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This photo shows 3-4 of the skylines merging somewhat, taken at 5-15 miles away depending on which skyline your talking about.
Houston
Seattle (own photo), not including the Bellevue skyline across the lake
Here is an interesting shot of Seattle and Bellevue skylines in a single frame: https://previews.123rf.com/images/st...background.jpg
I think highlights the scope of the city a little bit better. Like I said before, I don't think Seattle is the largest city visually by far, but to automatically say Houston is leagues larger visually, I just don't agree with. In the end it's subjective. You can dismiss me as a homer, but Charlotte485 and many others feel the same way. Population and area size isn't everything when it comes to visual feel.
That's perspective though.
It looks like one skyline in the pic that NN posted but the middle cluster is miles away from the other two so the scale is diminished. But you have to take pics from further away to get it all in one frame.
The middle cluster is downtown and the buildings are massive so although it is much further the buildings still stand out. But from that distance you don't get the midrises .
Seattle has an unobstructed view from the water. You can capture the towers and also the little buildings all around which makes for an impressive cluster.
Considering Houston inner loop is 90 sq miles and the left half of that contains Downtown, Midtown, TMC, Upper Kirby, Montrose, Allen Parkway, Greenway Plaza and Uptown just outside is a pretty impressive collection of business districts in about a 50 sq mile area. If they were all in a line it definitely would be leagues bigger than Seattle. TMC alone has 50M sq feet of medical/ office space. Uptown has another 30M of office and 6M retail. Property Shark lists the amount of office space in Seattle as 111M square feet. That is phenomenal for its size but that is comparable to Downtown Houston plus TMC and not counting Uptown, Greenway etc.
I've been to Barcelona too, under any circumstances it doesn't feel significantly larger than Houston. That's because the city is extremely dense. from the airport it only took us 20 odd minutes to get to the center of the city, and their was rural land around the airport. Also the city is not the Metro area. While the inner city architecture is nice, were Barcelona seemed massive to me was having so many large buildings in this area, as well as the entire ride to the city center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gornal...t_de_Llobregat)
A massive, midrise historic core can be found in so many cities. I grew up in the 3rd world. The core of Barcelona is extremely beautiful, but it's not a signifier of size without some sort of scale.
Here is Malaga. Tell me why, I would believe it's any smaller than Barcelona without getting in some sort of vehicle and traveling, or walking the 20 minutes out of the core into a lower density neighborhood. Density matters, but their are literal countries where every city over 300,000 has a dense historic core of 40,000 ppsm+. The only thing that differentiates cities size in those countries from about 500,000-20,000,000, is the scale of the city. The literal distance you have to travel to get places.
Half the time the other distinguishing factor is how many Skyscrapers, they have because large cities, with larger businesses, that need a large amount of space always need a big building to house their workers/companies. Kayseri might not have any legitimate skyscrapers, but Istanbul has multiple high rise districts dotting it's skyline, and massive structures for it's larger global pull.
Anytime, I hear someone mention why they feel Tokyo feels larger than NYC, it's always the scale they talk about. Tokyo has smaller buildings but what, NYC doesn't have is 10 different train stops that feel like Times Square. How can you travel 20 miles and still feel like your in the center of the city, and the middle of the action... that's a dizzying experience. Galveston to Conroe is no Tokyo, but it's insane to drive 90 miles and only see development, hence it's size. Miami also has that perk, as well as Seattle.
Well, we’ll have to disagree with what we feel like is visually a large city.
Because everything you guys are talking about is what I call sprawl. Yes. Visually, Houston is more sprawling than Seattle.
Seattle has the larger primary core, is denser and definitely feels more hustle and bustle, but Seattle does not visually look larger than Houston from up above due to sprawl and how Houston is zoned
Houston looks like a 2/3rd scale LA minus the mountains and beach front.
The ride down I-95 into Miami is pretty wild. If you were to take the road that runs non-stop right next to the beach, State Road A1A, going south from West Palm Beach or even from Jupiter your mind would probably be blown before you even get to Miami-Dade County. I'm talking by U.S. standards of course.
This 10 year old video below shows the coastline going north from North Beach to the southern Broward County line. There has also been a crazy amount of construction all over the place since this video was filmed 10 years ago.
It doesn't even show any of South Beach, Downtown Miami, Brickell, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove etc. None of Broward County and the Fort Lauderdale area or Palm Beach County and the West Palm Beach area either. (Which are really dense and have almost endless high-rise clusters all over the place)
Don't be fooled by the thumbnail this video is no joke.
Look at a density map. LA's vernacular SFR areas (the flat areas) were much denser than Houston's in 2020. Large swaths of LA had five-figure densities.
You can argue semantics of "limited areas" but the fact remains.
Look at a density map. LA's vernacular SFR areas (the flat areas) were much denser than Houston's in 2020. Large swaths of LA had five-figure densities.
You can argue semantics of "limited areas" but the fact remains.
That's not the part that's false. Houston lots are tightly packed. More tightly packed than single family detached homes in legacy cities such as Boston or Philly metros.
You are assuming that because Houston is less dense that the homes must be on bigger lots. Don't make up facts. Houston is less dense than LA because it has huge swarths of undevelopable and undeveloped land mixed in with neighborhoods.
Don't tell me to look at maps. I have personal knowledge of both cities I don't go about proclaiming things to be fact based on looking at maps.
You said LA is about tightly packed houses and Houston is not. That is totally false. They have very similar styles.only difference is LA doesn't have tons of open space in its urban area like Houston does
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