So I grew up in the D/FW area (Colleyville) and have now been living in the DC area (Arlington, VA) for a little more than 1.5 years. One of the major things I can see living here is that the DC area (and other parts of the country) do not see freeways as a development option as much. We don't have frontage roads here and thus the development tends to not be freeway oriented. The inner part of DC(inside the Beltway including; Montgomery County, Maryland, Arlington County, VA and the district of course) is way ahead of Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio. The one interesting thing is DC is facing it's own sprawl issues as the Northern Virginia burbs beyond the reach of the Metro have been growing a lot. The only thing is even the sprawl here tends to have concentrated business centers. Due to the real estate cost around here most of the new houses in these burbs are townhouses/rowhouses. So even though a sprawl problem exists here, I think the development will complement mass transit when it finally arrives. I haven't been to Houston's urban neighborhoods a whole lot. I did like the Westheimer strip inside 610. I also like the West U area. I don't know much about the midtown area. I hope the Texas cities can be somewhat like here in the future. I think the freeway oriented development of Dallas and Houston though will be quite hard to overcome. Dallas' uptown shows some promise but it still has a way to go. The neighborhood I live in in Arlington (Ballston) now has about 20 years of subway access and the results are great. The thing to remember is it takes time and a huge investment. A lot of people from Texas think of DC as an established rail city, but these same arguments over lots of money and long time 'till results happened in DC in 1968-1970. The full 103 mile system as planned back then wasn't fully finished until 2001 officially. I like reading the board.
