How Many High Rises Do We Need?

[Hasek]

to fill in the TMC/DT and DT/UT corridors?

 

I counted from Polk to Hermann Park about 40 blocks (2.5 Miles) and the UT/DT corridor is ~5 miles

 

I guess we'd need 2 towers per block average along those corridors to make any connection so that would make ~80 for the TMC/DT and ~100 counting whats already along 59. Can Houston support ~200 new highrises in our lifetime?

[Dakota79]

to fill in the TMC/DT and DT/UT corridors?

I counted from Polk to Hermann Park about 40 blocks (2.5 Miles) and the UT/DT corridor is ~5 miles

I guess we'd need 2 towers per block average along those corridors to make any connection so that would make ~80 for the TMC/DT and ~100 counting whats already along 59. Can Houston support ~200 new highrises in our lifetime?

Depends. How old are you?

[cloud713]

Considering we've built hundreds of high rises in a lot of peoples life times that are still around, if say yes it's a possibility. And a very likely one at that, that we will build hundreds more high rises in many of our life times. It's just a matter of will they all be confined to those spaces inside the loop? The answer is obviously no.. I do see uptown-greenway merging in the next decade or so.

[Howard Huge]

Eleventy billion.

[arche_757]

For Midtown: I'd be happy to see 15 Highrises clustered around Elgin and Main

For the Museum District: 15 more mostly along Main & Montrose

For the periphery of the Hermann Park area: 10 to frame it in

For the southern part of the TMC: 20+ 

 

I'd really like to see a new business core develop south of TMC between 610 and Braes Bayou.  I'd like to see 10 or more residential highrises + a few additional commercial highrises (10-20 floors) and then a slew of healthcare buildings.

 

200 would be fantastic, but that's highly unlikely.  We'll see a lot of 6-10 floor buildings crop up in Houston over the next 20 years, more of those than highrises I'd wager.

 

Of course this is all just wishful thinking.

[Sparrow]

Transit investment would further the cause of those in favor of a manifest destiny of united skylines. Med Center--Downtown will likely occur long before Downtown--Uptown. The street grid from I-10 all the way down to Hermann park provides the framework for the unification. 

 

If the powers that be really wanted to attain a unified Medical Center to Downtown dense urban skyline, they ought to build an east side transit line (subway, light rail, BRT, monorail... whatever). The Red Line favors the west side of the districts. Run a line along Almeda/Crawford all the way from Holmes to MMP. They could even run it up Elysian too if they wanted to encourage east side of the Northside to develop in a dense urban fashion. An east side line would be highly speculative, but would provide the framework for development much in the way highway building does.

 

It's not so much a question of how many more high rises are needed to unify the skylines so much as a question of where do high rises need to be built to create a single skyline. A linear path of buildings solely along Main through Midtown would not be much of a skyline. 

[ArchFan]

I can't envision such dense development (e.g., 200 high-rises)  happening w/o major improvements in our transit infrastructure -- i.e., some form of grade-separated mass transit.  

 

As a community, we haven't developed a consensus about what kind of city we want to be (say) 30 years in the future.  I think most people are in favor of continued growth, but it seems as if many/most of them don't stop to consider how we might encourage and/or accommodate such growth.  

 

I'm not sure what to expect in Houston's future.  Perhaps we will grow to the point that -- without infrastructure improvements -- the QOL is so degraded that people and companies move elsewhere.  OTOH, more optimistically, perhaps many people will start living closer to their jobs.    

 

 

[Howard Huge]

I can't envision such dense development (e.g., 200 high-rises) happening w/o major improvements in our transit infrastructure -- i.e., some form of grade-separated mass transit.

As a community, we haven't developed a consensus about what kind of city we want to be (say) 30 years in the future. I think most people are in favor of continued growth, but it seems as if many/most of them don't stop to consider how we might encourage and/or accommodate such growth.

I'm not sure what to expect in Houston's future. Perhaps we will grow to the point that -- without infrastructure improvements -- the QOL is so degraded that people and companies move elsewhere. OTOH, more optimistically, perhaps many people will start living closer to their jobs.

Too many anti-rail people/politicians holding the city back.

Name ONE U.S. alpha city that doesnt have an extensive rail transit system.....

Ill give you a hint. YOU CANT.

If Houston continues to develop as a city tailored to driving a car everywhere with no alternative, we will soon reach our peak and further growth will be choked off by a gridlocked failure of a freeway/toll road system.

[Luminare]

When I was little I always imagined highrises stretching from Downtown to the Galleria. That's slowly becoming a reality