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by ibejoeb
1232 days ago
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What's wrong with Houston? You have pretty much whatever you want there. You can go get a single family house, live in a gated community, rent a shack on the bayou, go be a hipster in montrose, live in a high-rise downtown... Pretty good as far as I'm concerned. |
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The outer loop of 99/Grand Parkway nearly encompasses D.C. and Baltimore [2]. Commuting from 99-adjacent (e.g. Sugar Land, Cypress, and the Woodlands) to downtown is common enough. I've seen Katy to Baytown for months while working on (oil & gas) projects. Same goes for Midtown/downtown to Baytown to work in the refineries. Trying to serve an area of that size with any sort of transit is not easy, regardless of density.
As Houston continues to grow, it's going to continually max out arterial road capacity. Even Katy Freeway backs up every day despite being 20+ lanes at its widest [3]. All of those cars have to go somewhere. And you're devoting so much valuable real estate to dozens of lanes for a few hundred thousand commuters. Not even the reverse commute will save you [4].
I have another post that mentions my optimism about Houston suburbs eventually providing more transit and density [5]. It's silly that your choices of hosing are single family or stranded apartment buildings adjacent to the highway [6]. The inability to convert some number of homes into 2 or 3 apartment buildings on the same lot like this [7] seems less disruptive than 5+ unit apartments.
Fundamentally, both are much easier than providing increasingly-distant suburbs with power, water, and highways. Hopefully Houston can start embracing this before prices become as ridiculous as other regions.
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[1] https://tcwp.tamu.edu/wetlands/wetland-loss/ [2] http://mapfrappe.com/?show=64047 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_10_in_Texas#/media/... [4] https://mobility.tamu.edu/mip/corridors-pdfs/houston/HOU-22-... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33567501 [6] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brea+Luxury+Apartments/@29... [7] https://www.apartments.com/43-hooper-st-worcester-ma/9rsxk34...