There are basically two definitions of urbanity - one based upon form, and one based upon use. I think it's uncontroversial to say that these Houston neighborhoods fail on form-based urbanity. The question is do they succeed at use-based urbanity - which means basically can people walk to commercial amenities within the neigborhood.
Looking at the Rice/Military area, the overall walkscore is rather high (peaking at 90 or so). The built form of the commercial district is still largely strip malls, but
there are a few passable infill projects which have been built. If most of the crappy strip-mall style businesses are replaced in such a fashion - all of the sudden you get a functional (if kinda ugly) semi-urban neighborhood.