IronTiger

I'm noticing a pattern that everything you say is TRUTH (which includes your suburban conspiracies), while everything is else is just "assumption". And yet you never questioned your assumptions that the Earth's population will grow indefinitely until we run out of resources and die? Here's a snippet from Urban Geography: A Global Perspective, Third Edition, which itself was adapted from a 1996 journal article by L. Bourne (published in Progress in Planning), entitled "Reinventing the suburbs: Old myths and new realities". You could check a college library to see if they subscribe to the journal. The snippet from the textbook is as follows. And, to be fair to you, the sixth reason: It turns out that there was a grain of truth in your statement after all! Congratulations! Unfortunately, despite that fact, they were not "created because of/by a conspiracy". There's some other stuff about suburbs, too, and share them with you if you'd like. (P.S.: Did you get my PM? I didn't see any comments...)

A lot of people on this thread (and others) think we should all live like urban dwellers and all ride trains, but hey, highways run both ways. Prices for food/water/gas/utilities isn't directly related to amount of people most of the time. It has to do with the weather, government policies, and a myriad of other reasons. And that power glitch? Even in homes with decent wiring, a flicker can be seen if the dishwasher, washing machine, AC system, or some other system launches. Well, I'm not belittling your point, but species DO matter. Do you shed a tear when people destroy a mosquito's breeding grounds (standing water) and take other measures to eliminate them?

I was half-right. Southbound is still open (for now), northbound has been closed for years.

Hasn't that been the case for the last decade?

How do you figure? I've actually spent time in classes, looking at population pyramids, and assuming that we'll probably hit a world population around 10 billion in 2100, which will be when the line actually plateaus. As nations develop and get more educated, the birth rate declines so that population growth crawls to a dead halt. (a link to play around with) Of course, when you make clownish comments like this: basically restating a conspiracy theory and repackaging it as "truth" (common tactic of conspiracy theorists, there's a reason 9/11 CTs called themselves "truthers"), then I'm afraid I can do nothing for you. P.S., the word you were looking for was "collusion", not "collision". HTH

You've heard of population pyramids, right, and how developing countries start making a "square" base on the bottom? Eventually, it will even out and the Earth's population will max out. It won't reach "trillions" and when it does, we will be so far out of touch that roads and rails as we see them today will be obsolete.

When we're doing large-scale price comparisons like that, we can't say "This is expensive, let's get rid of it" because it's the same type of fallacy that says "Wow, look at how much of a pittance education gets in taxpayer money than the military. We need to even it out some." (there's a little Flash cartoon with one of the Ben & Jerry's guys doing something like that, though I'm not going to bother looking it up because I feel it's misleading anyway). It doesn't work, and if you're trying to say that roads are bad for the economy, then...well, I don't know what to tell you.

Aw, no more stores in Galleria III? Glad I visited when I did. There were some dated storefronts when I went in 2008 (an old newsstand), Fox Sports Grill, Sharper Image (the biggest draws, which both left soon after my visit). Guess it wasn't meant to be.

Well, considering that the Interstate 10 widening did help people in Culberson's district (and interstates do service more people and industry than light rails do) I wouldn't write off Interstates for that. And while land in the Loop is expensive, I don't know if the developers "make less money": otherwise you would see less teardowns and rebuilds into townhomes or denser. I don't even know if rail being cheaper is true. At least in the case of Union Pacific, I've seen them do rather extensive projects on the rail, and the tracks and ties are both newer than even two decades ago since all of them have been replaced. Every last of the nasty, graffiti covered cars in the New York Subway was withdrawn and replaced with newer models in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And back to freight rails again, an Interstate that hasn't been touched since the 1960s will be a rough ride (and they do exist), a freight line that hasn't been touched since the 1960s will be horrifying with the train going dead slow so that it doesn't tip over. CRINGE! as cars gently rise up and down. WINCE! as the engine wobbles side to side. GASP! as what appears to be a train rolling in what appears to be untouched land. tl;dr, it's not necessarily "cheaper". As was mentioned earlier, you could even use the ancient Roman roads as an "example" of how highways will last centuries, but it doesn't work that way for roads or rails.

Yeah, the Big Lots was a Wal-Mart, and the Hobby Lobby was a Kmart. While Wal-Mart moved twice and is still around as a Supercenter, the Kmart cut out about a decade before they left Houston area for good.

One of the things I've been kind of curious about is the history of The Woodlands, Texas, which doesn't seem to be very well-documented since it was only built in the 1970s. Some tidbits I've gleaned include the Wharf, which was actually built (something I doubted initially) and contained an ice rink and boutique shops. It was eventually renovated into a conference/resort center, but I have seen no pictures of the inside as it was. An article I read on George Mitchell mentioned how The Woodlands didn't have a lot of grocery stores (if any) at first, but the Chron refers to (through article searches) that an upscale local grocery chain called Jamail's sold out two stores to Randalls in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Apparently the shopping center at Sawdust and Interstate 45 had both a Wal-Mart and a Kmart in there at some point (the Kmart being one of the extra-small late 1970s prototypes). Is there a place where I could find out more of the history of these types of things?

So, the Main Street Square isn't what you had in mind? Or Allen's Landing? Or Discovery Green? All of those fit the category you want some way or another. A town square is often found in small towns and cities with small town atmospheres. Houston, unfortunately, cannot gain back the "small town atmosphere" and once a city loses that, they can never get it back.

Well, the museum has a parking garage, and prior to the newest expansion, there were several fine old trees making the entire structure feel more at place with its environment.

It's a bit of strange hypocrisy that some people have: New Development on widened Interstates: "Grr! Clearly the politician behind this was in cahoots with the developers of these developments! This is SICK and WRONG and we should never do this again. Widened highways, that is." New Development on light rail corridors: "Sound the trumpets and beat the drum! Rail was built and new things have come! This is PURE and GOOD and we should do more of this. Light rail, that is."

The "room for future expansion" referred to the roads predominantly between 610 and Beltway 8: including Bellaire, Westheimer, Richmond, and others. Westheimer is eight lanes wide, Bellaire was built with six but reduced to a four (with no left hand turn lanes of any type) and was going through a major expansion on my last two trips to Houston (early March + late August). Besides, "future expansion" is usually standard procedure. No matter how great something when it is when it's built, it's going to need to be renovated or expanded. Buildings get expanded and renovated. Any structure, as a rule, should last at least 30 years without major renovation or expansion. Who is "most people"? "Most people" have never lived in LA, only seen it on TV. They probably don't know what Houston is even really like, even.

Does LA really have better "location" and "quality of life" than Houston? That's subjective, but if we were justifying price of living, it's not "worth" twice the cost.

I created a thread responding to the allegations that corruption exists everywhere and that while not denying that Culberson worked with developers on Interstate 10, suggested that the light rail line had some "palms greased" on it. This was replied with sarcasm about "freeway construction is always corrupt" and "rail projects are always squeaky clean" which you tended to miss. I wasn't trying to marginalize you, but cities aren't made out of money or else we would have all-new roads and sidewalks everywhere. Houston expanded fast, and they created relatively cheap wide concrete roads (designed for further expansion) down major corridors. Unfortunately, years of heavy traffic have taken their toll, creating rough, pot-holed roads. When money's available, they tend to allocate it to newer things and newer developments because that's where the money is. Now if you want to call "Corruption" and "Conspiracy", then that's fine, but it just tends to be the way things work...

And one more thing that NO ONE ELSE has mentioned: freeways in Houston double as evacuation routes, so all those "excess" lanes becomes the way of getting out of Houston easier.

Where does this "crappy downtown" rhetoric come in? Downtowns (in all of America, not just the South) usually have their share of hobos (which, I admit, do tend to cluster around major roadways) and tend to be a bit grungy, but they have huge glassy buildings, often the nicest hotels in town, lots of museums and/or the arts, and usually a good selection of bars and or restaurants. They have convention centers and sporting venues. And all of these can be found in the "freeways slicing it up".

First, which town squares are you drawing emphasis from? Some of the ones in small towns are rather unimpressive. And "how they enrich the memory of your visit"? Geez...that sounds like market-speak.

Man, this is a pretty interesting thread, here's replies to Slick and others. I'm pretty sure that was supposed to sarcasm. I hope that sarcasm, at least. Hate to break it to you, but unlike measurable things like traffic or pollution, these types of lists are often composed of hidden aggregated statistics that are compiled into lists. Even single-statistic lists are compiled: College Station has 27.70% of its residents with graduate degrees, which (some say) makes it a more "educated" city. However, I don't go to message boards and crow over that fact, because it's not really a fact at all. It is mostly a conjured label. This is the type of thing that would get you laughed out of the debate team. "No, but yes!" Yes! When the Arab Oil Embargo Crisis, the people abandoned the suburbs en masse and moved back to downtowns. Oh wait, they didn't. Slick misses the point again... Boston spent billions and billions on a massive tunneling project. And DC itself is a very low-rise city. The best comparison would be other Southern cities, of which there are in abundance that have freeways through them. It's worth noting that if you want to play causation/correlation, in the latter half of the 20th century, Southern downtowns and their freeways were more vibrant and healthy than their Northern counterparts. Yeah, but I saw actual recent statistics that showed that it was the predominantly age 30+ people that wanted to move downtown. It's been well-documented here that you rarely go anywhere in Houston beyond the inner loop, so it's easy to see how you extrapolated "The younger generation wants to live in the city core" from "I see and talk to a lot of younger people moving into Midtown", which although is faulty logic, is at least reasonable to jump to that conclusion. They're funded by two different agencies: TxDOT versus City of Houston. I hope I can put your paranoia to rest.

Yeah, a city with proportionally worse traffic than other cities of similar size. How are they "nutjobs"? Frankly, people like you and David should be applauding the fact that it means that there'll be less demolition for right of way. Remember the "Inner Loop echo chamber" statement above? The original argument was speculative anyway. Besides, if you believe the "other side" is corrupt and evil while your side is Honest and True, then you're deluding yourself (this goes for any political orientation) We are not going to get involved in this discussion again.

Well, Katy isn't exactly "nowhere", even 10 years ago before construction began (and points along Katy Freeway). As for Culberson's motivation, do you actually have real proof that he wanted Katy Freeway to be widened solely for money, or is that just rhetoric? Furthermore, even if Culberson was in cahoots with the developers, that's hardly a unique situation. You think that palms weren't being greased when they built the rail down Main and other streets?

Wait, that's Cypress Crossing? What about the vast clear-cut area on the other side of the highway?

Ah, but the difference is a city by city approach, which helps keeps costs down and has more community input, as well as a "test run" to see how it would fare elsewhere.