SpringTX

I thought my fellow folks on HAIF would like this. We've all seen various discussions on this forum about the real estate prices in various parts of the country and how they compare to Houston. Someone just showed me the website zillow.com. You can map any address, and it shows you the estimated property value...and the values of the all surrounding properties. It's kind of like the interactive map on har.com (but har.com only shows properties for sale). And unlike har.com, zillow everywhere in the country. And if you click on the checkbox for "heat map", you can see color-coded zones around each city for how expensive the housing is. You can also see what is happening on a macro level in the Houston metro area. If I learned one thing from this site, it's that we have a sweet, sweet, sweet deal here in Houston compared to most of the rest of the major cities in the country, especially on the east coast and west coast. The coasts definitely appear to have a "bubble" in the works like Europe has had.

I just checked housing prices in Dublin, CA. Dublin is a suburb 34 miles east of San Francisco. According to www.zillow.com, the average housing price in Dublin is $642K. In neighboring Pleasanton, it's $778K. San Ramon is $792K, Alameda $632K, Castro Valley $669K, etc. Surf around zillow.com's "heat map" for the San Francisco area and you'll see that $350/sf (yellow) is the low end for the suburbs - with a lot in the $400/sf (orange) or hotter. Compare that to the heat map for the Houston suburbs which shows a sea of icy blue ($100/sf or less).

This supports the anecdotal evidence discussed on this forum about how people living in The Woodlands are so much more calm and friendly, and how things seem so relatively crime-free here. It may be tempting to say that's just hometown pride, or marketing brainwashing, or merely an effect of the socioeconomic level, but I disagree, especially now that I see studies like this. My wife says that she notices that people seem to litter less often here. I swear that I think people drive more courteously here. Visitors to The Woodlands tell us that people here seem to so relaxed and friendly that it's odd. Some may say it's Prozac in the water supply, but I think there's something to Kuo's theory about all the trees calming people down and making them more well-adjusted.

Research by Frances Kuo, published in National Geographic, shows that communities with trees and green space have less crime, less domestic violence, more sociable neighbors, better memory retention on childrens' tests, and all sorts of other unexpected benefits. This supports the suspicion, and the dream of George Mitchell, that people living in The Woodlands are happier and healthier. Check out this link for more information on the research of Frances Kuo: http://www.lpb.org/programs/forest/chicago.html

When we were looking for a house in The Woodlands last year, I fell in love with several Life Forms houses in our price range in Panther Creek and Cochran's Crossing which were built in the late 1980's and early 1990's. The "woodsy craftsman" style as described here, and the way it "melds into the landscape" is just awesome. But after long study and consideration, here's what we found: * If you like the "woodsy craftsman" style on the exterior, then you're going to be very disappointed to find bland, undstinguished interiors. You'd almost expect to find wood paneling, wood beams, and other craftsman touches on the interior - but you'll find no such thing. The properties we looked at didn't even have wood floors. * As noted earlier, Life Forms have been dogged by a terrible reputation for being poorly-built homes. One of our criteria was a well-built home. While a Life Forms wasn't right for us, I still think they're awesome. Now, if you want to talk about Jerry Kirkpatrick custom homes (if anyone knows what those are)...

Translation: "The Woodlands was originally themed around lots of trees, and we ran out of land with trees on it, so in an effort to squeeze every last buck out of the existing land, we're starting a new neighborhood without any trees to speak of, simply so we can make as much money as possible." Oh, and... "And we'll throw in a couple token, tree-less parks to give lip service to the nature theme."

These are very good points. While The Woodlands is known to be a very private and secluded-feeling kind of place, it's also (ironically) an extremely, extremely friendly place. It's kind of like the irony of the "word hard, play hard" concept. In The Woodlands, a person might go for a week without even seeing any of his neighbors (because the forest everywhere), and then he decides to walk to the mailbox and he ends up bumping into a neighbor and talking for 30 minutes. Or longer. And he may not even see this neighbor again for a month. When it comes to socializing with neighbors in The Woodlands, it's usually a private ordeal because of the trees everywhere. It can sometimes feel like a confessional. There's certainly nothing fake or "staged" about any neighborly interaction, because there's no one else to see you! And since there are no distractions to interrupt or cut it short, conversations naturally ramble on as long as they want. And since there is such privacy, all kinds of juicy gossip can be spread. Neighbors in The Woodlands socialize when they feel like it, even if it's not that often. But when they do, they seem to pour it all out, completely unconsciously and naturally. While there appear to be some folks who relish the solitude and don't want to know their neighbors, I think the opposite is true for many folks, just as KatieDidIt and Bachanon were describing. I think the peace and quiet and "distance" afforded by all the trees generates a desire in many folks to become outgoing and to reach out to their neighbors. Outside of the individual subdivision, it's a different story. You really have to get active and get involved in the community if you want to connect with people outside of your subdivision, as Bachanon said.

* I've never lived in a gated community, but I thought gated communities were a solution for moms who were fearful of their kids playing in the street. I like the notion of a whole neighborhood of kids playing in the street, safe from speeding drivers or wandering predators. I think too many kids these days watch too much TV instead of getting outside and playing. * The notion of "community" in The Woodlands was sold out long ago. The Woodlands is all about making money now. The newer sections seem to be primarily targeted for upscale buyers, whereas the older sections were designed for economic diversity. The new sections might as well be Beverly Hills. That brings both good and bad aspects to the rest of us residents. * Personally, I don't care whether the Carlton Woods residents have a gate or not. My kids won't be playing with them. In fact, many of those kids will be attending the John Cooper School or The Woodlands Christian Academy or other private schools. Most of the cul-de-sacs in The Woodlands are very hard-to-reach, hard-to-find, and therefore very private as it is, with or without gates. * Rich people building 40,000 sq ft homes? Rich people building ugly homes? Rich people have never been known for their common sense. In fact, the very fact that they're rich...is usually a pretty good sign to me that they have no clue about what's important in life.

How important is diversity to you? If it's not that important to you, I would steer clear of Cranbrook and surrounding areas, and head for some areas which are safer but still within your price range. I would head farther north, personally. It's not easy raising African-American children in predominantly Caucasian neighborhoods or schools (and I have some personal experience along these lines) because they're going to struggle with prejudice and self-image, but your kids will receive better educations, will be in safer and more productive environments, and will be better prepared for success in life. The founder of a successful charter school for African Americans in Harlem described it along these lines of: "middle class schools have teachers who know how to teach, who care about their students, and who prepare them for the future". If you want your kids to have a better life than you had, then I suggest getting them in the best public schools that you can possibly afford, and then teach your kids to try to assimilate as best as possible and make the most of those opportunities. Good luck and God bless.

Does anybody know what kind of mph the water taxi goes? If it's equal to or slower than a brisk walk (say 5-7 mph), then I can't see it being used for anything other than sightseeing. Even if it went 35 mph and connected a major parking garage with a major office complex, I'm still hesitant to think many folks would shell out $6 just to travel a mile or two.

Would a simple street plan based on, say, triangles be that much more expensive than a street plan based on rectangles? 3 sides instead of 4 = 25% fewer sides

It's ok. Your idea is on a whole nother level from everything in existence today. If a designer hasn't attempted a city based on triangles in 5,000 years of human history, I can't imagine anyone ever attempting one based on a pre-designed, naturally-generated fractal pattern. Some ideas are just too advanced for everyday use, I guess. Maybe people don't like to try complicated things out of fear of failure.

I went to MapQuest and entered 77380 and this is the first map it showed me: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?zipcode=77380 You can see the cul-de-sac ciliae which give the map a cracked appearance. You can the semi-circular thoroughfare of Millbend from which many of them sprout. And you can see the linear roads. If you do zip code 77381 (http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?zipcode=77381), and look especially on the eastern and northern portions of the map, you see most of the poorly-formed circle that is Panther Creek Drive and its twigs and branches. North of Lake Woodlands Drive, you can see Golden Shadow Circle Quiet Oak Circle, and Shadowpoint Circle each have a similar effect.

I actually see similarities between that and the existing Woodlands street layout: the cul-de-sacs, the linear spokes, the curved thoroughfares.

That's awesome. I wasn't familiar with it. I can't believe that, in 5,000 years of urban planning, no one has tried this yet. I guess designers are stuck in a gridlock of the grid design. Those diagonals in DC make for some quite interesting navigation. They don't hold a candle to the clusterflunk of trying to drive even 1 mile in The Woodlands, but they definitely add some navigational spice.

I think that's a fair criticism to some extent. I think the planners were hoping for more of a sense of a small town, as you say. And there is some of that sense. But I think a lot of it comes from institutions such as the high schools, the WAC, the country club, the YMCA, and various churches. The planners centralized shopping with the Village shopping centers and now the town center, and I think that helps a little. The parks are too numerous (over 100 of them), too small, and too dispersed to really act as central gathering places for the larger community - with the possible exception of North Shore Park. The operating organizations try to hold special events like outdoor markets and outdoor concerts, and this helps a little. But the bottom line is that you're talking about nearly 100,000 people living in the middle of the Houston suburbs in the 21st century. It's got to be hard to create a sense of community in those conditions. So I agree that The Woodlands seems to have a mother lode of wonderful little enclaves, each consisting of a few hundred neighbors, each like its own little island. That doesn't seem to be a very common type of community, even for modern-day suburbia. Even if it isn't very revolutionary any more today, I think it offers a fascinating alternative to life in a grid. Does it connect us closer to mankind's most primitive pre-urban civilizations, back in the days when we swung from trees or lived in caves? Maybe not, but I think it's possible. I wonder if anyone has ever designed a community based entirely on triangles...

According to Oscar Newman's classic work "Creating Defensible Space", The Woodlands would be an extremely unsafe place to live: lots of tree cover, cul-de-sacs, hidden bike paths, etc. Basically a criminal could sneak up to your house, loot it, then escape, and never be seen by a single soul. But I've heard that crime rates in The Woodlands are very low.

Everyone knows about the towering shields of pine forest lining every street in The Woodlands, which hide both homes and businesses in sylvan enclaves. And most folks know about the democratic utopian experiment of George Mitchell. But the designers planned some less-well-known aspects which are just as revolutionary and amazing. They designed the entire community using the geometry of organic forces: curves, spirals, fractals, and intentional randomness. While often disorienting to navigate, this pervasive irregularity connects with people on a primal level. Its concentric curves tighten social bonds among neighbors and create greater senses of place and even personal individuality. For 5,000 years, since the first city arose in the Indus River valley, mankind has planned cities on rigid, rectangular grids. You will notice some form of grid in almost every city and community today. A few developers around the country attempted to veer away from the grid with utopian experiments in the 1970's, but The Woodlands is one of the few that has survived. Since the success of The Woodlands, some other communities have slowly started to adopt its curve-based street design. In Houston, for example, a few upscale golf course communities like Windrose and Gleannloch Farms have followed suit. Most residents of The Woodlands live on a semi-circle or flagella-shaped cul-de-sac, which is the cell unit of this community's design. Most subdivisions are themselves cul-de-sacs hanging off a circular or curved thoroughfare within each village. So they live in cul-de-sacs within cul-de-sacs. And the planners designed many of the villages to be cul-de-sacs themselves off of major thoroughfares like Woodlands Parkway. Even the entire community stems off I-45 as a giant cul-de-sac of sorts. The designers made each village a different shape and size, some long and slender like Indian Springs and others heart-shaped like Cochran's Crossing. They fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The architects aimed every road, big and small, in all directions, with constant twists and turns along the way. Shadow Bend Drive, for example, runs generally north-south parallel to Gosling, but then bends 90 degrees and runs perpindicular to it at one point. The planners made parks of all shapes and sizes, and placed them in a variety of locations. They placed the features in unusual locations inside the parks, like basketball courts in the middle of the woods. The golf course designers wove fairways through residential areas. A hundred miles of bike paths wind through the subdivisions like veins, sometimes mirroring the roads, only to later criss-cross them and/or vanish into the woods. These concentric semi-circles, unique shapes, and circuitous routes create deep layers of privacy for residents. People in The Woodlands live in what they typically describe as friendly little mini-communities, usually confined to their cul-de-sac or a few adjoining cul-de-sacs. They describe their neighbors as active in arranging block parties and other events. They report that their children make many friends in their neighborhoods. If you drive through any Woodlands subidvision after school on a sunny day, you will usually see children riding bikes, scooters, and skateboards down the street. If you drive down a cul-de-sac, you'll often see adults in their yards stop and stare unexpectedly at the sight of your car. If you live in The Woodlands, you'll see neighbors waving courteously at seemingly every car which drives past them, almost like they might have done in the romanticized small towns of yesteryear. Because of all the unusual geometry in The Woodlands, residents develop some different habits. Some tend to drive more cautiously on side streets, where the constant twists and unexpected intersections put drivers off balance. Drivers tend to get lost much more often, even on routine trips to the store. In conversations, people sometimes show confusion about locations. Perhaps Woodlands people explore their surroundings more. Even longtime residents seem to talk as if they were on a perpetual quest to find another store, or a closer store, or a better route to get to it. Residents seem to show a great sense of wonder about their surroundings. No one seems to show the slightest bit of irony at street or subdivision names like Hidden Lake, Mystic Woods, or Enchanted Forest. If you drive through one of these places slowly and admire the serenity of the thick canopy of trees, fresh air, and birds chirping, you'll find these names to be surprisingly appropriate. Residents tend to have a greater variety in neighborhood experiences; 2 residents living only a mile apart can live in 2 totally different worlds. One of them might live on a street among crusty retirees in mansions, and the other one might live among down-to-earth, young, blue-collar families. Because of all this, perhaps Woodlands folks feel more individualistic, like modern-day Henry David Thoreaus, each living in their own little Walden Pond in the suburbs.

That's a good point about those who can't drive. But as for a shuttle to the town center, I don't think there is a car rental place in the town center now. I think maybe Sawdust Road or I-45 would be the closest one. And a local cab could go the extra 5 miles to pick you up at your doorstep instead of at the town center. Remember there's also a commuter bus service into downtown Houston every day from a couple different points in The Woodlands.

East Shore - this new subdivision is being built in walking distance of the town center. Most of the homes will be within one or two miles of everything in the town center. There are some other residential developments in the town center now. Most residents in the villages of Grogan's Mill, Panther Creek, and some parts have direct routes of less than 5 miles to the town center via bike trails along Grogan's Mill Rd, Woodlands Pkwy, Lake Woodlands Dr, and Research Forest Dr. (http://www.thewoodlandsassociations.org/parks-rec/index.php?page=82) So some 20,000 residents can bike leisurely for less than 30 minutes and get to the town center. I regularly see residents riding bikes to the town center on weekends right now. I just saw one yesterday. I see kids biking to school every day in The Woodlands. Biking to work is trickier because it depends on the weather and the facilities in your workplace. Any way I look at it, inexpensive or upscale, public transportation in The Woodlands doesn't seem to make much sense to me in a primarily upscale, self-contained, suburban community. The average Woodlands household makes $100,000/year, probably has at least 2 cars, and we're talking about a 10-minute drive to work. And they drive everywhere else they go. So they'd spend 5 or 10 minutes walking on the bike trails to their nearest village shopping center, wait for a bus, pay $X, and then walk to work from wherever the bus stopped? For most folks who worked in The Woodlands, it would be easier to just drive to work. For some folks, it would be quicker to walk to work than to take a bus. I wonder if they'd consider opening up the bike trails to motorized traffic during commuting hours (weekday mornings and afternoons), and set a speed limit of 15 mph. They could do it on a trial basis and see what the reaction was. They could start out just opening it up a couple days per year. They could even limit it to certain types of motorized vehicles, like ones that weren't capable of going any faster than 30 mph, which would include golf carts, mopeds, kids scooters, and segways. This would keep out things like motorcycles. Another thing they might consider is to offer police patrol on the bikepaths. Or to have security cameras stationed at places along the bikepaths.

http://www.christiancourier.com/questions/fishQuestion.htm

I just read today that, back in 1995, approximately 1/3 of Woodlands residents worked inside The Woodlands.

http://www.pbase.com/photomurage/image/37310437 http://www.pbase.com/image/23692562 http://www.pbase.com/photomurage/image/37310860 http://www.pbase.com/image/23705447 http://www.pbase.com/photomurage/image/38231800 http://www.pbase.com/photomurage/image/37310845

I was thinking about that, too (housewives, children, retirees, college students, etc.), but then I realized they could only have been counting actual workers. The article said "about 80 percent of The Woodlands used to commute into Houston. Now, it's 30 percent because jobs were created (in The Woodlands)". So if it was once 80%, they couldn't have been counting children. There are perhaps as many or more children in The Woodlands as there are working adults.

Of the 70% of Woodlands residents that don't commute downtown, I think Redscare is right that many of them commute somewhere outside of The Woodlands. If I'm remembering correctly, there are 80,000 residents in TW and 40,000 jobs located here. And it's expected to go to something like 120,000 residents and 60,000 jobs. So basically there's a 2:1 ratio of residents to jobs. And I'm guessing that, like Seth, many of those jobs are held by folks from places outside The Woodlands like College Station or whatever. So I'm guessing that maybe as little as half of the jobs in The Woodlands are actually held by Woodlands residents. So that means 25% of people who live in The Woodlands actually work in The Woodlands as well. Maybe it's as high 30% or 40%, but it can't be much more than that. And it looks like it'll never get much higher than that. So most folks are presumably commuting to Kingwood or Katy or whatever.