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Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

texasmonthly.com

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Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#91

Post by komali2 »

criddell wrote: post #70
komali2 wrote: post #22

Ex houstonian here, university of houston and everything. Decently fun city, interesting history, cool people. The road and traffic situation is nightmarish. I slowly came to this realization in college when I went abroad a couple of times. I found out that didn't have to be How Things Are. The university of houston has a problem where students aren't attending classes because parking isn't available. Stories of tryi…

How did you manage to ride a bicycle in Houston without getting sweaty and gross?

I didn't, lol. I was just always sweaty and gross.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#92

Post by mixedCase »

kaesar14 wrote: post #52
tomrod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, as the interchange allows a sizable fraction to more quickly get to work.

Public transit would've done the same in a much more equitable and environmentally friendly way. Probably faster too.

High quality, super-expensive (think quality, cleanliness, secure) public transit that requires higher taxation and therefore reduces the incentive to do business there, maybe. If you want to burn some public money you could subsidize electric cars for a long time at a fraction of the cost of the kind of stuff you need.

As someone living in a third world country in a city where (cheap) public transit is the norm, I can tell you that faster than private cars/taxis it is not; hell, Uber arriving here was a nice uplift to my lifestyle at a price I could justify ponying up for.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#94

Post by naringas »

apacheCamel wrote: post #10

>Siena’s history dates back millennia. Houston, meanwhile, was founded in 1836. Every time I am made aware of just how young the US is, it blows me away. I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old places/structures in person.

In Europe 100 km is far away.

In America 100 years is a long time ago.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#95

Post by AlotOfReading »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #64
AlotOfReading wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colonial architecture is still pretty recent in the grand scheme of things. Native construction is far older and some of it is still standing. Oraibi, Taos, and Acoma are all close to a millennia old and there are structures in the US going back another couple thousand years like las capas or poverty point. If you head south into Mexico, you can find structures even older than that. There's nothing like gobekli tepe,…

Right that's true, but little of that stuff is part of the fabric of an intact, living city right? Either because it was raised by colonizers (e.g. Just a few things from technocratic remain, which are largely dug up rather than continuous, right?) or abandoned first (like Mayan cities).

That depends on what you mean by part of an intact, living city. Oraibi, Taos, and Acoma are all continuously inhabited places, so obviously they count. Las Capas is a continuously inhabited region with small periods of interruption in certain specific areas, just like any city in the UK.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#96

Post by oblio »

johnbrodie wrote: post #84
oblio wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want to be stacked, but they do want jobs, they want Chinese/Indian/French/... restaurants, they want daycares, they want schools, they want high-schools, they want notaries, and hospitals and clinics, they want shopping malls and delis, they want pharmacies and pawn shops, ... It's almost like wanting 50000 people with different professions nearby means you have to live next to 50000 people. Until we disc…

I'm confused as to whether you're describing urban living or suburban living. Both have everything mentioned, the latter without being stacked on top of your neighbors.

It's in the name. You only have "sub-urban living" because there is an "urban" nearby.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#97

Post by kergonath »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #27
apacheCamel wrote: post #10

>Siena’s history dates back millennia. Houston, meanwhile, was founded in 1836. Every time I am made aware of just how young the US is, it blows me away. I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old places/structures in person.

Just so you aren't in for a shock, "millennia" is including all sorts of neolithic stuff in the ground that could probably well be said of places in the US too. In terms of street layout, little is per-roman, and in terms of buildings, little is > 1000 years old. The most common thing would be more 17th 18th 19th century buildings (in increasing frequency), and if you go to parts of Massachusetts (and maybe Virginia)…

It’s not uncommon to have city walls from the Middle Ages, and Roman buildings and monuments around here (not all of them still in use, true). Plus a whole bunch of castles and churches from the 11th century onwards.

Boston and Santa Fe are very nice, but it really feels quite a bit different.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#98

Post by leetcrew »

adolph wrote: post #90
tuna-piano wrote: post #55

It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-t…

"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy contr…

is there any further explanation of this? it strikes me that narrow chokepoints would be more advantageous to the numerically inferior but better-equipped/trained force.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#99

Post by refurb »

kaesar14 wrote: post #88
refurb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t live there if you don’t like it?

We all live in an interconnected world. The choices made around the country to prioritize cars have led to negative externalities for all of us.

The world is fully of negative externalities caused by others. That alone is not a good enough reason to force them to change their behavior.

Sure, incentivize a dense urban area if that’s what you want. But you should realize a lot of people want a suburban environment.

Re: Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy

#100

Post by ashtonkem »

sithadmin wrote: post #17
blakesterz wrote: post #11

"Rather, Cold War–era urban design philosophy in the U.S. prioritized sprawl because older cities that had urbanized pre–World War II—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were seen as being susceptible to nuclear strikes. Less-dense cities such as Los Angeles and Houston were less likely to be targeted for a nuclear attack. Sprawl was a deterrent against Soviet aggression." That's the first time I've heard th…

I'm not sure I buy it; it sounds like a 'just-so' story. Sprawl is popular because it allows for larger properties at lower prices relative to dense urban development. The vast majority of real estate developers have likely never seriously considered factors like probability of a nuclear strike as a criteria for selecting land for development.

The timing doesn’t really work out either. Automobile suburbs, the beginning of what we’d call sprawl, started in the early 1920s, and really picked up speed in the 1940s and 1950s in Detroit. Detroit really hurts the narrative of nuclear strike resistance, as it’s buried pretty deep inside US air space; it wouldn’t be until the proliferation of ICBMs that Detroit would face significant nuclear strike risk. If sprawl provides any protection against nuclear weapons (which I doubt), then that is clearly a post-hoc rationalization.
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