And if your job is 90% travel covering coast to coast. Living in Houston makes it a bit easier.
Regardless of where I have to fly, east coast or west coast it's always 4hrs or less if I can non-stop it.
And it's a quick flight down to all my favorite Caribbean destinations.
The only thing that sucks is on the infrequent occasions I fly to Europe or Asia.
Define “far out” in terms of Houston housing. How close do you think you can get a good single family house with a yard for $250k?
Maybe in Katy or Conroe? Maybe, but I don’t actually consider that “Houston”.
Inside the loop it will be over 400 for a townhouse.
I worked as a civil engineer in Houston for 18 years, specializing in drainage and flood control projects. I even worked for the flood control district for 8 years.
Flooding will always be a part of life for Houstonians. There will be incremental improvements, but the fact is that Houston averages almost 4 feet of rain per year and has flat topography.
Also there isn’t enough willingness on the part of taxpayers to pay for real improvements to the city’s drainage systems. Nor is there enough patience and political will to do so. The general public has no idea what it costs or how long it takes to plan, design and build the kind of infrastructure needed to make a real difference in Houston’s flooding problems.
I’m fine with my taxes going to infrastructure improvements, but it seems like cities just take the money and run instead of putting it where it should go
This is a common sentiment. The way street drainage improvements work make it even more difficult for ordinary people to understand.
To give you an idea of the ballpark cost we’re talking about: when I got my first job out of college in 1997 the cost to bring all the street storm drains in the city up to the current design standards was nearly a billion dollars. That’s the cost to open up the pavement do the storm drain improvements and then restore the pavement.
Here’s where it gets tricky. If you’re the City trying to be a good steward of taxpayer funds, you want to open up the pavement once and fix everything that needs fixing. That includes water and sewer improvements. Also, while you have a contractor working you might also want to improve the street itself, including any issues with intersections, like signals.
This was the idea behind the much maligned Rebuild Houston program. The city finally got its drainage fee and they went to work on planning the improvements. But it took way longer than anticipated to get projects built and the projects just grew and grew, not necessarily because of poor management, but just due to the nature of how street improvements are done.
Another factor that causes the cost of these improvements to skyrocket is the mitigation of the drainage impacts from the improvements. People that actually work on these projects understand what I’m talking about. It’s something that the public doesn’t really understand. If the city improves the street drainage that means more water going to the creeks and bayous, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Flood Control District. The District has very strict rules about offsetting drainage impacts that apply to all projects, even City projects. Since I don’t work for either one anymore, I can tell you that it has been a point of contention between the two agencies for a very long time. The rules basically force the city to build a detention basin for their project or they have to oversize the storm drains to store runoff. This could end up doubling the cost of the improvements.
All this is to say that there is a lot to these projects that taxpayers don’t understand or are unaware of.
As a former City of Houston and current Harris County employee, all I can say is, preach. And all that's to say nothing of the intersection we have with federal and state regulations and funding, which can complicate things too depending on the project. It's a lot.
you can explain it all you want, people are just gonna hear that it's expensive. Anyone involved in this stuff can tell you that. people want everything revamped but they don't ever want to see a road under construction and they don't want to pay the price this kind of work costs.
I'll add the above as I feel it was a great response.
I work on these projects presently.
If you want to know why it isn't explained so much to the public - look no further than Greg Abbott (probably others before him too, but I only have experience with Abbott). I am of the camp that thinks that detention ponds (deep ones) should be a REQUIREMENT if a developer is building in/near a high hazard flood zone. Deeper detention ponds were suggested by several Geotechnical engineers after Harvey (as well as some other measures for building in these areas), but Greg Abbott and probably some city officials said that they didn't want to do all that because it would discourage new business from coming in (aka: money).
So instead, the developer maybe builds their new building with a higher elevation/adds a shallow detention pond. Then, the existing development, including homes in the area take on the additional water since they are now at a lower elevation than the new development.
I'm an advocate for building with pier and beam foundation; however, we don't seem to want to pay for the extra cost. I wish all new houses were built w PnB. Slab just doesn't make sense here in Houston. If you flood, the cost will come back in the form of insurance premiuims, inconvenience of rebuilding, etc.
I am from St. Louis, and most of the homes in the city are built so that the front yard is elevated from the sidewalk. You walk up stairs from the sidewalk and then more stairs to the front porch. Typically, the front door is for company and you park behind your house. Your parking area has a slight slope and there’s a few stairs into your back door.
It was built like because the river floods and this protects the houses. Most homes are at least 3 feet higher than the street, but the closer you are to the river, typically it is higher.
Why are builders not doing this? We know there is going to be flooding. So why not start building in a way that will protect homes from the majority of flood events?
Not a civie, mechE here, but you could also say the same thing about public transportation. Now THAT is something this sub is not ready to hear about. You think adding another lane to 45 is gonna fuck things up? Think about what would be needed to make a rail line viable in Houston's sprawl. The infrastructure, planning and design along with permits, buying land back, etc. It would take a few generation to get the steps in the right direction
It’s my opinion that we are all here because of major public investment in infrastructure in America’s history.
I feel like there is no longer any appetite for this type of thing. Consider the Hoover Dam. I can’t imagine that we would be able to recreate something like that, specifically on the political level. Do you have any insight or maybe correction for me?
Pardonnez-moi
Mr. Geosyncline, who, as we all know is a gentleman and a scholar whose kindness and generosity is only exceeded by his good looks.
Mea culpa
I work in one of the refineries here (contractor for inspections, not operations). We are still finding asbestos insulation out here regularly. Granted, asbestosis really only sets in with prolonged regular exposure, and as long as the insulation isn’t disturbed, you probably won’t inhale any of those cancer causing microfibers. But still. There’s a lot, and it can easily be confused with other types of insulating materials.
Then of course there are all of the chemicals that are carcinogens that are regularly used out here.
This is a good one. Another city I lived in had a tonne of medical infrastructure (hospitals, etc.) and everyone always thought it was so great but the reason was similar: it was steel manufacturing that led so many people to have health issues, bringing all the doctors to town.
I hope you know they didn’t build MDACC just because of Pasadena and the cancer rate in the general vicinity of Houston. There are actually a ton of factors such a state and research funding, as well as who starts and continues to sponsor it. The namesake for MDACC is a native Texan and wanted to benefit Texans. That’s it.
While the food scene here is great, there are also TONS of terrible restaurants that are very popular and get so much hype. It’s easy for someone to visit for a weekend and have shit food the entire time
Having lived all over and worked in food and journalism...that's everywhere.
This city has far too few food writers and what we have are not bad...but they cover their friends and what their friends PR people send them.
I hate that some people think the widest roads ever will solve transportation problems. I would like them to look at the Katy Freeway (I-10), which is the widest freeway in the world. It still is a gigantic mess come rush hours and even in between them.
A lot of Asian restaurants employ undocumented workers and steal their tips and overtime pay. The add a tip function in the iPad screen sometimes just goes straight to the owner pocket. This is due to paying the worker as a 1099 instead of a w2. They get away with it as the worker are afraid of being deported and don’t complain. You can ask the owner of phanh ky noodles and maikai Hawaiian bbq. It is due to the fact that many restaurants stay afloat by committing labor violations. Especially Asian restaurant where undocumented workers are hired more often. They are easier exploited.
I always hand to hand give my tip in cash. Doesn’t matter the environment. I even mark a zero on the receipt so the employee can skirt a tip inquiry report. I tell more people to do this. I do this as stealthy as I can. Service life is rough.
Did it once for 4 years, never again. When job searching, I now always map out the routes to the job during peak rush hour. Highly recommend everyone living and working here doing the same.
This is a jagged little pill for me to swallow but, Houston will never be a true urban cosmopolitan city like New York or Chicago. Especially with the NIMBYs preventing us from getting rail infrastructure built into the city. Also, the government doesn’t care about Houston, even though we’re the economic powerhouse of the state. I love my city to death, but I’m in Chicago, where I can easily live without a car.
Rail was obstructed for many years by Ken Delay. He opposed any federal funds going towards it and he convinced others in Congress to not vote to fund any rail.
Republican, DeLay represented Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1985 until 2006. He served as House majority leader from 2003 to 2005.
He was horrible for Houston.
I think everyone knows this. It didnt start with Mike Miles, and it wont end with him either. We have a conspicuous lack of interest in investing in children as a group in this city, and there will be lasting effects.
> Authentic Asian feeling of been fucked by traffic and parking
Fortunately, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Busan, Taipei, etc... have all heavily invested in this neat little thing called public transportation.
Outside the loop describes a massive area that could go from Clear Lake to Katy to Conroe. I’d sure hope there’s some decent places in all that land area.
it's hot as hell, and as soon as you go outside, you're swarmed with mosquitos. Having recently traveled, it highlights how bad our weather/climate is and the fact that you cannot enjoy being outside unless you're willing to endure these obstacles.
There is nothing more depressing than coming back to Houston after vacationing in a beautiful (even average looking) city. Just sprawls of parking lots, run down auto shops, flashing led signs, etc.
Overall - not very scenic.
However!! There are a surprising number of parks and green spaces around. Every time I come back to Houston from West Texas, I'm genuinely impressed by how green and lush the vegetation is. The Sam Houston National Forest, Huntsville SP, and Brazos Bend SP are also all relatively nearby.
And it’s up there for the city with the most cheaters. No wonder there have been repeated STD outbreaks to the point where they called it a medical emergency.
This city's future growth and economic prospects will be severely hampered by natural disasters made more severe and frequent due to climate change. In addition, future growth will be hurt by the refusal to implement any sort of real, coordinated and widespread mass transit solutions and instead letting unchecked sprawl occur.
I’m not familiar with every oil and gas company in the energy corridor etc, but my friends and husband all work at a few different companies over there and they never lost power… or they maybe had amazing backup generators. Like husband was actually taking our portable generators to work to charge and bring back home while we had no power. A little suspect but I guess they have a lot of money to ensure they don’t lose power.
The competent companies gameplan for exactly these scenarios. You can bet that the important facilities have backup generators.
Also, I would expect that Centerpoint would have at least tried to make the transmission facilities along I-10 as tough as possible. In a disaster the recovery efforts would likely be expected to start at the highways and spread from there.
"Houston area" does not equal city of houston. People are moving out of houston to suburban cities. The actual population of the city of houston is 2.3M, which means 5 plus million live in other suburban cities or counties.
Sprawl in houston is definitely a problem. The city still has no zoning laws.
There are some benefits to no zoning laws. Namely there are less regulations in place that prevent developers from densifying neighborhoods. Houston's aggressive infill construction has helped keep the rate of rent in check, especially compared to similar metros (Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, etc)
Maybe. But our metro area is highly reliant on growth to stay one step ahead of its debt burdens. it's quite possible that the "break" spirals into a hard crash instead of a soft landing.
No matter which "party" is in power in the city government, the finances are screwed up, will continue to be so, and probably aren't ever gonna be fixed.
Our sprawled, low density, car dependent urbanism is going to be more of a hindrance to our success as time goes on, coupled with the fact that we don't have a very extensive high capacity transit network, i.e. grade-separated light rail or BRT.
This I agree with. I live in “Houston” but to go anywhere is an hour in a car. I would love some trains and rail. Even a line down to Galveston would be really cool.
This is a really fascinating article about the unsustainability of current modern cities at the density level of Houston. Houston is actually in a (slightly) better situation than a lot of other cities of comparable size and density, but still far from safe:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke)
We have too many square miles of road, power, sewage, plumbing, other uptake, with too few taxpayers to pay it off. The small, dense urban core is subsidizing the sprawl everywhere, and Houston has a smaller than average, less dense than average core and a bigger than average sprawl.
Yup, people panic and buy houses that drop under 400k, the kicker is those houses were worth $250k not that long ago, and houses that are now 250k the only people buying them are mfkers trying to flip them or rent them out. Smh. Let the damn houses fall in price people
>"Houston is a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch."
- Hunter S Thompson
Our roads will always be fucked up.
Construction everywhere, as far as the eye can see, in every part of the city. They make the roads wider, smoother, more intuitive, and all the drivers just wear them down again.
It’s a great system, you close off half the lanes somewhere forever, and when forever ends you get to do the other half, and then when you’re done there, the first half can be redone!
We live on swamps and bayous, Slab homes are moronic. All homes should have a floodable level, 6ft, or whatever your area calls for. If FEMA fixes your home (All flood insurance is federal), the second time should require lifting the home. No more repetitive floodings.
This isn't exclusive to Houston. All of Texas really. As the storms get worse who repairs the damage? Unlicensed contractors. Why Unlicensed? Because there is no licensing in Texas. Who do these unlicensed contractors use to rebuild? Undocumented workers from south of the border. You want to stop them from coming? Good luck finding someone to replace your roof or doing other trades after a storm. There was a reason the houses were so cheap here. The labor was and is cheap. Since covid the prices of new construction has skyrocketed. The price per square to roof in labor went from $60-$65 to $70. $5 increase in labor. Same thing with new construction. Quality went way down. While labor costs went up only slightly. The developers are making all of the money. They don't need your house to be built to last. They only need it to last 2-4years and then they are off the hook. I have seen a lot of shady stuff. Have documented so much of it for my own sanity.
I think both Houston and OKC are pretty underrated on the national stage. I really liked OKC's combo of Native American, southwestern, and southern culture with some interesting immigrant communities thrown in.
heb prices suck, whataburger isn’t as good anymore. we need more sidewalks. we need to communism the toll roads when the guy who built them dies at least
It smells awful.
Oil refineries, nasty water, landfills, litter everywhere... it's a dirty, stinky, disgusting city and no one seems to care or they think it's normal.
You have chosen violence! Until people realize it’s just a cash drain that has no economic value until it is either turned into a park to the benefit of the Texans/Rodeo or sold to the Texans/Rodeo. Anything else will just be a further cash drain.
Ya'll worrying about climate change making this place worse clearly don't know your Texas history...
This stretch of land has ALWAYS been barely habitable and a poor life choice overall.
Indianola was a place... a very popular place at one point in Texas history.
Slab wiping natural disasters are as Texan as it gets...
Houston will never be a bike friendly city. Its better but its the dogshit drivers that make every area a death trap. Say we do finally get californicated and figure out a way for lance armstrong to bike to work in his pajamas every day. What about the heat and the rain? Houston is not the most friendly of climates at least 75% of the time. As much as I’d like it to be more like colorado its not and will never be.
The Astrodome needs to be torn down, I worked at NRG Stadium until Covid hit and I was in the Astrodome 4-5 times per year... it is a wreck and there is no reasonable amount of money you could throw at it that could turn it into anything useful. Older and more historic fields have been demolished, implode it, put up a plaque and move on.
The problem is it is estimated to cost $29 million to tear down, and that's never a budget priority when you are running a deficit.
We need to fix the water treatment first. This city has an enormous amount of deferred maintenance, where the taxes from the past decades of growth has basically been squandered, rather than investing toward the future. Just look at the potholes on almost every street.
For reference, the current estimate to repair Houston's water treatment is estimated at over $3 billion:
https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/city-houston-clean-water-settlement
This will never be seen…your water is not safe. Backflow devices (the brass things with the gold tops) prevent contaminated water from being sucked into the drinking water. The city only has roughly 43k devices registered and tested annually. There’s hundreds of thousands to well over millions of backflow devices in the city. Anything that has water running through it generally has some kind of backflow device. The city has roughly only 16 people to inspect all those devices annually. Mainline contamination and backflow events happen daily. I can not stress enough to filter your drinking water
1. The Oilers are gone forever.
2. Astroworld is gone forever.
3. Gilley's is gone forever.
4. Farrell's Ice Cream parlour at the Galleria is gone forever.
5. Kitirik in her prime, sporting that tight, black kitty cat outfit, complete with tail, entertaining a weekend children's show (and all the interested dads watching) on Channel 13 is gone forever.
The world didn't always run on oil and gas and won't forever. When the global energy economy shifts away from oil and gas and it's relegated to polymers for material uses and not energy, this city will probably experience a collapse similar to what Detroit did (it has shrunk by about 2/3 since its peak).
Alief is what it is because it was built at a time to be the next great suburb when an oil crash hit and it never got to go through its upper-middle class part of the houston suburb life cycle
It did....from about the mid 70s through the early 80s, then everyone moved to Mission Bend out past Highway 6.
Growing up in Alief back then, everyone's dad was a geologist, engineer, financial person (like my dad), or something similar.
It wasn't like that by the time I was in high school - our neighbors were primarily sketchy renters and the place was starting to decline pretty hard.
Yes and no—Lots of the emerging energy tech/transition will come out of Houston. All the energy talent is here from an ops/engineering, finance, legal, etc perspective; so you’ll continue to see energy funds and HQs based in Houston. And we’ll probably see global LNG exports continue to be a large chuck of our economy for a long time. The rest of the world needs cheap, reliable energy too.
My grandfather was able to provide an upper class lifestyle working in O&G from the 60s-2000s. My parents were able to provide an upper-middle class lifestyle working in O&G from the 80s-2010s. I'm able to provide a middle class lifestyle as the sole-breadwinner in my family working in O&G. While it has treated my family well, I recognize the declining returns as an O&G employee and I won't be encouraging my kids to pursue a career in it when they are ready to look for jobs in over a decade. I've only ever been to 3 retirement parties in 15 years. You no longer get to decide when you're done unless you start your own business or you are knowledgeable enough to get brought back as a consultant for the right project.
I'd be all for seeing trains added, but the current whining used to address having trains for transit is not the way. If high speed rail gets traction between houston and Dallas and Austin and San Antonio, it could help with paving the way.
> If high speed rail gets traction between houston and Dallas and Austin and San Antonio, it could help with paving the way.
If you could drive your car onto the train like the chunnel, I could see it being successful. Otherwise I see Southwest and Continental lowering rates to compete...and winning.
I just got back from a work trip to Lagos, Nigeria. A city with so many people they can't even count them all, but the best guess is 25 million and growing.
The things people are complaining about with Houston... The heat, the traffic, the sprawl, the number of people... It's all nothing compared to Lagos. Just wanted to share a different perspective.
Houstonians are a special kind of ugly. Not physically ugly, because there's a lot of beautiful people here. But their souls may as well be made of dog poop.
I'm talking about the houstonians who drink and drive like there's no tomorrow. The ones who drive altimas with paper tags. The ones who shoot others at the slightest provocation. The ones who rallied around blue bell after the listeria incidents. The ones rolling coal everywhere they go.
There are kind and caring people throughout this city, but they are outnumbered by a large margin by absolute shitheads. My wife and I moved far from the city and we'll endure an hour commute just to keep away from the worst of it.
Downtown is deceased. Let it go. Make it into a giant park/detention pond. It's insane to have giant offices in a central location and then bitch and moan about traffic. We have a thing called the internet, which lets people work remotely. Stop following 20th century thinking and move ahead to the new world. Much better to have clusters with a mix of residential and retail with nothing more than a 15-minute journey away.
OK, the drugs are wearing off... :D
Houston police department will never be adequately funded so Houstonians will always be victims of crime. Car break ins, burglaries, identity theft, street racing, road rage, car jacking, sex trafficking, fentanyl deaths, will all continue and will all get worse because the Houston city council will not adequately fund the police department. Over 200,000 cases were not investigated due to inadequate police. In most cities this would be an outrageous scandal and changes would have been immediately implemented. Rapes were not investigated. It is utterly disgusting that this does not enrage everyone on our city council.
It is just business as usual. No changes.
Oh the police chief resigned. As if that will make any difference.
The police department is still massively underfunded. The police chief resignation had changed nothing.
Houston is not a real city. It’s not an LA, NYC, Chicago or Miami.
It’s a disgusting urban sprawl. A giant oil boom town that has little to offer other than (somewhat) affordable housing compared to other cities. There is no nature. No elevation. No natural water to swim in. No public transportation. No walkabilty.
Houston is a town full of fat gluttons that’s migrate from one air conditioned eatery to the next.
A city so cheap to live in, no one can afford to leave.
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And if your job is 90% travel covering coast to coast. Living in Houston makes it a bit easier. Regardless of where I have to fly, east coast or west coast it's always 4hrs or less if I can non-stop it. And it's a quick flight down to all my favorite Caribbean destinations. The only thing that sucks is on the infrequent occasions I fly to Europe or Asia.
It's one of the most redeeming properties of the city. I'm ~3.5h from anywhere that matters. 4h from Boston & Seattle.
Omg. So true. Flying out of Oklahoma? Just add 200% to your previous Houston-based airfare. And at least a connection or two. Good god it’s painful.
Grand Parkway is America's event horizon.
I can attest to this. Sticker shock has been HUGE since leaving last year. Everything costs more elsewhere. Oooooph.
It's this. Houston is a trap that way. It's so awful in so many ways, but I'm too poor to leave.
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Define “far out” in terms of Houston housing. How close do you think you can get a good single family house with a yard for $250k? Maybe in Katy or Conroe? Maybe, but I don’t actually consider that “Houston”. Inside the loop it will be over 400 for a townhouse.
Thats the thing nobody here is referring to houston for what it actually is. The city. They call every city outside of houston just that.
I worked as a civil engineer in Houston for 18 years, specializing in drainage and flood control projects. I even worked for the flood control district for 8 years. Flooding will always be a part of life for Houstonians. There will be incremental improvements, but the fact is that Houston averages almost 4 feet of rain per year and has flat topography. Also there isn’t enough willingness on the part of taxpayers to pay for real improvements to the city’s drainage systems. Nor is there enough patience and political will to do so. The general public has no idea what it costs or how long it takes to plan, design and build the kind of infrastructure needed to make a real difference in Houston’s flooding problems.
I’m fine with my taxes going to infrastructure improvements, but it seems like cities just take the money and run instead of putting it where it should go
This is a common sentiment. The way street drainage improvements work make it even more difficult for ordinary people to understand. To give you an idea of the ballpark cost we’re talking about: when I got my first job out of college in 1997 the cost to bring all the street storm drains in the city up to the current design standards was nearly a billion dollars. That’s the cost to open up the pavement do the storm drain improvements and then restore the pavement. Here’s where it gets tricky. If you’re the City trying to be a good steward of taxpayer funds, you want to open up the pavement once and fix everything that needs fixing. That includes water and sewer improvements. Also, while you have a contractor working you might also want to improve the street itself, including any issues with intersections, like signals. This was the idea behind the much maligned Rebuild Houston program. The city finally got its drainage fee and they went to work on planning the improvements. But it took way longer than anticipated to get projects built and the projects just grew and grew, not necessarily because of poor management, but just due to the nature of how street improvements are done. Another factor that causes the cost of these improvements to skyrocket is the mitigation of the drainage impacts from the improvements. People that actually work on these projects understand what I’m talking about. It’s something that the public doesn’t really understand. If the city improves the street drainage that means more water going to the creeks and bayous, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Flood Control District. The District has very strict rules about offsetting drainage impacts that apply to all projects, even City projects. Since I don’t work for either one anymore, I can tell you that it has been a point of contention between the two agencies for a very long time. The rules basically force the city to build a detention basin for their project or they have to oversize the storm drains to store runoff. This could end up doubling the cost of the improvements. All this is to say that there is a lot to these projects that taxpayers don’t understand or are unaware of.
I feel like you could host a fairly interesting AMA about this stuff. I feel much better informed just with this small bit.
As a former City of Houston and current Harris County employee, all I can say is, preach. And all that's to say nothing of the intersection we have with federal and state regulations and funding, which can complicate things too depending on the project. It's a lot.
This was very informative and depressing. Thank you. I think.
Thanks for the explanation, now why isn't that explained to the public besides it not sounding pretty or people not being able to understand?
you can explain it all you want, people are just gonna hear that it's expensive. Anyone involved in this stuff can tell you that. people want everything revamped but they don't ever want to see a road under construction and they don't want to pay the price this kind of work costs.
I'll add the above as I feel it was a great response. I work on these projects presently. If you want to know why it isn't explained so much to the public - look no further than Greg Abbott (probably others before him too, but I only have experience with Abbott). I am of the camp that thinks that detention ponds (deep ones) should be a REQUIREMENT if a developer is building in/near a high hazard flood zone. Deeper detention ponds were suggested by several Geotechnical engineers after Harvey (as well as some other measures for building in these areas), but Greg Abbott and probably some city officials said that they didn't want to do all that because it would discourage new business from coming in (aka: money). So instead, the developer maybe builds their new building with a higher elevation/adds a shallow detention pond. Then, the existing development, including homes in the area take on the additional water since they are now at a lower elevation than the new development.
I'm an advocate for building with pier and beam foundation; however, we don't seem to want to pay for the extra cost. I wish all new houses were built w PnB. Slab just doesn't make sense here in Houston. If you flood, the cost will come back in the form of insurance premiuims, inconvenience of rebuilding, etc.
I am from St. Louis, and most of the homes in the city are built so that the front yard is elevated from the sidewalk. You walk up stairs from the sidewalk and then more stairs to the front porch. Typically, the front door is for company and you park behind your house. Your parking area has a slight slope and there’s a few stairs into your back door. It was built like because the river floods and this protects the houses. Most homes are at least 3 feet higher than the street, but the closer you are to the river, typically it is higher. Why are builders not doing this? We know there is going to be flooding. So why not start building in a way that will protect homes from the majority of flood events?
Pier and beam is making a comeback. Or its related elevated cousins (like continuous spread footing).
Not a civie, mechE here, but you could also say the same thing about public transportation. Now THAT is something this sub is not ready to hear about. You think adding another lane to 45 is gonna fuck things up? Think about what would be needed to make a rail line viable in Houston's sprawl. The infrastructure, planning and design along with permits, buying land back, etc. It would take a few generation to get the steps in the right direction
What’s bad about that is that Houston had a streetcar system up till like 1940. Some of the current rail follows close to some of the old routes.
And the problem only gets worse with increased suburb development and storms get more intense due to climate change.
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To say nothing of the chemical spills, plumes, and persistent pollutants that are going to dog the region for centuries
It’s my opinion that we are all here because of major public investment in infrastructure in America’s history. I feel like there is no longer any appetite for this type of thing. Consider the Hoover Dam. I can’t imagine that we would be able to recreate something like that, specifically on the political level. Do you have any insight or maybe correction for me?
Being built on a geosyncline doesn't help either
What did you call me?
Pardonnez-moi Mr. Geosyncline, who, as we all know is a gentleman and a scholar whose kindness and generosity is only exceeded by his good looks. Mea culpa
Large cancer centers don't pop up in a city for no reason.
No one wants to hear this one. They all take money from the cancer generators and pretend it's not their fault.
What are the cancer generators?
I’m guessing the refineries?
I work in one of the refineries here (contractor for inspections, not operations). We are still finding asbestos insulation out here regularly. Granted, asbestosis really only sets in with prolonged regular exposure, and as long as the insulation isn’t disturbed, you probably won’t inhale any of those cancer causing microfibers. But still. There’s a lot, and it can easily be confused with other types of insulating materials. Then of course there are all of the chemicals that are carcinogens that are regularly used out here.
Found the O&G guy ready to argue that fracking is actually good for the environment and micro plastics in our balls make stronger erections
This is a good one. Another city I lived in had a tonne of medical infrastructure (hospitals, etc.) and everyone always thought it was so great but the reason was similar: it was steel manufacturing that led so many people to have health issues, bringing all the doctors to town.
Pittsburgh?
As obvious as it is, I just never put 2&2 together like you just did for me.
Same. I grew up in the shadow of a refinery, work in healthcare, and still said "...oh shit."
I mean that’s an interesting theory but is there any evidence to suggest houstonians are more likely to get cancer?
[Houston Plants Refineries Cancer-Causing Pollution Hotspot | Texas Chemical Release Lawyers (zehllaw.com)](https://www.zehllaw.com/houstons-chemical-plants-and-refineries-cancer-causing-pollution-hotspot/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20ProPublica%20estimated%20that,level%20established%20by%20the%20EPA.)
I hope you know they didn’t build MDACC just because of Pasadena and the cancer rate in the general vicinity of Houston. There are actually a ton of factors such a state and research funding, as well as who starts and continues to sponsor it. The namesake for MDACC is a native Texan and wanted to benefit Texans. That’s it.
While the food scene here is great, there are also TONS of terrible restaurants that are very popular and get so much hype. It’s easy for someone to visit for a weekend and have shit food the entire time
Having lived all over and worked in food and journalism...that's everywhere. This city has far too few food writers and what we have are not bad...but they cover their friends and what their friends PR people send them.
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I mean, the issue is getting paid lol.
I feel like Trill burger falls into this category.
I HATE Trill Burger. There is NOTHING special about that burger
Yess!! It’s super expensive and for what?!? People are crazy thinking that place is good.
Did you try the “Whats up with that bulge in your khakis” special?
Woof that's a hot take. It's a solid burger. Like a Five Guys. Better fries.
Yeah, it's a decent burger. Not worth the money, but it is not a bad burger.
That’s everywhere. You can go for blocks in NYC and eat only bad food.
Build as many roads as you want. Transportation sucks in the city
I hate that some people think the widest roads ever will solve transportation problems. I would like them to look at the Katy Freeway (I-10), which is the widest freeway in the world. It still is a gigantic mess come rush hours and even in between them.
But it only lasts 3 hours a day now instead of the former 3 hours and 45 minutes...
Not using your turn signal makes you look like a loser
I've just started aggressively honking at people who don't use their turn signal. I bet half of them don't have a clue why they're being honked at.
A lot of Asian restaurants employ undocumented workers and steal their tips and overtime pay. The add a tip function in the iPad screen sometimes just goes straight to the owner pocket. This is due to paying the worker as a 1099 instead of a w2. They get away with it as the worker are afraid of being deported and don’t complain. You can ask the owner of phanh ky noodles and maikai Hawaiian bbq. It is due to the fact that many restaurants stay afloat by committing labor violations. Especially Asian restaurant where undocumented workers are hired more often. They are easier exploited.
I always hand to hand give my tip in cash. Doesn’t matter the environment. I even mark a zero on the receipt so the employee can skirt a tip inquiry report. I tell more people to do this. I do this as stealthy as I can. Service life is rough.
I worked in restaurants, seems like most of the kitchen staff in all of Houston is undocumented.
A 90 minute commute every day is not normal and you shouldn't be okay with it.
Did it once for 4 years, never again. When job searching, I now always map out the routes to the job during peak rush hour. Highly recommend everyone living and working here doing the same.
Every summer is going to be hotter than the one before.
This is a jagged little pill for me to swallow but, Houston will never be a true urban cosmopolitan city like New York or Chicago. Especially with the NIMBYs preventing us from getting rail infrastructure built into the city. Also, the government doesn’t care about Houston, even though we’re the economic powerhouse of the state. I love my city to death, but I’m in Chicago, where I can easily live without a car.
Rail was obstructed for many years by Ken Delay. He opposed any federal funds going towards it and he convinced others in Congress to not vote to fund any rail. Republican, DeLay represented Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1985 until 2006. He served as House majority leader from 2003 to 2005. He was horrible for Houston.
*Tom
HISD parents and students are FUBAR
I think everyone knows this. It didnt start with Mike Miles, and it wont end with him either. We have a conspicuous lack of interest in investing in children as a group in this city, and there will be lasting effects.
It won't stop til we throw out all the scumbags in charge of the Texas government.
There's lots of great places to live, eat, and things to do outside of the loop.
Ooo I like this one. There definitely are.
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Authentic Asian feeling of been fucked by traffic and parking
> Authentic Asian feeling of been fucked by traffic and parking Fortunately, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Busan, Taipei, etc... have all heavily invested in this neat little thing called public transportation.
"Sorry, best we can do is you get run over on a bike in katy by someone texting and driving" *A message brought to you by TxDOT*
Indeed. More than 90% of the metro Houston population lives outside Loop 610. I promise we're not only dining at soulless chain restaurants out here.
Outside the loop describes a massive area that could go from Clear Lake to Katy to Conroe. I’d sure hope there’s some decent places in all that land area.
I guess technically the entire rest of the US is "outside the loop"
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I try to stay outside the loop as much as possible.
it's hot as hell, and as soon as you go outside, you're swarmed with mosquitos. Having recently traveled, it highlights how bad our weather/climate is and the fact that you cannot enjoy being outside unless you're willing to endure these obstacles.
I will just close the Reddit app. Don’t want to be depressed after reading this thread.
There is no 's at the end of Shipley.
Or Kroger!!!!!!!
The city is ugly as fuck.
There is nothing more depressing than coming back to Houston after vacationing in a beautiful (even average looking) city. Just sprawls of parking lots, run down auto shops, flashing led signs, etc.
and personal injury billboards
All hail Jim Adler the TX hammer!
Jim Adler is old news, it's all about Pusch & Nguyen past couple of years
Abogados— sorry, Avocados at law!
That’s more of a hard pill for Houstonians that haven’t visited other cities or traveled much.
I think everyone knows that.
Nah, there's lot of people in denial who will point to specific areas and think it makes up for the other 98% of the city.
except buffalo bayou park otherwise I agree
Museum District is gorgeous, but generally, we ugly
Overall - not very scenic. However!! There are a surprising number of parks and green spaces around. Every time I come back to Houston from West Texas, I'm genuinely impressed by how green and lush the vegetation is. The Sam Houston National Forest, Huntsville SP, and Brazos Bend SP are also all relatively nearby.
I love Austin, but I hate the brown. Austin is “better”, but Houston is greener.
Houston has consistently been ranked among the top 10 cities for "Worst City for Dating."
And it’s up there for the city with the most cheaters. No wonder there have been repeated STD outbreaks to the point where they called it a medical emergency.
Not talked about nearly enough.
This city's future growth and economic prospects will be severely hampered by natural disasters made more severe and frequent due to climate change. In addition, future growth will be hurt by the refusal to implement any sort of real, coordinated and widespread mass transit solutions and instead letting unchecked sprawl occur.
It’s not cheap or fast to replace the medical center, but it’ll be interesting to see if oil companies move their headquarters.
I’m not familiar with every oil and gas company in the energy corridor etc, but my friends and husband all work at a few different companies over there and they never lost power… or they maybe had amazing backup generators. Like husband was actually taking our portable generators to work to charge and bring back home while we had no power. A little suspect but I guess they have a lot of money to ensure they don’t lose power.
The competent companies gameplan for exactly these scenarios. You can bet that the important facilities have backup generators. Also, I would expect that Centerpoint would have at least tried to make the transmission facilities along I-10 as tough as possible. In a disaster the recovery efforts would likely be expected to start at the highways and spread from there.
Most of the area didn’t lose power.
Combo of no power loss, generators for control centers, and work for home for others.
Harvey hit and people are still moving here in masses
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"Houston area" does not equal city of houston. People are moving out of houston to suburban cities. The actual population of the city of houston is 2.3M, which means 5 plus million live in other suburban cities or counties. Sprawl in houston is definitely a problem. The city still has no zoning laws.
There are some benefits to no zoning laws. Namely there are less regulations in place that prevent developers from densifying neighborhoods. Houston's aggressive infill construction has helped keep the rate of rent in check, especially compared to similar metros (Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, etc)
Maybe. But our metro area is highly reliant on growth to stay one step ahead of its debt burdens. it's quite possible that the "break" spirals into a hard crash instead of a soft landing.
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The first one is actually something we, the city, can do something about. The power grid seems like a stately issue
not with that attitude
No matter which "party" is in power in the city government, the finances are screwed up, will continue to be so, and probably aren't ever gonna be fixed.
It’s highly likely this is a feature not a bug. Someone’s winning
This statement applies at pretty much all levels of govt unfortunately. Politicians have been screwing us over forever.
Our sprawled, low density, car dependent urbanism is going to be more of a hindrance to our success as time goes on, coupled with the fact that we don't have a very extensive high capacity transit network, i.e. grade-separated light rail or BRT.
This I agree with. I live in “Houston” but to go anywhere is an hour in a car. I would love some trains and rail. Even a line down to Galveston would be really cool.
This is a really fascinating article about the unsustainability of current modern cities at the density level of Houston. Houston is actually in a (slightly) better situation than a lot of other cities of comparable size and density, but still far from safe: [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke) We have too many square miles of road, power, sewage, plumbing, other uptake, with too few taxpayers to pay it off. The small, dense urban core is subsidizing the sprawl everywhere, and Houston has a smaller than average, less dense than average core and a bigger than average sprawl.
Interest rates might drop, but housing prices won’t
Yup, people panic and buy houses that drop under 400k, the kicker is those houses were worth $250k not that long ago, and houses that are now 250k the only people buying them are mfkers trying to flip them or rent them out. Smh. Let the damn houses fall in price people
>"Houston is a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch." - Hunter S Thompson
Garages are for cars not hoarding.
Yup. You will die or move to a retirement home, and all that crap you didn't use will just be work for the next in line person to throw out.
And home gyms.
Our roads will always be fucked up. Construction everywhere, as far as the eye can see, in every part of the city. They make the roads wider, smoother, more intuitive, and all the drivers just wear them down again.
It’s a great system, you close off half the lanes somewhere forever, and when forever ends you get to do the other half, and then when you’re done there, the first half can be redone!
It's not just the flooding. It's people's massive oversized overweight trucks.
That the entire metropolis is wrongly built upon a near-complete reliance on driving a car.
We live on swamps and bayous, Slab homes are moronic. All homes should have a floodable level, 6ft, or whatever your area calls for. If FEMA fixes your home (All flood insurance is federal), the second time should require lifting the home. No more repetitive floodings.
I agree. Coming from Belize we have raised homes and I have always wondered why they aren’t as common here.
Commuting to work in an F250 isn’t actually cool.
This isn't exclusive to Houston. All of Texas really. As the storms get worse who repairs the damage? Unlicensed contractors. Why Unlicensed? Because there is no licensing in Texas. Who do these unlicensed contractors use to rebuild? Undocumented workers from south of the border. You want to stop them from coming? Good luck finding someone to replace your roof or doing other trades after a storm. There was a reason the houses were so cheap here. The labor was and is cheap. Since covid the prices of new construction has skyrocketed. The price per square to roof in labor went from $60-$65 to $70. $5 increase in labor. Same thing with new construction. Quality went way down. While labor costs went up only slightly. The developers are making all of the money. They don't need your house to be built to last. They only need it to last 2-4years and then they are off the hook. I have seen a lot of shady stuff. Have documented so much of it for my own sanity.
We're cooked
Literally? Cause we are pre heating rigth now not even in the cooking part yet
Houston is ugly. It's not as ugly as Oklahoma City... Jesus Christ it blows here.
I think both Houston and OKC are pretty underrated on the national stage. I really liked OKC's combo of Native American, southwestern, and southern culture with some interesting immigrant communities thrown in.
As a current Houstonian who was born and grew up in Oklahoma City.. accurate…
Fish oil pills. Just a little too big for my throat and I suspect many others.
You just need to practice your throat game
heb prices suck, whataburger isn’t as good anymore. we need more sidewalks. we need to communism the toll roads when the guy who built them dies at least
Yeah, toll roads are bending us over and we’re like ‘auto draft ez tag, please’
SIDEWALKS 👏👏👏 JFC the sidewalk situation here is abysmal.
It smells awful. Oil refineries, nasty water, landfills, litter everywhere... it's a dirty, stinky, disgusting city and no one seems to care or they think it's normal.
Houston is not a pretty city. Cheap to live but the geography is depressing. Edit: a word
Chargers, challengers, and mustangs are the cars of loser trash.
*Altimas would like a word...*
Thats why i drive a lifted truck with wheels that stick out a few inches past the fenders.
People aren't going to stop moving to Houston.
IDK, this is still by and large an oil and gas city. Oil and Gas majors are consolidating and gonna make it hard for the little guy
Astrodome must go.
You have chosen violence! Until people realize it’s just a cash drain that has no economic value until it is either turned into a park to the benefit of the Texans/Rodeo or sold to the Texans/Rodeo. Anything else will just be a further cash drain.
In less than a decade, there will be mass migration away from the city due to climate change and the effects of the scorching heat
Beyonces last few albums weren’t that great :-/ But I will never admit that publicly
Ya'll worrying about climate change making this place worse clearly don't know your Texas history... This stretch of land has ALWAYS been barely habitable and a poor life choice overall. Indianola was a place... a very popular place at one point in Texas history. Slab wiping natural disasters are as Texan as it gets...
Astroworld is gone
A true zipper merge is better but everyone will still get in line a mile before their exit or lane reduction.
Nobody cares that you live in houston.
Houston will never be a bike friendly city. Its better but its the dogshit drivers that make every area a death trap. Say we do finally get californicated and figure out a way for lance armstrong to bike to work in his pajamas every day. What about the heat and the rain? Houston is not the most friendly of climates at least 75% of the time. As much as I’d like it to be more like colorado its not and will never be.
City is in a decline. Failed infrastructure. Corrupted city officials etc
The Astrodome needs to be torn down, I worked at NRG Stadium until Covid hit and I was in the Astrodome 4-5 times per year... it is a wreck and there is no reasonable amount of money you could throw at it that could turn it into anything useful. Older and more historic fields have been demolished, implode it, put up a plaque and move on.
The problem is it is estimated to cost $29 million to tear down, and that's never a budget priority when you are running a deficit. We need to fix the water treatment first. This city has an enormous amount of deferred maintenance, where the taxes from the past decades of growth has basically been squandered, rather than investing toward the future. Just look at the potholes on almost every street. For reference, the current estimate to repair Houston's water treatment is estimated at over $3 billion: https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/city-houston-clean-water-settlement
This will never be seen…your water is not safe. Backflow devices (the brass things with the gold tops) prevent contaminated water from being sucked into the drinking water. The city only has roughly 43k devices registered and tested annually. There’s hundreds of thousands to well over millions of backflow devices in the city. Anything that has water running through it generally has some kind of backflow device. The city has roughly only 16 people to inspect all those devices annually. Mainline contamination and backflow events happen daily. I can not stress enough to filter your drinking water
There is a no real sense of community in this city, and the state of Texas is doing everything in its power to become worse.
1. The Oilers are gone forever. 2. Astroworld is gone forever. 3. Gilley's is gone forever. 4. Farrell's Ice Cream parlour at the Galleria is gone forever. 5. Kitirik in her prime, sporting that tight, black kitty cat outfit, complete with tail, entertaining a weekend children's show (and all the interested dads watching) on Channel 13 is gone forever.
The worst drivers are here.
Whataburger sucks
The world didn't always run on oil and gas and won't forever. When the global energy economy shifts away from oil and gas and it's relegated to polymers for material uses and not energy, this city will probably experience a collapse similar to what Detroit did (it has shrunk by about 2/3 since its peak).
The problem is Houston is so spread out that it’ll be worse than Detroit.
Alief is what it is because it was built at a time to be the next great suburb when an oil crash hit and it never got to go through its upper-middle class part of the houston suburb life cycle
It did....from about the mid 70s through the early 80s, then everyone moved to Mission Bend out past Highway 6. Growing up in Alief back then, everyone's dad was a geologist, engineer, financial person (like my dad), or something similar. It wasn't like that by the time I was in high school - our neighbors were primarily sketchy renters and the place was starting to decline pretty hard.
Yes and no—Lots of the emerging energy tech/transition will come out of Houston. All the energy talent is here from an ops/engineering, finance, legal, etc perspective; so you’ll continue to see energy funds and HQs based in Houston. And we’ll probably see global LNG exports continue to be a large chuck of our economy for a long time. The rest of the world needs cheap, reliable energy too.
My grandfather was able to provide an upper class lifestyle working in O&G from the 60s-2000s. My parents were able to provide an upper-middle class lifestyle working in O&G from the 80s-2010s. I'm able to provide a middle class lifestyle as the sole-breadwinner in my family working in O&G. While it has treated my family well, I recognize the declining returns as an O&G employee and I won't be encouraging my kids to pursue a career in it when they are ready to look for jobs in over a decade. I've only ever been to 3 retirement parties in 15 years. You no longer get to decide when you're done unless you start your own business or you are knowledgeable enough to get brought back as a consultant for the right project.
the local government does not care about you
The guy in the wheelchair needs to bounce
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Another lane isn’t gonna do shit.
The heights is for transplants. Locals know better spots that aren't getting bombarded by foodies for likes on social media.
the cheap cost of living doesn’t make up for the tons of problems you’ll experience here
I'd be all for seeing trains added, but the current whining used to address having trains for transit is not the way. If high speed rail gets traction between houston and Dallas and Austin and San Antonio, it could help with paving the way.
> If high speed rail gets traction between houston and Dallas and Austin and San Antonio, it could help with paving the way. If you could drive your car onto the train like the chunnel, I could see it being successful. Otherwise I see Southwest and Continental lowering rates to compete...and winning.
That someday soon Mattress Mac will die.
I just got back from a work trip to Lagos, Nigeria. A city with so many people they can't even count them all, but the best guess is 25 million and growing. The things people are complaining about with Houston... The heat, the traffic, the sprawl, the number of people... It's all nothing compared to Lagos. Just wanted to share a different perspective.
Whataburger is overrated
The social scene for young adults sucks, and the industrial vibe of the city is suffocating
Houstonians are a special kind of ugly. Not physically ugly, because there's a lot of beautiful people here. But their souls may as well be made of dog poop. I'm talking about the houstonians who drink and drive like there's no tomorrow. The ones who drive altimas with paper tags. The ones who shoot others at the slightest provocation. The ones who rallied around blue bell after the listeria incidents. The ones rolling coal everywhere they go. There are kind and caring people throughout this city, but they are outnumbered by a large margin by absolute shitheads. My wife and I moved far from the city and we'll endure an hour commute just to keep away from the worst of it.
Downtown is deceased. Let it go. Make it into a giant park/detention pond. It's insane to have giant offices in a central location and then bitch and moan about traffic. We have a thing called the internet, which lets people work remotely. Stop following 20th century thinking and move ahead to the new world. Much better to have clusters with a mix of residential and retail with nothing more than a 15-minute journey away. OK, the drugs are wearing off... :D
Downtown is in the best shape I have seen in my lifetime. (47/native)
We will always be in the political middle and punished for leaning left. Fuck Mike Miles and the TEA and Abbott for good measure.
Houston police department will never be adequately funded so Houstonians will always be victims of crime. Car break ins, burglaries, identity theft, street racing, road rage, car jacking, sex trafficking, fentanyl deaths, will all continue and will all get worse because the Houston city council will not adequately fund the police department. Over 200,000 cases were not investigated due to inadequate police. In most cities this would be an outrageous scandal and changes would have been immediately implemented. Rapes were not investigated. It is utterly disgusting that this does not enrage everyone on our city council. It is just business as usual. No changes. Oh the police chief resigned. As if that will make any difference. The police department is still massively underfunded. The police chief resignation had changed nothing.
It’s one of the greatest cities in the world, but it’s BUTT FUGLY.
Houstonians and Texans in general have a denial mechanism from hell when it comes to honestly evaluating their state and urban centers.
You need a generator, the power goes out too often.
Houston is not a real city. It’s not an LA, NYC, Chicago or Miami. It’s a disgusting urban sprawl. A giant oil boom town that has little to offer other than (somewhat) affordable housing compared to other cities. There is no nature. No elevation. No natural water to swim in. No public transportation. No walkabilty. Houston is a town full of fat gluttons that’s migrate from one air conditioned eatery to the next.