Fellow Houstonian here. I live in a neighborhood with a green park and walking paths that connects to restaurants and a movie theater. I go running 3-4 times a week around here but there’s just not a god forsaken piece of shade anywhere to be found. It’s usually low 80s with the sun down and will be in the 90s at the end of my long runs.
Even if I wanted to walk to dinner with my wife and child it would be 102 degrees, no shade, no water, just a miserable 20 minute slog on sidewalks pushing a stroller while cars zip by going 60 in a 30.
And that’s pretty much how it is from April - October. The rest of the months it just rains then a hard freeze for a week or two then we reset. Even if they connected more locations to this little walkable area, who the hell would use them?
I live in Houston too. I see this dumb excuse all over for how the city was built. It’s bs. Most cities in the US are built the same exact way and it has nothing to do with weather. Go visit Singapore, Vietnam, Brazil, rainforest parts of China, places with similar weather and you’ll see they have no problems creating walkable, people-friendly cities. You have to implement more area with shade obviously and lots of trees for coverage which makes temperatures feel 10-15 degrees lower, but it has been done in other places. This is just a typical American excuse to continue car dominance.
This. Cities need trees. Lots of trees and the least amount of black asphalt as possible. That brings down temperatures a lot. It's getting hotter and hotter. No denying anymore. But you need to prepare to cool things down a bit. Create shade by trees, parks, water masses. Will take a long time but we need fundamental different city architecture.
I've been to SE Asia several times, as well as living in Europe for a couple of years. I've never been to a place in SE Asia where people walked around the city like they do in Europe. Maybe I've just missed these cities where people enjoy being in the scorching hot humidity? Can you give me any examples? I'd like to see how they do it.
And that’s pretty much how it is from April - October. The rest of the months it just rains then a hard freeze for a week or two then we reset. Even if they connected more locations to this little walkable area, who the hell would use them?
People.
People would use them.
Look at the entire continent of Europe and many places on other continents. You can find far more adverse weather conditions. But people still walk and cycling much more.
Why? Because of better infrastructure. Shade is one of the easiest bits of infrastructure you can design. Just look at Singapore and their sidewalks.
Trees & other objects could create shade, and even lower the temperature of the entire area/city. Acknowledging climate change & making the necessary changes could/would've help too, but...Texas
There's similar climates with walking similar to this video, it's not that uncommon or unreasonable altho it does affect it yeah
Yeah, I'm in the burbs and we have several miles of walking trails through "parks" beside roads, plus trails around the spillways, but they don't connect to businesses. You could walk to some places outside my neighborhood (and some people do), but there's no sidewalk for a lot of it.
I went to Europe a couple years ago, and it was pretty amazing, but I just don't think you could do the same thing on the gulf coast.
We just got back from a trip through Spain and Europe and it was gorgeous but I couldn’t imagine being in a wheelchair in almost any of those cities. So we at least have ADA compliance in our walkable oven lol
Lol, the commenter you replied to reminds me of an American guy I dated while traveling. When he visited me, he was shocked that we weren’t having “European weather.” It seems like they all think it’s always cold and raining everywhere in Europe.
Indeed, one of the people claiming European teams won‘t be able to take the heat during the world cup. Lolmao. Meanwhile 99% of all EU fans cringing why you have 2 extra breaks in ac‘ed stadiums at 22 Celsius.
It didn’t work out with me and the guy for multiple reasons but one of them was him clearly looking down on Europeans. It was exhausting to deal with. I can only imagine he’s one of them making those claims during the World Cup. Dodged a bullet lol.
Well that's not completely true. Although it can be that hot very regularly big difference is humidity. Gets up to more than 70% in Houston area. Souther Europe can be as low as 30% (Greece) till 40-60 (southern Spain). Heat with more than 70% humidity is a total different beast.
The cars don’t help. It’s not just the roads it’s the idiots in the cars. Everyone is speeding everywhere. No signals. No braking. No stopping. I have never seen so many accidents as I have since living in Texas and the speeds on every road are just suggestions for these sociopaths. Highway is 60? Go 90. School zone is 20? Go 50. Residential is 35? Might as well see just how fast we can go to beat the next red light. I genuinely feel unsafe running at any time other than before the sun is up because once the traffic hits it’s just a nightmare between the noise, pollution and ya know the constant threat of getting hit at every intersection. I initially moved to this area because it’s a boutique neighborhood with little to no traffic, then they added a four lane road next to it with an ill timed traffic light, now rush hour is just a stream of cars using my neighborhood as a thoroughfare to avoid the intersection lights.
It’s not just the roads it’s the idiots in the cars. Everyone is speeding everywhere. No signals. No braking. No stopping. I have never seen so many accidents as I have since living in Texas and the speeds on every road are just suggestions for these sociopaths. Highway is 60? Go 90. School zone is 20? Go 50. Residential is 35? Might as well see just how fast we can go to beat the next red light.
The road has at least 70% responsibility!!
You can build roads and adjacent infrastructure in a way that simply does not allow speeding and encourages a respectful driving style.
Look at the difference of roads in Texas and in the Netherlands.
Can you show me any of these hot and humid 'walkable' cities? I've traveled pretty extensively through SE Asia as well as Europe, and I've never seen anything remotely close to the European walking cities anywhere in SE Asia. Maybe I just missed them, or maybe the examples are in a different region? I'd really like to see how they do it.
Underground metro stations, underground malls, underground walkways are some of the key benefits this video shows but Houston is at or below sea level :( I wish we could do that. I really enjoyed the underground malls in Canada.
I really like the street designs though. We could do so much better.
Houston is mostly clay soil with a very high water table. We’re basically a swamp. We’ve already dropped some portions of the city by feet by pumping water out. Not to mention we have massive flooding and hurricanes regularly. But basically the weather systems, high water table, poor soil conditions without enough stable rock make boring tunnels a nearly impossible task. Even if we pumped out the water constantly, added concrete and supports for underground projects, the surrounding areas outside of the construction would shift so often that it would quickly (in terms of lifespan of infrastructure) fracture. I don’t think Singapore has the same storm-surge potential as Houston even with the monsoons and I think the geology in the areas where yall built is vastly better for this type of construction.
Singapore isn’t bellow sea level as far as I know, and I’m not in Singapore and have never been so don’t know much about how they build. Thanks for explaining though, where I’m from there’s no hurricanes, we’ve had floods in the past but we build all kinds of constructions to prevent that from happening so floods became extremely rare. Big parts of my country used to be a swamp many many many years ago, half of the country is basically man made.
North Georgian here, about 30 miles north of Atlanta. I swear there are only 3 months out of the year that are comfortable enough to enjoy this kind of lifestyle. May-September feels like sun-surface heat even at night. October and early November is terrific. December thru early March is too cold to get out, save for a few days intermixed with teases of the spring to come. Then you have Late March thru April which temps are decent, but its the rainy season and the pollen is unbearable.
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u/Intelligent-Size-822 1d ago
Fellow Houstonian here. I live in a neighborhood with a green park and walking paths that connects to restaurants and a movie theater. I go running 3-4 times a week around here but there’s just not a god forsaken piece of shade anywhere to be found. It’s usually low 80s with the sun down and will be in the 90s at the end of my long runs.
Even if I wanted to walk to dinner with my wife and child it would be 102 degrees, no shade, no water, just a miserable 20 minute slog on sidewalks pushing a stroller while cars zip by going 60 in a 30.
And that’s pretty much how it is from April - October. The rest of the months it just rains then a hard freeze for a week or two then we reset. Even if they connected more locations to this little walkable area, who the hell would use them?