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Prefer TX's more free-market approach to zoning/teardown/building...free markets, employers and consumers tend to be best in sorting out what "aesthetics" for which they want to pay
"Zoning" is a communist excuse for overpaid gvt workers to shake down developers for permits/exemptions...and to impose all kinds of new taxes to hire and overpay more gvt workers
Don't know of a city/suburban region anywhere that is elegant throughout, zoning or not, no matter how wealthy is region nor how costly is housing
And high-income jobs migrate over time....SiliconValley is world's highest-tech, perhaps wealthiest, region and most yuppie workers choose to reside in suburbs nr their suburban office campuses in Cupertino, MtnView, etc...not up in SF...and have plenty of Houston-like apt slums/crime in places like EastPaloAlto just blks from where many billionaires reside in PaloAlto
In any major region, most major companies (and high-income jobs) are based in distant, newer suburbs, not in a city....look where Exxon is HQ'd: Irving, not Dallas; where's Conoco HQ'd, etc...and doubt many cos. will ever move back from suburbs to cities, with their more costly office space, parking hassles and distance from suburbs where most top execs and middle mgrs prefer to reside
Call me crazy, but Gulfton seems ripe for redevelopment from a developer's perspective I'd think. Borders the West Univ area to the west, Bellaire to the southwest, Meyerland south, and the Galleria area / Uptown to the north. The land is probably in parcels unfortunately, but if it was sold off in one big chunk and the crummy apts torn down and the land totally redeveloped into a cohesive community that complemented the surrounding area, seems like it would do very well on location alone.
If Sharpstown continues its turnaround, Gulfton may very well follow.
Prefer TX's more free-market approach to zoning/teardown/building...free markets, employers and consumers tend to be best in sorting out what "aesthetics" for which they want to pay
"Zoning" is a communist excuse for overpaid gvt workers to shake down developers for permits/exemptions...and to impose all kinds of new taxes to hire and overpay more gvt workers
Don't know of a city/suburban region anywhere that is elegant throughout, zoning or not, no matter how wealthy is region nor how costly is housing
And high-income jobs migrate over time....SiliconValley is world's highest-tech, perhaps wealthiest, region and most yuppie workers choose to reside in suburbs nr their suburban office campuses in Cupertino, MtnView, etc...not up in SF...and have plenty of Houston-like apt slums/crime in places like EastPaloAlto just blks from where many billionaires reside in PaloAlto
In any major region, most major companies (and high-income jobs) are based in distant, newer suburbs, not in a city....look where Exxon is HQ'd: Irving, not Dallas; where's Conoco HQ'd, etc...and doubt many cos. will ever move back from suburbs to cities, with their more costly office space, parking hassles and distance from suburbs where most top execs and middle mgrs prefer to reside
Although your points are correct, there is no denying that if people want improvements to this city, they will need to fork over some cash for it. You cant possibly expect to see an improvement in the Houston landscape and not be willing to sacrifice something.
Freemarket has been prevalent in Houston, and look at what it has become.
It may be true that some companies are moving out to suburbs but that still doesn't solve the sprawl dilemma and now it has become an epidemic.
Trust me Houston needs a MAJOR face-lift, I just hope it doesnt come in the form of some new shiny "citycenter/towncenter" crap. There needs to be some originality and creativity for development to be truly successful. To me, Towncenter/Citycentre etc. isn't made to make anything look better or revive any sort of neighborhood, its sole purpose is to create huge revenues for developers, these developers could careless about Houston.
And you're right, there's not a total lack of zoning, because there are city ordinances for land use, right?
A lot of the complaints I hear are more about aesthetics than anything else. Billboards, signanage, clutter, general ugliness. How much prettier would the Houston area be if we could remove every one of the tallest monster billboards and replace them with a little cluster of trees? There is headway being made in this area, fortunately (Scenic Houston, Trees for Houston, etc.) But it can't happen soon enough...
There are many of us who would definitely consider living closer in, but our options are so limited when we don't have $700k+ to spend on decent family home with good public schools. I have many friends in Austin who live in the city, with kids, in nice (but older) neighborhoods that have great public schools. It's not cheap either, but more like like $300k+ homes (certainly more attainable than the $500k+ you often see here for comparable) because there just seem to be more options; they don't have this problem we do in Houston of bad areas spread around randomly, especially with the large number of apartment complexes, so it's just easier there. In Houston it's more like finding a needle in a haystack. Thus, the master-planned communities in the burbs are so popular here and people just go to these.
Developers definitely have some great opportunities to develop more sustainable/walkable, mixed-use and family-friendly developments in town. The question is will they do it, or will they just keep building more crap and more apartments? Maybe it is a good idea for city of Houston to start having more say and more power in this... these days, you need more than just good jobs to attract (and keep) the best.
*looks at the size of Houston then compares it to Austin*
That's probably why. You can't find a $300K house with great schools around the Inner Loop in Houston, but a house for that price and good schools is easily attainable in the city. The Spring Branch area for one. Don't really know of the bad areas spread around randomly you're talking about.
Completely agree with you on the billboards/signage thing. I also wish our city leaders were more aggressive on attracting new companies into the Houston area instead of waiting on them to come first. Something Dallas does do better than us.
I don't think people's minds are changing. I think those who have always opposed zoning will always oppose zoning. The difference in thinking or poll results is probly result of the influx of new residents to Texas and to Houston who don't know the history of the growth of the region.
Then I got to this comment, 'Houstonian Uchenna Agu said when he first arrived from California, he was stunned by the lack of zoning.' What his comment really means to me is that California has arrived and they intend to convert Texas - and Houston, to California.
Developers definitely have some great opportunities to develop more sustainable/walkable, mixed-use and family-friendly developments in town.
Because nothing says walkable like hot, sticky, and mosquito-infested swamp. Which Houston is/was. Like you're going to walk anywhere in the heat and humidity, let alone walk your groceries a half mile back to your condo. Lest you forget, that will be nearly every day, since you can't carry a week's worth of groceries by yourself. In day-to-day operation, "walkable" gets tiresome very quickly. Apparently the solution to everything is "walkable", the actual conditions on the ground be damned.
If a developer wants to build mixed-use, that's fine with me, but I will object to any attempt to make it mandatory.
I still don't get other poster's fetish for bigger setbacks. All that does is make land less valuable and new development more expensive. In fact it makes the apartments those same posters hate more likely to be built, not less, because the developer needs more density to make up for the increased costs created by the setback rules. Urban planning advocates keep talking about making housing affordable, but every rule they push for makes it more expensive. One might think that making housing less affordable is their actual goal, public rhetoric notwithstanding. The lords of Portland OR are more honest than most urban planners: they publicly state that increased traffic congestion and more expensive housing is the desired result of their planning activities.
For those without a clue, "land use planning" does not make housing more affordable or available. In fact, the opposite is true. Housing is most affordable in places with the least planning, and is least affordable in places with the most planning e.g. California. Price volatility is the same; big runups and big crashes happen most in places with strong planning: California, Florida, New York, Massachusetts. That's all aside from the corruption that inevitably results from giving politicians power over other people's property. Such power is morally questionable at best, and given the impossibility of an urban planner having the same depth and breadth of knowledge as the sum total of the many thousands of participants in land markets, a gross overreach.
Urban renewal renews nothing, unless you call stealing from landowners in undesirable parts of town via eminent domain, and then wasting tax dollars on vanity projects for politicians, renewal. If "renewal" is accomplished by private actors buying land from voluntary sellers, it's great. If accomplished by fiat with money taken (as always) forcibly from the public, it's wrong. Even if urban renewal were morally acceptable as it is usually practiced, no urban renewal project ever attains its initial goals. Indeed, it usually fails miserably. Why, therefore, urban renewal is as popular as ever remains a mystery. I am reminded of a classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
*looks at the size of Houston then compares it to Austin*
That's probably why. You can't find a $300K house with great schools around the Inner Loop in Houston, but a house for that price and good schools is easily attainable in the city. The Spring Branch area for one. Don't really know of the bad areas spread around randomly you're talking about.
Completely agree with you on the billboards/signage thing. I also wish our city leaders were more aggressive on attracting new companies into the Houston area instead of waiting on them to come first. Something Dallas does do better than us.
Yeah, I'm not really getting AK123's points. You're asking for two different types of development, but you're failing to realize one has to give into the other. Austin is tiny compared to Houston.
You're not going to find a $300K house in most places (especially big cities) that have very good mixed-use development and zoning--just not going to happen. Houston is getting more expensive every day, not less, as development is shifting. Like someone said about the parking thing, most cities with this type of development often choose the more expensive, yet more aesthetic route of doing things (ie renovating an old building as opposed to building a cheap new one). Let's be honest: Houston has opted for the cheap way to do things the cheap way for a long time and now its catching up. Also, apartment living tends to be the main housing stock in these areas, so yes, apartments can be nice, as long as they're not owned by a slumlord.
Honestly, I was in NYC for a couple of days this past week and what Houston really needs is some color on the buildings (enough with that boring beige) and billboards with cool lights and ****. If it's any consolation, I think we're doing better than Astoria.
I spent last weekend in Dallas (another Texas city) and couldn't believe how much the city was better planned in comparison to Houston.....it's not even in the same ballpark.
I spent last weekend in Dallas (another Texas city) and couldn't believe how much the city was better planned in comparison to Houston.....it's not even in the same ballpark.
True. But Dallas has its own challenges. I think when we start comparing ourselves to other cities we lose focus of what will work best for US. I agree with an earlier thread that the change has to start from the inside out.
I am personally ALL for taking old neighborhoods and refurbishing them (whether that means restoring existing structures/businesses or building news in their place). I think a gleaming example of success in this area in Houston is The Heights. Now only if we could do what's been done in The Heights to East End and Third Ward we'd have something started.
A lot of people complain about the weather in Houston. If you don't like it then that's your problem, stay inside. Recognize, though, that there are some people who can actually walk outside their front door and appreciate the GOOD attributes of a day and I think you'll find that there are more of them in Houston than you think. What we need to do is start giving them INCENTIVES to go outside. Discovery Green is a great start but it's in a place that's populated by hardly anybody (except the people in One Park Place). Market Square Park will be another good addition to downtown. I think that development can go hand in hand and aid in renewal. For example, I'm kind of sad they're building the new Embassy hotel where they are. I think Discovery Green would be a BETTER utilized if they'd built a smaller scale apartment complex there (much like Lofts at the Ball Park). Establishing parks is great...it's a start...we need to start bringing people TO those park. The existing lofts downtown are nice and all but they're too far from amenities like Discovery Green. People who live downtown want to be close to amenities...b/c that's the whole point, right? Being within walking distance of a cool/place? Too bad for every downtown park/amenity we renew, we can add a decently filled, small-scale condo/apt. complex b/c before long we'd have a bunch of little clusters of folks living and playing w/ in downtown. In addition, we need a grocery store downtown and NO the Randall's in midtown doesn't count. The CVS off of Main is a better example. It'd be even sweeter if it were in a building's facade and was multilevel (like many urban European grocery stores) and accessible from the street AND the tunnel system. This would give the downtown inhabitants somewhere to go and get the necessities. Sorry...I'm going to get off my soap box now...
I've lived in "New Urban Communities". I found them sterile and uninviting (Las Colinas in Irving, for one). Living in Las Colinas, the master-planned community, you have to drive to get to ANYTHING---except the perfectly beautiful high rises with their artificial lake.
Here in Houston, while I'm glad CityCentre is there, and I think it's pretty, and I go there for Studio Movie Grill and Yard House---I wouldn't want to live there. It's as sterile and uninviting as Las Colinas.
In Little Rock, I lived in the Quapaw Quarter (in my 20's). The Quapaw Quarter is the largest intact Victorian neighborhood in the US. All these beautifully, painstakingly restored victorian homes; the original neighborhood of Little Rock. It really is gorgeous. Most of the plans for most of the houses are still on file with the City, and many of the residents have gone to extreme lengths to restore the homes to an exact period of time, say 1888 (with a few updates like the kitchen and bathroom). I lived in one of the houses with several friends, and we restored it.
Ever-so-elegant (Christmas parties were great! Holly and Ivy strung over the fireplace, mulled wine, etc. Very chi-chi and very pretentious...). Not so elegant: cracking the ice on the floor with your bare foot as you jump out of bed to race to the bathroom (also icy). Impossible to heat in the winter, impossible to cool in the summer. Really unpleasant to have to get a stained-glass maker to try to replicate the stained glass panel that was blown out last week by the bullets of the gang-bangers as they did a drive by (yes, that happened, and the window was in my bedroom, and I was in bed at the time). Put a marble on the floor at one end of the hall and watch it roll to the bottom at the other end, without your having nudged it. Not a straight line in the house. Odd angles. No closets. It sounds romantic, but the actual living of it---not so much.
I've lived in NYC. It's a "walkable, high-density urban environment with mass transit." This sounds glamorous; it's just what everybody wants right now!!! It's very fashionable!!!! Note how exciting everything is with exclamation points!!!!
It is, sometimes. On a beautiful April Saturday, with the sky blue and the temps balmy, it's downright fabulous. The vendors all have their wares out on the sidewalk, people are happy, it's very cool.
However, it is not so very cool when the temperature is around 33 degrees, the snow/sleet/frozen particulate matter is hitting you in the face as you struggle upwind and uphill toward your apartment---then an M5 bus splashes you with black water/slush from the street. You, of course, are carrying your 2 or 3 bags of groceries, because you had to go to the store, like you do every day, because you can only carry so much in your hands.
You get home to your tiny apartment for which you pay enormous sums of money; you smell the fish somebody on the hall is cooking; you have to go in, drop your groceries, hitch up your dog and take him back downstairs so he can pee and poop (and you can scoop), still in the rain and the soggy ruin of a pair of your (formerly) good shoes. You go back upstairs (fish again), hang your wet clothes in the bathroom to dry---you know the bathroom, with the pipes running down the walls (Pre-WWII building, very primo!); the bathroom that you have to straddle the toilet or get in the bath tub in order to shut the door (it's that tiny). Oh, and of course, you can hear every flush from every apartment above you. Anyway, then (if you're eating in) you try to cook in the 5 foot space euphemistically termed "the kitchen".
This is in contrast to summer, of course, during which it is 95 degrees, the buses make slicky sounds as they drive by with their tires sticking to the asphalt. That same M5 bus had a/c at one time, but of course it doesn't work now (but since it was built for a/c, the windows don't open). As you stand there holding the strap, jouncing with every bump, smelling the breath of the immigrant with whom you are now VERY personally acquainted (since you (male) and he (male) are pressed directly together by the crowd) in your shirt that was starched and white and pristine when you left your apartment but is now drenched with sweat and stuck to you, you can reflect on the glamorous lifestyle you are leading.
Yes, I had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, it was pretty fabulous to walk in between the Chagall murals and down the red carpet to my seat and listen to the best Opera in the world. Yes, it's fabulous to stand thiiiiiiis close to a Pissarro or a Renoir or a Rembrandt or a 6000 year old mummy at the Metropolitan Museum, or look at a bear Teddy Roosevelt shot at the Museum of Natural History. Yes, the music at St. Thomas Fifth Avenue is stupendous. Yes, the chicken rollatini at the Grotta Azzurra on Mulberry at Broome is fantastic (don't forget to go to Ferrara's for dessert).
But you know what? I can still enjoy all those fabulous things twice a year; Continental has daily nonstops from IAH to Newark, and you can be in Penn Station in 30 minutes.
Then I can come back to my nice, comfortable suburban (by New York standards) home in Houston, with my air conditioned cars and my green, beautiful lawn (and the lovely lawns of the neighbors) and the space in my house and the ease (because of lack of zoning) of getting to the grocery, the cleaners, and 1,000 restaurants....
One of the neighbors in my building in NYC was 90 years old! (real exclamation point). The things she had seen....WWI and WWII, the Stock Market Crash, Man on the Moon...incredible. She was a native New Yorker, born on the lower east side, living in her rent-controlled apartment. No kids, never married, no relatives. A few friends to look in on her now and again. She was still making it. However, she was also having to slog through the sloshy, grimy streets to the grocery, the doctor, or anywhere else she had to go. Her 90 year old feet, ankles, and hips had to get her there, arthritic or not.
I can't see myself doing that. I don't want all the "nouveau urban lifestyle". I don't like sterile, artificial environments (sorry, CityCentre, Woodlands, and Las Colinas; sorry big new development at Kirby and Alabama; sorry uber-cool Rice Military folks in your Communist-bloc looking 3-story housing complexes). Your stuff may be "the next big thing", but it's no more or less "artificial" than the master planned, cul de sac'd suburbs you claim to detest.
Just because it works for the 20-somethings and urban utopians doesn't mean it works for everybody else.
Summing up: the only "real" places are places LIKE HOUSTON---where everything just sort of sprouts up. Where you have a warehouse next to a neighborhood next to a shopping center (featuring an adult bookstore and a Mattress Firm and a Donut Shop) next to a church on a freeway with billboards and strip centers.
THAT is real.
And that's why I like Houston. It's "real".
Don't change it.
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