texas911

One reason the original Chinatown is on the decline is because of those jerks that built the GBR. They effectively made Chinatown a back alley.

Oh please! Drive out of the Houston city limits for 15 minutes and you'll see that we're incapable of filling up the land with dead bodies. Fly in an airplane and look out the window. We have vast vast lands. This is just as humorous as those tree huggers that claim that urban sprawl will gobble up all the open area. Yea right.

Or, maybe because upper class neighborhoods have more upper class people living there and upper class people have more stuff to steal.

That's how I'd rank it, but the negative for me with the Woodlands is its very far from downtown.

First Colony is not just a master planned community, its one of the better ones in Houston. Its what zoning can do for you.

Actually any architect can work with any budget you give them. That's the beauty of hiring a real architect. I also quite like Val Giltsch. Also I've seen a Form Works Design house that looks fantastic. Keep us updated.

http://www.mc2architects.com http://www.unicornarch.com http://crescentdesigngroup.com All UH guys with a great sense of design. UH is a design school first and foremost.

Check out the www.coogfun.com for some really funny stuff.

I think people say they are from Sugar Land because it sounds cooler.

Don't confuse Sugar Land the city with First Colony the master planned community. Inside First Colony, it is orderly and very well planned, outside of it is just like any other unruly suburban sprawl. First Colony is where its at.

allenbianchi.com?

Oh that house! I was wondering about that house, its been under construction for like 5 years! When's he finishing it? One bedroom? He's self financing because no bank is going to loan you money for a one bedroom house.

I like it because when I'm lost, I can use them to find my way back to the freeway.

I just hope they don't turn it into another crappy spanish colonial strip center with fake red tile roofs and cheapo iron detailing.

My wife graduated from there and its a nice small close knit University, you literally know everyone on campus. The architecture is OK, the finished mall and the Chapel look good but those damn priests must have bern hitting the wine when they apporved that ugly garage right next to the Chapel, which blocks the western sun that used to shone through the giant transparent cross on the western wall of the Chapel. Idiots! Also they should plant more oak trees and keep them trimmed. Nothing unifies an urban campus like trees do. But the new dorms are top notch and I applaud them closing the through streets. Its definitely an asset for Houston and hope they can keep growing. You'd be surprised how many out of state students go to UST. That's a plus for Houston.

The Zman, he's totally nutter, I had him when I was at UH. An excellent teacher if you can see past his deranged character. Sort of an angry Keeland.

Godspeed, and show'em how we do it in Texas!

Especially when you don't agree with it. But if you do then its iron clad! http://biz.yahoo.com/special/besttowns06_article3.html 3. Sugar Land, TX. Population: 75,800 Typical single family home: $170,000 Est. property taxes: $4,500 Pros: Diversity; affordable housing Con: Like humidity? A lot? When Fred Fogarty was transferred to Houston in 1999, he and his wife Susan checked out every city in the area before deciding to live in Sugar Land. Now they can't imagine being anywhere else. Fred, an investment adviser, has since set up his own business in the city too. "We like to do family-oriented things, and we wanted to be outside the hustle and bustle of Houston but still have the big-city feel," says Fred, 40. "It's an amazing spot." That's a sentiment shared by many in Sugar Land, one of the country's more diverse communities. The area's heat and humidity tend to remind Asian immigrants of home, and in the 80's, as Sugar Land became less a sleepy small town and more a land of good jobs and affordable housing, more Asians moved in. Today the city is almost a quarter Asian, and Sugar Land is home to mosques as well as Hindu and Buddhist temples. The city's head count has tripled since 1990, and Mayor David Wallace expects it to hit almost 200,000 within the next 10 years. That expansion will follow a detailed plan; no area will join without utilities and services already in place. To limit the impact of sprawl, Sugar Land requires brick storefronts as well as extensive landscaping around shopping centers. Though town namesake Imperial Sugar Co. recently closed its refinery, the city is teeming with software, engineering and energy firms such as Fluor Corp. and Unocal. Sugar Land recently revamped its airport to better accommodate corporate jets. The booming school population has led to crowding, but the district churns out dozens of National Merit semifinalists each year, and SAT scores are consistently higher than state and national averages. And in few desirable cities does a buck go so far: $200,000 buys a roomy house in a landscaped neighborhood with a community pool. "We were thinking that this would be a nice place to have children," says Suja Pappan, 37, a local teacher who moved here with her husband Phillip nine years ago. The couple now have a two-year-old son. "The schools are exemplary," Suja says. "Houses are reasonable, and there are all different varieties of people here. It's a good fit."

Barf, hope it doesn't look like that rendering in the newspaper. That's what Houston needs more of, faux Italian architecture, you know becuase we're either faux or Italian.

I think there are reports of wepons of mass destruction in Sugar Land. That's enough to invade.

I'd take 3 white houses before I buy a house like the castle.

Its jus suspect, how do we know its not one person posting as multiple people to try and get their views across.

Hang out at Starbucks or Borders.

He's been around since before Urban Lofts, so I'm thinking he's not ripping anyone off. I actually went to an open house and the spaces are insane! It has 11 foot ceilings and it feels spacious, more than what the square footage would imply. Anything is better than another McMansion.

It looks cool but man, that is a high price. http://search.har.com/engine/dispSearch.cf...=0&backButton=Y