I just returned from a week of business in Houston and the contrasts between the cities is pretty dramatic. We have bad traffic in Seattle due to geographical constraints....(there is NOWHERE else to build a road!), but Houston traffic was a bit staggering at rush hour. The cloverleafs that split and then quickly split again are confusing and a bit intimidating. I was glad to have a GPS buddy in the car, but it was still stressful to navigate. I found Houstonians to be very friendly in person...but behind the wheel they were really aggressive by Seattle standards. The other thing that struck me was that I never really saw any pedestrians, but that's pretty typical of most American cities. Everyone is in their car.
I found the food scene in Houston outstanding and had some really great meals there. It was quite chilly and even cold at night while I was there, so it wasn't the hot muggy Houston I remember from years ago. Downtown seemed to have been wiped clean of any human scale by massive 'scrapers back in the 70's - 90's??? but it sounds like there's a major effort to revive it with more livable and walkable streets. I loved the neighborhoods around Rice Village..really beautiful old architecture.
Whereas Houston has no zoning, Seattle has really restrictive zoning. We have building height restrictions downtown which means that a lot of the residential construction happening now is restricted to 440-500 ft. We do have two major office buildings breaking ground which are around 550 and 660ft, with another in the pipeline which will be 850ft. They are being built in the zones which allow these heights, but no more. The Columbia Center will probably always be our tallest.
We are probably in midst of the biggest building boom ever, not only downtown but in just about every city neighborhood. We instituted 'Urban Growth Boundaries' (Like Portland) back in the 90's to prevent sprawl into the Cascade Mountains, so the result has been infill back into the city into what are termed 'Urban Villages' which are zoned around existing commercial districts to allow them to build more densely. The plan has worked and we're getting thousands of new apartments within existing neighborhoods. (Which in turn creates more traffic) We're rebuilding a major new bridge across Lake Washington, digging a tunnel to put cars underground along the waterfront ( big boondoggle), digging more subway lines north under Capitol Hill to the University of Washington, and finishing up a new trolley line to Capitol Hill. Even with all of this our infrastructure can barely keep up.
Being a native Southerner (South Georgia) I can attest to Seattle's Liberalism. It's quite secular, with few Steeples to be found. The founders were mostly Scandinavian, so the social attitudes run Northern European, as does the climate and general temperament of the people. It's truly a live and let live area, with a great appreciation for the outdoors as well as culture. The central city neighborhoods are gentrified and were built about a century ago. Thats why most are wood construction, and there's a lot of brick too, but not on the scale of Houston. In my neighborhood, there are lots of 'Dwell' style houses going up to replace small bungalows which aren't worth the cost of the land beneath them.
Because of our latitude, Summer and Fall is the best time to come as our days are really long and dry. (We do go into draught during the Summer!) We are appx. the same latitude as Paris, with a similar climate to there and London, which is further north.
Seattle
in Meanwhile, In The Rest of the World...
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More Greetings from Seattle!
I just returned from a week of business in Houston and the contrasts between the cities is pretty dramatic. We have bad traffic in Seattle due to geographical constraints....(there is NOWHERE else to build a road!), but Houston traffic was a bit staggering at rush hour. The cloverleafs that split and then quickly split again are confusing and a bit intimidating. I was glad to have a GPS buddy in the car, but it was still stressful to navigate. I found Houstonians to be very friendly in person...but behind the wheel they were really aggressive by Seattle standards. The other thing that struck me was that I never really saw any pedestrians, but that's pretty typical of most American cities. Everyone is in their car.
I found the food scene in Houston outstanding and had some really great meals there. It was quite chilly and even cold at night while I was there, so it wasn't the hot muggy Houston I remember from years ago. Downtown seemed to have been wiped clean of any human scale by massive 'scrapers back in the 70's - 90's??? but it sounds like there's a major effort to revive it with more livable and walkable streets. I loved the neighborhoods around Rice Village..really beautiful old architecture.
Whereas Houston has no zoning, Seattle has really restrictive zoning. We have building height restrictions downtown which means that a lot of the residential construction happening now is restricted to 440-500 ft. We do have two major office buildings breaking ground which are around 550 and 660ft, with another in the pipeline which will be 850ft. They are being built in the zones which allow these heights, but no more. The Columbia Center will probably always be our tallest.
We are probably in midst of the biggest building boom ever, not only downtown but in just about every city neighborhood. We instituted 'Urban Growth Boundaries' (Like Portland) back in the 90's to prevent sprawl into the Cascade Mountains, so the result has been infill back into the city into what are termed 'Urban Villages' which are zoned around existing commercial districts to allow them to build more densely. The plan has worked and we're getting thousands of new apartments within existing neighborhoods. (Which in turn creates more traffic) We're rebuilding a major new bridge across Lake Washington, digging a tunnel to put cars underground along the waterfront ( big boondoggle), digging more subway lines north under Capitol Hill to the University of Washington, and finishing up a new trolley line to Capitol Hill. Even with all of this our infrastructure can barely keep up.
Being a native Southerner (South Georgia) I can attest to Seattle's Liberalism. It's quite secular, with few Steeples to be found. The founders were mostly Scandinavian, so the social attitudes run Northern European, as does the climate and general temperament of the people. It's truly a live and let live area, with a great appreciation for the outdoors as well as culture. The central city neighborhoods are gentrified and were built about a century ago. Thats why most are wood construction, and there's a lot of brick too, but not on the scale of Houston. In my neighborhood, there are lots of 'Dwell' style houses going up to replace small bungalows which aren't worth the cost of the land beneath them.
Because of our latitude, Summer and Fall is the best time to come as our days are really long and dry. (We do go into draught during the Summer!) We are appx. the same latitude as Paris, with a similar climate to there and London, which is further north.
Come visit!