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  #61  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 2:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
the open ditches and discontinuous sidewalks in these houston streetviews always throw me for a loop.

that's the kind of thing you might see way out in the boondocks 30+ miles from downtown in most cities, but these are from inner city hoods only 2 miles from downtown houston.


are open ditches a common thing in inner city houston, or are they just a quirk of the rice-military section of town?

also, how are they not huge mosquito breeding grounds? from that perspective alone i would think the city would want to divert its run-off into proper sewers.
Houston is really Detroitish but Southern Style, central Houston really got bombed out and fell into disrepair after the 80s bust (much worse than Dallas). Development leap frogged the old streetcar suburbs and inner ring suburbs. The open ditches is just a relic of the city's old drainage system for a flood prone city at sealevel. Nicer areas like Montrose had them filled in and proper drainage, but historically black areas (which is a good chunk of inner central Houston where townhomes exploded) never got the same treatment. It's not exclusive to central Houston or historically black areas , some of the older, wealthiest neighborhoods have them too.

As far as mosquitoes .... All of SE Texas is a breeding ground. Houston doesn't have any where to send the water quickly at it's elevation so the city has been requiring detention ponds through out the city. All the detention ponds throughout the metro have a much larger surface area than the open ditches.

The sidewalks are the thing that bugs me the most and there's really no excuse except for being cheap and stubborn.
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  #62  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 2:35 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
No functional difference. Two-car, attached garages and no sidewalks. Attached two-car garages aren't auto-lite, they're the same autocentricity you get in exurban America.

If you built a house 40 miles outside of Houston, you'd build the same attached parking. In the Woodlands they're driving to soccer practice, in the Inner Loop they're driving to a restaurant. These buildings add density, but don't functionally change the environment.
Except for the fact that everything is closer together and getting more compact?

Living in a townhome in Rice Military vs a McMansion in The Woodlands would feel very different, just not to someone like you (who is an infinitesimally small % of the population).

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Nope, I've been to Houston a bunch of times. And irrelevent.
The fact that you paint in such broad strokes suggests otherwise. The fact that I've walked on many of a sidewalk in central Houston suggests otherwise. But whatever.

It's not even arguable that building more centrally in a sunbelt city is a bad thing.
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  #63  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:06 PM
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^ crawford sees the world in an extremely black/white fashion.

if a housing unit doesn't have an attached parking space then it's automatically 100% urban.

if a housing unit does have an attached parking space then it's automatically 100% suburban.

there is no middle ground with him.


but back here in the real world, there are obviously hundreds of shades of gray.

these houston detached townhomes are clearly one of those shades of gray, IMO.

the main fail with them in my eyes is simply the lack of alleys, which makes for a much less than ideal streetscape of 80% garage doors.
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  #64  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:12 PM
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I don't mind parking spaces that are embedded into the townhouse. It's very common in San Francisco, and doesn't have to detract from the walkability, as long as land area isn't devoted solely to automobile storage. Also, an urban neighborhood can't have more than 2 dedicated parking spaces per townhouse. Once you get past that, you're designing for the car.
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  #65  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:25 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I don't mind parking spaces that are embedded into the townhouse. It's very common in San Francisco, and doesn't have to detract from the walkability, as long as land area isn't devoted solely to automobile storage.
yes, those single-car garage doors found at the base of many of SF's townhouses are certainly much more preferable from an aesthetic perspective than the two-car garage doors found on many of these houston examples that end up eating damn near the entire facade of the home at street level.

of course, whether 1 or 2 cars, i'd prefer the car storage be placed off of a back alley over either of the above options.
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  #66  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
^ crawford sees the world in an extremely black/white fashion.
No. I don't buy that building functionally suburban-style housing in a dense manner or in-town location creates functional change.

The implicit claim is that adding a whole bunch of suburban-style townhouses will someday turn Houston's Inner Loop into a core Chicago-type environment (aka auto lite). I don't believe this will happen, ever, because Houston doesn't have prewar fabric, and the stuff built now is functionally no different than in the burbs.

Again, there is no functional difference between this housing and what is built 40 miles outside of city centers. But there are no kids involved, so it's the stacked townhouse model (which appears in exurbia too, just less common, because exurbia is kid-centered).
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  #67  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:38 PM
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It's not necessarily the two-car, narrow-lot typology that's the problem. I see it as more of an issue with design and execution. Just some landscaping and diverse architectural styles can break up the monotony of the dreaded "wall of garages."

Like here, these have similar lot sizes to those Houston neighborhoods:

https://goo.gl/maps/aUwBUQcUA7iB78DW8
https://goo.gl/maps/DcCAC77Zhku3BwNs5
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  #68  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:42 PM
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Originally Posted by TexasPlaya View Post
Except for the fact that everything is closer together and getting more compact?
Exurban areas tend to be "closer together and getting more compact" relative to older suburban areas. That doesn't make them functionally more urban.

This is an typical newer exurban neighborhood of Detroit:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4920...7i16384!8i8192

This is an typical older suburban neighborhood of Detroit:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5016...7i16384!8i8192

Yes, density is a common ingredient in the urbanity/walkability "secret sauce". But you can have a low density streetcar/railroad suburb with good walkability/urban form and a high density urban center with poor walkability/urban form.
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  #69  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:56 PM
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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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  #70  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 3:57 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
No. I don't buy that building functionally suburban-style housing in a dense manner or in-town location creates functional change.
the functional change can happen if houston addresses its neighborhood commercial corridors to be less auto-centric.

but the population density will have to come first, so it's a transitional phase.

and even if these houston neighborhoods never get to the same level of urbanism as a pre-war chicago neighborhood, they can still be an improvement over than the exurbs if things keep progressing, because they're at least starting out with a comprehensive and interconnected street grid in most places.

shades of gray....




Quote:
Originally Posted by Segun View Post
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.
100% true.

that's the real nut that needs to be cracked.
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  #71  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:00 PM
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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.
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  #72  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:03 PM
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Originally Posted by Segun View Post
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.
Due to the change in household size and shopping patterns, neighborhood business districts cannot be successful at suburban - or even "streetcar suburban" densities based upon foot traffic alone. They need to be supplemented to some extent by people driving in from the outside.
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  #73  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:08 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Due to the change in household size and shopping patterns, neighborhood business districts cannot be successful at suburban - or even "streetcar suburban" densities based upon foot traffic alone. They need to be supplemented to some extent by people driving in from the outside.
what would you say is the minimum neighborhood population density needed to support a neighborhood business district without off street parking?
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  #74  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:10 PM
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Originally Posted by craigs View Post
Though I despise your whataboutism, I will take time to point out that your example is an inapt analogy to the subject of this thread. First, the article about Houston refers to new construction, but your example is of decades-old housing built in the peak of the suburban dream, and second, the article refers specifically to Houston's Inner Loop, its urban core, but your example is of a random neighborhood many miles from LA's urban core.
lol okay. I'm just making a casual observation of the urbanism of these two cities in relation to each other. Somebody already mentioned and compared Houston to LA so I think it's relevant, I know it's not new construction.

This example is right next to DTLA: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0484...7i16384!8i8192

I do agree though that it gets a lot better closer to the core because you have way more pre-war development around that's walkable and doesn't have that sort of thing.
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  #75  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:18 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Due to the change in household size and shopping patterns, neighborhood business districts cannot be successful at suburban - or even "streetcar suburban" densities based upon foot traffic alone. They need to be supplemented to some extent by people driving in from the outside.
Or taking transit. With this is mind - Is there a neighborhood in the US, even in the most urban places, whose vibrant commercial strip is completely filled with the locals from that neighborhood?
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  #76  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
what would you say is the minimum neighborhood population density to support a neighborhood business district without off street parking?
I am not sure I can think of an ideal density. I know I have read essays on urban planning which argued if one builds new urban neighborhoods from scratch they need higher densities than traditional "missing middle" housing in order to generate enough foot traffic, and have to include some mid-rise to high-rise residential in the mix.

One way to figure this out is to look at non-touristy traditional urban neighborhoods, and see what densities allow for a largely occupied and intact business districts. In a lot of cases this means looking at black and Latino neighborhoods. Such areas can be thriving in NYC and some of the immediately surrounding cities. There's examples of active (or at least functioning) traditional commercial districts like this in pockets of Boston, Philly, Baltimore, and Chicago. So...maybe the threshold is somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 PPSM?
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  #77  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Segun View Post
Or taking transit. With this is mind - Is there a neighborhood in the US, even in the most urban places, whose vibrant commercial strip is completely filled with the locals from that neighborhood?
I mean, obviously even in the most impoverished parts of NYC outsiders do occasionally travel into the neighborhood and shop. But this would be a relatively small proportion of overall commercial traffic, with most of those who were not residents likely shopping because they happened to be in the neighborhood for some other reason.

Regarding transit, in cities like NYC where lots of people don't have any cars, obviously you are going to use transit to shop some of the time. However, even in these cases I think people are going to have the bias to either shop in their neighborhood or around their place of work, making it a part of their daily walking/transit commute. I've done this myself here in Pittsburgh. The BRT line goes to the next neighborhood over from mine super-fast, but it's like a 30-minute walk home from there, which isn't worth it except in good weather. But as part of my walk home, I would stop by a Target and a neighborhood farmer's market, meaning I can pick up some stuff incidentally as I walk home.
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  #78  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:41 PM
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Originally Posted by bilbao58 View Post
You mean like this?

I been there!! (Awesome, awesome ramen place pictured but the whole surrounding area is walkable and filled with gems.)

Houston gets a lot of hate both inside and outside Texas, but the "Detached Townhomes" as Houston calls them are nice. I wish there was more of these built in cities. Far too much emphasis on lawns when it comes to new development, but not everyone wants a lawn and the maintenance that comes with it.

Do you need a car to live in Houston? Yes, in my opinion. Is it possible to live in a walkable neighborhood, yes as the above image shows.

Personally, I find Houston's development fascinating. There is much room for improvement, but doing a better job at building urban than say Atlanta.
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  #79  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 4:53 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
the open ditches and discontinuous sidewalks in these houston streetviews always throw me for a loop.

that's the kind of thing you might see way out in the boondocks 30+ miles from downtown in most cities, but these are from inner city hoods only 2 miles from downtown houston.


are open ditches a common thing in inner city houston, or are they just a quirk of the rice-military section of town?

also, how are they not huge mosquito breeding grounds? from that perspective alone i would think the city would want to divert its run-off into proper sewers.
The open drainage is typical of the pre-WW2 small home areas of Houston, but not universal. I believe many of these streets were originally built before those areas became annexed by Houston. My block in the Heights had ditches (Heights was a separate entity until annexed by Houston in 1919), but several of the adjacent blocks had storm sewers and curbs. To get the ditches replaced, would have had to get a super majority of the property owners on the block to agree, and then each property owner would be assessed the cost of replacement added to their property taxes. The city also does not add or maintain sidewalks on most streets (including commercial) but leaves it as the responsibility of the property owner, so in older neighborhoods sidewalks are either usually lacking or in bad shape, pushed up by tree roots. The city also does not clean or street-sweep most streets, again it is left to the property owners unless there is a hazard. They did, however, dig out ditches every few years as they become filled with silt.

[Side note - I just checked the value of my old 1600 sf bungalow in the Heights that I paid 69k for in 1985 - current market value is 810k today, ditches and all]
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  #80  
Old Posted May 5, 2021, 5:14 PM
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