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I don’t no what tall buildings have to do with urban streetscape. Dallas wins this easily. It’s a much more pedestrian friendly city in its core.
MUCH MORE is a big stretch. I would say Dallas is a little more pedestrian friendly in it's core but it's still pretty dead for the more pedestrian friendly core it does have outside of Deep Ellum. I do think however that Houston's larger core gives it more of a "urban" feel. But like others have mentioned before, neither one is significantly ahead of one another.
Have you been to downtown Houston lately? Those parking lots seem to get fewer and fewe every time I visit.
A developer bought the last remaining lots from the park going down past Toyota.
Not lately since I don't live in Houston anymore and since my family is out in the burb (Sugar Land), I rarely go past Montrose/Upper Kirby/Rice Village even heading into the city.
Glad to hear that those parking lots are disappearing - they should with the way Houston metro area had been exploding the past decades or so.
As an Angeleno, I used to think this, but then I visited family in Houston, and it's just not comparable at all. I like Houston a lot and think it gets undersold in a lot of ways, but even at a per capita basis with regard to urban streetscape, Houston and LÁ are in completely different leagues. The ambiguity of "sprawly" here is doing a lot of work
Yep.. both are very "sprawly" compared to east coast or foreign cities. And both are very car dependent. (As someone mentioned in another thread: even if you live and work in dense parts of LA you likely need to drive between them). But there are still so many dense, walkable nodes in the LA area and there is just nothing like that in Houston at all. Houston has a fairly high population density thanks to presence of quite a few townhomes, apartment complexes, and lower income areas that have multi generational families living in packed SFHs, but I don't see much in the way of urban streetscapes anywhere.
And I don't mean to single out Houston, generally this applies to all Texas cities. It simply didn't have any large cities in the pre -automobile era. We forget that even LA had millions of people before WW2. That simply wasn't the case in Texas cities.
But half the buildings in that spot are parking garages... That's kind of the problem with urban streetscapes in Texas cities. There isn't really one that isn't 50% parking. Overall I don't think it compares to the stretch of DTLA I posted. Of course, a lot of DTLA is also filled with parking much like Texas cities.
But all of them have ground floor retail. Doesn't matter what the buildings are, it's the streetscape we are talking about. For many of them at street level you don't notice what they are.
But half the buildings in that spot are parking garages... That's kind of the problem with urban streetscapes in Texas cities. There isn't really one that isn't 50% parking. Overall I don't think it compares to the stretch of DTLA I posted. Of course, a lot of DTLA is also filled with parking much like Texas cities.
I have stated that while parking garages are better than surface parking, it's still an eyesore and doesn't really help with the urbanity. I think Texas cities overbuild on parking garages myself. I also think Houston has way to many one way streets in the core and those one way streets are pretty wide. There are plans to tear down the Pierce Elevated and submerge I-69/I-45 which will open up East Downtown to Downtown Houston as well as the other two sides to Downtown. For some stupid reason, TxDot thought it was smart to build freeways around the CBDs in all of Texas major cities. Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio all have this problem and I think at least Dallas and Houston wants to tear down at least one freeway in their cores. I don't think any other state did this idiocy.
While parking garages are certainly eye sores, there’s better ways to built them. Here’s a link to an under construction garage in Midtown, Houston that’s part of Rice University’s “Innovation District”. They’re implementing street level retain and greenery.
While parking garages are certainly eye sores, there’s better ways to built them. Here’s a link to an under construction garage in Midtown, Houston that’s part of Rice University’s “Innovation District”. They’re implementing street level retain and greenery.
I hope Houston, Dallas and other car centric towns implement more projects like this to overcome that ugly post WWII concrete mess
They need more projects like this period. That project is in a really great location. Is BRT for that area still in the works. Still scratching my head as to the University line not being built.
I'm also shocked more has not been built around Houston Community College's main campus.
They need more projects like this period. That project is in a really great location. Is BRT for that area still in the works. Still scratching my head as to the University line not being built.
I'm also shocked more has not been built around Houston Community College's main campus.
Here’s an article from 2 weeks ago on the University Line. It won’t get built before the Katy BRT line breaks ground (which is more urgent anyway). There was a longer version on the chronicle but there’s a paywall.
HCC owns most of the land in proximity to its classes and it doesn’t want to give up that land to block future building expansions. Especially now that they’ve basically ran out of room in their main area and will have to start expanding outward.
Here’s an article from 2 weeks ago on the University Line. It won’t get built before the Katy BRT line breaks ground (which is more urgent anyway). There was a longer version on the chronicle but there’s a paywall.
HCC owns most of the land in proximity to its classes and it doesn’t want to give up that land to block future building expansions. Especially now that they’ve basically ran out of room in their main area and will have to start expanding outward.
Thanks for the article.
Is the Katy line really needed more than the university line? I think the rail system would have been loads more popular if there was a line connecting the population of the south west with downtown, TMC a and the universities. I think the reason Houston system never took off is because the university line would have been the backbone feeding the other lines. Forget brt, or even light rail. A game changer would be a sunken line with north-south buses and light rail feeding into it. There a reason why the busiest stations are in TMC. It is just so much more convenient to take the rail. To be honest I think the whole Katy BRT is a waste of time.
As for HCC I didn't mean the land on campus, I looked on Google maps and it looks to be surrounded by townhouses. It didn't look like there was anything related to the campus once you left campus. I know that community colleges cater to a transient crowd. But still im shocked that there isn't anything catering the 8am to 5pm crowd. It looks very insular. You drive in and drive out. Doesn't that campus house like 25,000 plus students? Again I might be wrong and I'm not familiar with the campus but where are the restaurants, bars...
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