august948

That's a very good point. The reason there's a referendum, though, is that there's political opposition to rail that doesn't exist for freeway expansion. Those who want to implement rail essentially have to provide proof that there is voter demand. The way our system is set up, we're all tolled or taxed for infrastructure we don't use. I've never driven route 66, but I pay to keep it maintained. It comes down to how we, and the politicians we elect, want that money used.

I think that the development of master planned communities like Cinco Ranch and First Colony are in part a response to what happened to Sharpstown and Alief. In the end we may end up with a city with a wealthy core surronded by older suburbs where the urban poor live surrounded by wealthier master planned suburbs. At least that appears to be where we are now.

The federal government also subsidized everything about building our cities and infrastructure to foster economic development to a point where you don't have to farm for a living like 80% of the population of pre-automobile America did. Sources please for the "tremendous" bias in school funding. The very word suburb comes from the latin word "suburbium" and comes directly to us from the Old French word "suburbe" meaning a residential area outside a city or town. Usage of that word comes from the mid-14th century. Are you telling us that the ancient Romans and the medeval French created a word for something that didn't exist until the US Government colluded with Big Oil and GM in the mid-20th century?

As the crow flies, I'm about 60 miles from the ocean, so I'll stay put and wait for it to come to me. Can I sue Al Gore if global warming doesn't make my property beach-front by the time I retire?

I'm not sure how higher real estate costs are a positive for anyone other than people selling the real estate and their agents. Since transit is run by government agencies and subject to the capricious will of the voters it almost always lags demand, sometimes by decades, so that overtaxed becomes the norm. Not sure how that would be a positive either.You probably need to choose a different city than Detroit for this comparison as it has unique problems. My point here is the more people come into contact, the more friction will occur. And you are right, these are things that come with the territory. My point is there are negatives and positives to both denser (urban core) and less dense (suburbs) locations.

There are also many disadvantages to density. Less personal space, higher crime rates, overcrowded schools, higher real estate costs, greater susceptibility to a disaster, overtaxed transit, scarce parking, etc.

I agree on the bike parking. It can be a pain sometimes trying to find a place to tie up. I also agree on reducing the requirements as that will let the market decide. Might still end up with a lot of buildings paved over, though.

I believe the city is already working on that, aren't they? Question is, will much more walkable retail actually result or will reduction in parking options tend to decrease business?

Or it might just put more cars on the road in your neighborhood. Isn't that what the Stop Ashby folks were arguing?

And it will, slowly, and never to the extent of NYC or San Francisco. Houston is already well on the way to being a distributed, multi-core city and only the sudden appearance of mountains or ocean circling the area is going to change how the city grows. In 50 to 100 years one might ask which core you are talking about.

It will, but not to anything like the degree that will happen in the core. There's always more farm land to be bought on the fringes. Plus with the urban poor getting squeezed out of the core, there will be a segment of suburban buyers/renters without the money to push prices higher.

Manhattan and SF are both surrounded by water so they are land locked in a more significant way.

How impressive it was depends on what the existing population was at the beginning of the 10 year period. I'll take a ballpark guess at 600k or so. That makes for about a 6% growth rate over 10 years. I'd bet you could trace most of that back to mid and high rise developments put up in the last 10 years.

Why the interstate highway system, of course, plus all those other evil roads that allow people to not have to live squashed like sardines in concrete highrises like they do in enlightened societies like, say, North Korea. Come on, comrade, get with the program! As for the funding bias, your guess is as good as mine. Slick, can you provide us with some outdated partisan sources, please?

I hear that all the time from folks I work with in California, particularly the younger ones. They seem to think that Texas is just a large desert with only rednecks and cowboys. I usually tell them they watch way too much tv.

For visitors, it might be good to have some very visible signage showing the above-ground entrances to the tunnels. Something like what other cities do for subways.

All Walmarts are awesome.

Like a rose unfolding. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wj3Uxbyuh4

I'm curious, what smells like freshly mowed grass and kills quickly? Amen to that. We lived about 10 miles from a paper plant when I was a kid and you could get a whiff of it if the wind blew just right. Driving by it was a nightmare. Far worse than any refinery I've ever smelled. Mmmm...fresh baked bread.

I think what we're talking about here is the development of "edge cities", where downtown becomes just the biggest or oldest of several concentrations of office space and jobs.

I guess that leads to the question of who controls the uptown tirz.

I wonder if that would lead to the bar/club being cited as a public nuisance if the neighbors are constantly calling HPD down to take measurements? Does the city have the means to shut a bar down if it is deemed a nuisance?

I think the 610 loop may be a convenient, but not necessarily accurate, delimiter for the "urban core". Houston is, architecturally speaking, almost entirely suburban in character. If you can get population density broken down sufficiently, you might be able to better define the core. While La Grange is indeed well beyond being exurban for Houston, you might be surprised by how many people commute in from places like Brenham and Sealy.

That would support the notion that the population center of Houston has shifted westward outside the loop. I think I heard somewhere (maybe in another thread) that the population center of Houston was somewhere around I10 and the Beltway.

Are those limits at the door at a specified distance?