Quote:
Originally Posted by Segun
I feel as if most of the discussion of urban design should revolve more around the access to walkable retail. I’ve been to numerous neighborhoods with vibrant commercial strips with single family homes, with or without driveways.
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100% this.
I think it's a positive thing that some of Houston's neighborhoods are 'growing up'. If you look at some of the streetviews that have been posted here, these townhomes are going up in areas that almost looked rural before, despite being in the center of the city. Open ditches on the side of the roads, few sidewalks, houses that look like they were dropped in from the country. Very strange to see that type of development in the city, and even stranger to see it side by side with these new townhomes. But at least this represents densification (assuming population density is increasing along with structural density).
I run into trouble with Houston when I look to its commercial corridors. I honestly have trouble finding any commercial districts that aren't totally auto-centric. Even Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta have multiple commercial nodes that are traditionally walkable: i.e. buildings built to the sidewalk, parking either absent or behind buildings, no/few curb cuts or drive-thru places, etc. When I've looked around Houston, there is essentially nothing at all that resembles this, outside of downtown. It's crazy, really. So even if you pack the residential neighborhoods of Houston with these townhomes, are the residents really going to be walking anywhere when the commercial districts look like this?
https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7705...7i16384!8i8192
I know this criticism might seem weird coming from someone who lives in LA, as it's true that LA has a ton of nasty commercial arterials, and walkability suffers as a result of that. But at least LA also has a ton of great, or at least serviceable, pedestrian-oriented commercial districts. Houston, to my knowledge, has almost none. That's why the densification of the neighborhoods there feels a bit like lipstick on a pig. The needle really isn't moving in terms of Houston becoming more functionally urban.