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Have you driven around Houston in a car or just visited downtown via airplane? Greater Houston is a gigantic circle that is evenly populated throughout whereas the Bay Area is a pretty thin ring of development around the Bay itself. The freeways system in Houston is absurd and much larger than the in the Bay Area and there are multiple skyscraper clusters as well.
I certainly don't like Houston's layout as a city but it feels like a more significant cluster of humanity to me. The Bay Area doesn't feel all that intensely developed.
This makes no sense, SF is full of 3-4 story mixed use neighborhoods, with wall to wall 5-8 story neighborhoods nearer to the urban core. I don’t recall anywhere in Houston being like that, it drops to detached buildings pretty quickly just a few blocks from Downtown (admittedly, there are more blocks of townhomes being developed in the 610 loop these days, but keep in mind that’s roughly the minimum density in San Francisco vs the maximum in a lot of Houston). Also, the primary statistical area has more people than Houston’s, and jammed into a much smaller landmass, so it is quite literally more densely built up even in the suburbs than the Houston region.
Houston is certainly more sprawly, but San Francisco and the surrounding suburbs in the East Bay/South Bay/North Bay are much more intensely developed.Obviously California metropolitan areas have to deal with more topographical constraints, but that just makes the developed areas all the more intensely developed because the metropolitan area can’t sprawl outward.
To be fair he said the Bay and not SF City.
It's kinda twisting his words to imply he is comparing city of Houston with City of San Francisco.
That's silly, San Francisco is like the most dense big city in the country.
Although I am not in-agreement, it is clear he is talking about the metro and not the cities.
By chance how big of a metro would you say SFBA feels like? 6M? 8M? Bigger?
SF metro definitely feels bigger than a 4M metro, but how big?
Houston feels every bit as big as it's 7.5M too.
American cities sprawl. Just how it is for the last 100 years.
If you judge a metro size just by the core nowadays then you will be coming up wrong 90% of the time.
You got to factor in expanse somewhere in the equation and for areas like the Bay and Miami they do have more intense peaks but clearly from the discourse in this thread people go by more than just the intense areas and try to factor in the whole.
LA previously was seen as this up and coming sprawling city with a less vibrant downtown and poor public transit but it has evolved into the country's most dense urban area and now has much better transit.
Miami is more constrained like SF, and Houston is more consistent all around like Los Angeles.
Miami is no SF and Houston is no LA, but it's just an analogy.
SF is denser in its core areas than LA, but taken as a whole LA definitely feels bigger than SF.
Without everyone following the same rules (judging by the core only or entire metro) all we do is end up in an argument loop.
To be fair he said the Bay and not SF City.
It's kinda twisting his words to imply he is comparing city of Houston with City of San Francisco.
That's silly, San Francisco is like the most dense big city in the country.
Although I am not in-agreement, it is clear he is talking about the metro and not the cities.
By chance how big of a metro would you say SFBA feels like? 6M? 8M? Bigger?
SF metro definitely feels bigger than a 4M metro, but how big?
Houston feels every bit as big as it's 7.5M too.
American cities sprawl. Just how it is for the last 100 years.
If you judge a metro size just by the core nowadays then you will be coming up wrong 90% of the time.
You got to factor in expanse somewhere in the equation and for areas like the Bay and Miami they do have more intense peaks but clearly from the discourse in this thread people go by more than just the intense areas and try to factor in the whole.
LA previously was seen as this up and coming sprawling city with a less vibrant downtown and poor public transit but it has evolved into the country's most dense urban area and now has much better transit.
Miami is more constrained like SF, and Houston is more consistent all around like Los Angeles.
Miami is no SF and Houston is no LA, but it's just an analogy.
SF is denser in its core areas than LA, but taken as a whole LA definitely feels bigger than SF.
Without everyone following the same rules (judging by the core only or entire metro) all we do is end up in an argument loop.
But it works either way! Core of Houston with core of SF, or Houston and its suburbs vs San Francisco and its suburbs.The San Francisco region has something like 9.6 million people, at least pre-COVID, which is larger than the Houston region’s population. Also, due to the topographic constraints (and much older cities) pretty much all the suburbs around SF are far more urban than most of the suburbs in Houston (both those inside and outside the Houston city limits), with the exception of maybe some of the South Bay (Milpitas/Cupertino/San Jose outside Downtown area) or the furthest out East Bay suburbs (Fairfield/Vacaville/etc.).
Otherwise most SF suburbs are streetcar suburbs with dense nodes built around Caltrain stops like Redwood City, Palo Alto, San Mateo, South SF, etc. that are almost non-existent in the Houston area. There’s lots of fairly dense (at least by American standards) little ferry towns in the North Bay, not to mention the East Bay being all built up with central Oakland or Berkeley. There’s nothing in the Houston suburbs quite as urban as those places at all, sans maybe like the old part of Galveston? Most of the built up areas in the Houston metropolitan area are more like giant suburban office parks, more like an Irvine, CA than a built up urban neighborhood of dense mixed use walkable streets on a grid. Heck, even Miami doesn’t really have many built up urban places outside of Miami Beach, Downtown, Coral Gables, Little Havana, Wynwood, and the Downtowns of Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. It’s got more truly urban nodes than Houston, I suppose, but that isn’t saying much.
Like how many areas in Miami and Houston can you live without a car, and get most of your daily needs by walking/cycling/transit? That’s a pretty good indicator of how built up or urban a place is. I find a lot of that in both San Francisco and its suburbs, but in Houston and most of Miami it’s strip malls, stroads, single family homes, retail power centers, and sometimes tall building in between huge expanses of parking. That’s hardly built up, dense, big, or city feeling.
But it works either way! Core of Houston with core of SF, or Houston and its suburbs vs San Francisco and its suburbs.The San Francisco region has something like 9.6 million people, at least pre-COVID, which is larger than the Houston region’s population. Also, due to the topographic constraints (and much older cities) pretty much all the suburbs around SF are far more urban than most of the suburbs in Houston (both those inside and outside the Houston city limits), with the exception of maybe some of the South Bay (Milpitas/Cupertino/San Jose outside Downtown area) or the furthest out East Bay suburbs (Fairfield/Vacaville/etc.).
Otherwise most SF suburbs are streetcar suburbs with dense nodes built around Caltrain stops like Redwood City, Palo Alto, San Mateo, South SF, etc. that are almost non-existent in the Houston area. There’s lots of fairly dense (at least by American standards) little ferry towns in the North Bay, not to mention the East Bay being all built up with central Oakland or Berkeley. There’s nothing in the Houston suburbs quite as urban as those places at all, sans maybe like the old part of Galveston? Most of the built up areas in the Houston metropolitan area are more like giant suburban office parks, more like an Irvine, CA than a built up urban neighborhood of dense mixed use walkable streets on a grid. Heck, even Miami doesn’t really have many built up urban places outside of Miami Beach, Downtown, Coral Gables, Little Havana, Wynwood, and the Downtowns of Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. It’s got more truly urban nodes than Houston, I suppose, but that isn’t saying much.
Like how many areas in Miami and Houston can you live without a car, and get most of your daily needs by walking/cycling/transit? That’s a pretty good indicator of how built up or urban a place is. I find a lot of that in both San Francisco and its suburbs, but in Houston and most of Miami it’s strip malls, stroads, single family homes, retail power centers, and sometimes tall building in between huge expanses of parking. That’s hardly built up, dense, big, or city feeling.
So more urban = bigger to you, got it. Not an unfair conclusion but there are many instances where that fails, such as comparing Boston to Los Angeles. Urbanity isn’t a defacto 1 to 1 with feeling of size. Places like Houston and DFW feel large because they’re expansive (Houston in particular feels large since it’s expansive and its entire population revolves around 1 core).
Also that 9.6 million figure accounts for places like Modesto, Stockton, Santa Cruz, etc. that are physically distant from the urbanized area but still boost the population figures of “the bay.” The actual 9 county core of the Bay Area that actually includes places of continuous development is around the 7.5-7.6 million range so pretty similar to Houston.
I think the bay feels larger than Houston but the difference isn’t as big as you make it out to be.
So more urban = bigger to you, got it. Not an unfair conclusion but there are many instances where that fails, such as comparing Boston to Los Angeles. Urbanity isn’t a defacto 1 to 1 with feeling of size. Places like Houston and DFW feel large because they’re expansive (Houston in particular feels large since it’s expansive and its entire population revolves around 1 core).
Also that 9.6 million figure accounts for places like Modesto, Stockton, Santa Cruz, etc. that are physically distant from the urbanized area but still boost the population figures of “the bay.” The actual 9 county core of the Bay Area that actually includes places of continuous development is around the 7.5-7.6 million range so pretty similar to Houston.
I think the bay feels larger than Houston but the difference isn’t as big as you make it out to be.
The poster said Houston was more “intensely developed” which to me means density/urbanity/intensity, and yes I disagreed because nearly everywhere in the SF region is denser and more intensely developed, in particular due to the geographic constraints, but also do to more thoughtful urban planning and having cities and suburbs that predominately grew before the US threw the principles of city building out the window. I will give Houston credit it is starting to change this by allowing more density inside the loop, but it’s got a long long way to go to play catchup (plus most of the loop still doesn’t allow density beyond townhomes, sans the CBD itself and points south where they allow mid rise apartments).
Houston’s primary statistical area and metropolitan statistical area also include plenty of cities/towns that are far and disconnected too, so that’s nothing particular to SF. Plus SF suburbs have mountain ranges between them so of course there is some disconnection given they didn’t build continuously on every mountain range and marsh, but that doesn’t mean the metropolitan area and commuting shed isn’t still expansive.
Like when Houston has far away sprawl it’s expansive, when SF does they’re “cheating” apparently.
The poster said Houston was more “intensely developed” which to me means density/urbanity/intensity, and yes I disagreed because nearly everywhere in the SF region is denser and more intensely developed, in particular due to the geographic constraints, but also do to more thoughtful urban planning and having cities and suburbs that predominately grew before the US threw the principles of city building out the window. I will give Houston credit it is starting to change this by allowing more density inside the loop, but it’s got a long long way to go to play catchup (plus most of the loop still doesn’t allow density beyond townhomes, sans the CBD itself and points south where they allow mid rise apartments).
Houston’s primary statistical area and metropolitan statistical area also include plenty of cities/towns that are far and disconnected too, so that’s nothing particular to SF. Plus SF suburbs have mountain ranges between them so of course there is some disconnection given they didn’t build continuously on every mountain range and marsh, but that doesn’t mean the metropolitan area and commuting shed isn’t still expansive.
Like when Houston has far away sprawl it’s expansive, when SF does they’re “cheating” apparently.
I don't understand why you keep bringing up SF? I clearly stated they SF proper is far more urban than Houston, but it's quite small at the end of the day and has less than a million people. The other parts of the metro aren't particularly urban. More than Houston sprawl, sure, but that is a low bar. Houston sprawl is absolutely massive. SFBA sprawl is a thin ring of development around the Bay and it is only slightly more dense than Houston.
As far as development intensity, look at the freeway lane-miles, where Houston has 2-3x more. SFBA has very large nature preserves to go with a large body of water taking up most of the area. Whereas Houston is almost uniformly developed in a giant circle centered around the city.
I grew up visiting family in SF, I travel to the Bay area multiple times per year for work and I've lived there for a short stretch. Nowhere outside of SF proper feels like a particular big and dense city (not unlike Houston). You are acting like the place is NYC or something. What makes Houston feel big is that it is gigantic. SFBA is also gigantic in a way but (like Miami) it's much more linear in comparison to Houston.
Last edited by whereiend; 04-23-2024 at 07:37 AM..
I don't understand why you keep bringing up SF? I clearly stated they SF proper is far more urban than Houston, but it's quite small at the end of the day and has less than a million people. The other parts of the metro aren't particularly urban. More than Houston sprawl, sure, but that is a low bar. Houston sprawl is absolutely massive. SFBA sprawl is a thin ring of development around the Bay and it is only slightly more dense than Houston.
As far as development intensity, look at the freeway lane-miles, where Houston has 2-3x more. SFBA has very large nature preserves to go with a large body of water taking up most of the area. Whereas Houston is almost uniformly developed in a giant circle centered around the city.
I grew up visiting family in SF, I travel to the Bay area multiple times per year for work and I've lived there for a short stretch. Nowhere outside of SF proper feels like a particular big and dense city (not unlike Houston). You are acting like the place is NYC or something. What makes Houston feel big is that it is gigantic. SFBA is also gigantic in a way but (like Miami) it's much more linear in comparison to Houston.
Oakland, Berkeley, the Peninsula. Not particularly big and dense? I’m lost on your thoughts and opinion about that.
Houston built lots of roads. Are the amount of roads your definition of size feeling and expansiveness.
Houston gets to sprawl and the second largest metro in California doesn’t. Another lost me.
South Florida and the SFBA feel bigger than Houston, whether I’m in the core of each or in a far flung exurb.
Houston builds taller buildings along a lot of its freeways, which may give it a big feeling.
From a downtown perspective, Miami.
From a metro perspective, Houston.
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