Houston is number one! (Dallas, Austin: best cities, crimes, homes)

[eric3781]

What an outrage! This booming number 1 economy stuff cannot stand!

Quick! Everyone from California, Michigan, and the commie northern blue states...move down to Texas and bring your perverted Marxist authoritarian tax-and-spend brand of governance with you!

Please come and help take us down a peg and turn us into the soviet-style wasteland you just moved away from!

Hurry!

[BarcelonaFan]

Houston's development has been amazing. The city is quickly approaching world class status and is starting to look like a full fledge metropolis rivaling NY and LA. It still has a ways to go but it's nothing but up.

I do share some concerns that the development is mainly just pushing the working class (mostly minorities) to the burbs and then creating "white flight" into the further reaches of the countryside; Fulshear, Richmond, Old Katy. The Northside for one has also become a bit of a lawless no man's land. So yes, in some areas where development hasn't reached it's borderline third world-ish.

Houston is not perfect but it's growing and bustling and Texans can be proud of that.

[HookTheBrotherUp]

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

Houston's development has been amazing. The city is quickly approaching world class status and is starting to look like a full fledge metropolis rivaling NY and LA. It still has a ways to go but it's nothing but up.

I do share some concerns that the development is mainly just pushing the working class (mostly minorities) to the burbs and then creating "white flight" into the further reaches of the countryside; Fulshear, Richmond, Old Katy. The Northside for one has also become a bit of a lawless no man's land. So yes, in some areas where development hasn't reached it's borderline third world-ish.

Houston is not perfect but it's growing and bustling and Texans can be proud of that.

Ironically, the flight to the burbs frees up real estate in the loop, my wife and I took advantage of this and are actually moving from Katy to Montrose. It was expensive though, we paid double the cost for a home in Montrose that is less than have the size of our current Katy home. The development is nice, but it also makes it costly. Near my house is a plaque recognizing "Freedman's Town", but not too many "freed men" in the neighborhood anymore.

[Sunderpig2]

There's no question that the town keeps growing in size (both population and sprawl). But the town hasn't improved in any way over the past decades, other than maybe that the downtown area has been cleaned up. Crime keeps increasing, people have to drive further and further to get to work and home, the illegal population keeps growing and putting a strain on the schools/hospitals/etc., pollution keeps getting worse - just to name a few things.

The "world class" status is only something seen in the eyes of Houstonians, and maybe others in the south. Basically everywhere else, the town is seen as being overly trashy.

Increasing growth does not equal improvement and quality, it just means being bigger (something Texans love). As long as folks are caught up with that, they'll continue to not pay attention to the more significant declines going on all around them.

[City Love]

The Houston economy is strong and growth is very healthy! Like someone else mentioned, if you drive around the Energy Corridor, Memorial, Upper Kirby, Galleria, The Woodlands, Downtown, etc, you will see plenty of large scale growth. All this growth should lead to better infrastructure. Sure many of the surface streets suck and need work, but you can only have so much construction going on at any given time before the construction starts to inhibit regular transportation. I think many of the problems today are because of a lack of attention in yesteryear's.

[still_waiting]

The infrastructure (major roadways) will be the major bottleneck as Houston continues to grow. Otherwise good news.

[still_waiting]

Originally Posted by Redlionjr

The negative reviews will be coming soon and VERY SOON!!!!

When are you going to run for Mayor?

[Nairobi]

Originally Posted by HookTheBrotherUp

I'd say all we need now are better roads. The city streets, especially in the inner city just plain suck; it is embarassing to bring in out of town guests and have to drive through many of the neighborhood streets.

Better roads are ALL we need? You can't be serious.

[newton22]

No mention of education anywhere?

The Houston population isn't highly educated compared to other big cities on the west and east coasts. We have too many illiterates.

[jek74]

Originally Posted by newton22

No mention of education anywhere?

The Houston population isn't highly educated compared to other big cities on the west and east coasts. We have too many illiterates.

Sorry to jump in with some facts here. This graphic is from 2003 but the relative differences are likely the same. You will see that Texas has higher literacy rates then NY, CA and FL. Sorry about this.



I'm sure you are smart enough to figure out why all 4 of those states are higher then the rest of the country. If you need help, I'll lend a hand.