown stretching NW to West Hollywood. I know downtown has been building quite a few and Koreatown has some presence. Not sure for LA’s size whether that would be substantial. Maybe it’s getting there, but not quite. San Diego would even have a more noticeable residential high rise presence, downtown.
I don't agree. I live in a DTLA high rise and have been to SD a couple of times recently and think that DTLA has caught and passed downtown San Diego and the gap is widening. LA isn't NYC nor is it Chicago or Miami, but it's in the next tier somewhere.
I've visited Houston 3 times in the last 4 years and the high rise living must be spread out or isolated because I didn't see much of it if going by 15 stories. I stayed twice downtown and once in the galleria area. How much are we required to drive around Houston before we respond to this post based on our own perceptions?
If you didn't see them in this areas then it might be time for an optometrist visit. Could it be that you saw those buildings and didn't know they were residential?
Chicago enacted strict zoning regulations in 1893 to curtail high-rise/skyscraper growth after public outrage while New York embraced them throughout its history. Mid & high-rise residential was illegal in Chicago until the 1960's and office/commercial buildings were capped at 15 then 26 floors giving New York 70 years of unrivaled development as they never adopted height/density restrictions.
Even today most of Chicago's public is anti-height and single-family zoning utterly dominates. Something like only 5% of the land is zoned for "high-rise" and (or) multi-family buildings above 4 stories. Almost 1,400 high-rises is quite remarkable given the historic and current obstacles.
I’m not sure this is true, there are plenty of residential highrises from the “banned” time period you are describing, just not in the loop. But neighborhoods like Hyde Park, South Shore, Uptown, Lincoln Park etc where there are plenty of older residential highrises.
There were height restrictions from about 1893-sometime in the 1910s, and even then I still think plenty of 10-15 story buildings were getting built during that period. During the 1920s, it got changed up significantly, where after 20 stories or something you could still build above but those above floors had to occupy a maximum of 50% of the lot of the below floors or something like that. That’s why Chicago’s Art Deco is so different from NYC’s.
I've visited Houston 3 times in the last 4 years and the high rise living must be spread out or isolated because I didn't see much of it if going by 15 stories. I stayed twice downtown and once in the galleria area. How much are we required to drive around Houston before we respond to this post based on our own perceptions?
I don't know how you missed them then. There's quite a few outside of those 2 neighborhoods.
Above based purely on number of high rises which includes office towers, not just residential (living)—the subject of this post. If you exclude office towers the rankings likely would remain the same with the differences narrowing somewhat.
Sure to the first part based strictly on counting skyscrapers, but Houston would not be #4 if we narrow the list to residential mid/high-rises only. I could see Philadelphia, Boston and Seattle moving in with LA / SF, then Atlanta. Then Houston and others.
If you didn't see them in this areas then it might be time for an optometrist visit. Could it be that you saw those buildings and didn't know they were residential?
Must have. I took light rail around town and also walked a lot. I saw very few people downtown after work hours outside of one shopping/mall/restaurant area. I went to a bar downtown and didn't see evidence of many residents. I'm not saying that downtown didn't have any residents, but it was obviously overwhelmingly offices.
Where is the main high rise residential area? If I knew where that was maybe I could explain how I missed them.
Montrose, Museum District, River Oaks, Allen Parkway, Kirby and around the parks downtown. Then in Uptown there are quite a few. I don't think you will see any on Westheimer tho. If you stayed around the mall then there are only midrise apartments around that area. Head a few blocks north and you will see strings of them and across the highway quite a few have popped up in that area too.
Some of them are rather bulky buildings. You might not realize they are residential if you see them from a distance. Especially the ones in Uptown.
Also worth noting that just because there are a bunch of high-rises (i.e. buildings with height above 100ft), doesn't mean that people on the third floor of a high-rise are higher up than those in a third floor walk-up.
The better measure would be the median floor/height that people live on. Hong Kong something like 25 (could be misremembering).
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