zaphod

The latter thing is Colony Ridge. It was fairly controversial. The guy who bought all the land and built it is a libertarian of sorts and his arguments in favor of his right to build it are sound. It's just that he's going to create a concentration of like 50,000-60,000 extremely poor people a large proportion of which are undocumented, don't speak english, have no education, etc in a location that's extremely far away from practically everything. It's going to be weird. Also not a lot of long term provisions to pay for services and infrastructure. Understandable why so many, especially in today's economy, would take the offer to buy a cheap lot and put up a trailer and DIY yourself some kind of homestead, but man, I think going forward 20-30 years that place is going to be rough. I think the only other similar places in the US would be the deserts north of LA, where there are huge settlements of people living in trailers and it's really bleak and weird.

To save money they should close down their offices in Midtown. That would be a big space to be redeveloped that's not a ugly wall on the sidewalk. Crime Stoppers would be a better fit for Greenspoint, I think.

The mall looks like it was pretty nice up until a few years prior to its demise. I had a thought, it seems like nowadays the "pace of change" for places like malls is slower. Like, many malls of the 1960s and 1970s only lasted about 30 years. 30 years ago was 1992, there aren't as many dead shopping centers from 1992 around today. I wonder if the retail industry was more volatile back then, when it was a new and growing thing. Nowadays there are only a handful of major chains, a lot of malls have vanished, so of course that means what remains are regional or flagship stores operated by giant publicly traded corporations that have deep pockets. Kind of like how when the internet was young there were a lot of different search engines and a lot of major websites and a lot of different brands of PC's and early smartphones and many of them came in a flash and vanished. Now there's just a few giant social media platforms, and a handful of companies that sell the majority of mobile devices.

That's a pretty heavy duty phase 1. It looks like they shifted from being many small buildings to being a handful of big ones?

"Dynamic and walkable"🙄

So, actually there is a severe paucity of publically accessible ones outside the city proper. The HOA pools, which are residents only, tend to dominate. I disagree completely. Other metro areas usually have municipal or county run aquatic facilities.

So it's like a normal apartment complex, but with big chonker 6 story buildings. Interesting.

I feel like I am raising the dead here, but I have a similar childhood memory and associate those things with Kmart too. Also older Krogers would have the intake vents in the middle of the store that would suck up all the mylar balloons that escaped the floral section. They'd float there and spin around helplessly like prey.

They have an ongoing project (recently went through permitting phase, no ground broken yet) in central Fort Worth to build three individual midrise apartments and then an 8 floor garage shared amongst them https://www.dfwi.org/go/1000-weatherford https://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6596&page=5#entry138136 I would expect this thing in Houston would be very big with loads of units.

I love it, it kind of takes density in that area to the next level and hopefully there will be more. I'm glad its modern looking and not some "old timey heights" design.

That fedex used to be a kinko's and had a subway conjoined to it. Oh well, a highrise would be much better.

Seems like a way to just suppress wages and allow some native populations (like black males with minimal education) to continue to languish. We should be encouraging people to take these jobs by making them less awful. Also, here is another thought. Maybe having labor get more expensive would be a way to disrupt the industry into being more efficient? Like what if houses were more modular or partially prefabricated in a factory? https://www.economist.com/business/2017/08/17/efficiency-eludes-the-construction-industry

I actually like the typeface and color scheme. It's clean and minimalistic. What I don't like is the light rail livery. Bring back the all silver trains

So are the towers actually happening?

Couldn't disagree more. For one, Italy being the sick man of Europe is a complicated story but I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with urban density. Otherwise you'd expect Japan and Germany to be just as behind and their not. Also I may be wrong but someone told me that Italians do in fact make cars.... and therefore have "auto plants". And factories making everything else. Italy was Europe's place to "nearshore" a lot of manufacturing prior to the EU making places like Poland and Bulgaria just as appealing, and it's still where a lot of appliances and other "white goods" like fridges and ovens sold under a variety of brand names get made. Maybe if you opened up Google Maps in your web browser you'd notice that country has a massive highway network and that cities like Naples have bypasses and ring roads with elevated structures and tunnels ducking below hills that have stuff developed on them. And that outside of these old cities are no shortage of industrial zones, big box stores, outlet malls, and all the other stuff we have here. I don't see what's so outmoded about affordable housing where people can enjoy common areas and walk places and interact with their community while exercising? Also unsure about your comment on opportunity related to land use. Actually, given Italy's demographic decline some of those old villages are emptying out and therefore very cheap places to live. Unlike Texas they don't have a housing shortage. You know maybe it's convenient that people there can be happy living in dwellings that are smaller and simpler and can devote their income and money and efforts into other economic activities. We take for granted our roads and freeways and the extra miles of sewer lines and water pipes we have but all those things are very expensive. One day when the US is over the demographic hump due to low birth rates and limited immigration, there will be fewer people paying more in taxes to sustain those things. Formerly middle class subdivisions with HOA's funding and maintaining aging infrastructure are going to be in pain in another 30 years when those areas are as old as neighborhoods in Cleveland and Detroit are now. Think about it.