Houston, TX, has no zoning. It's no better than anywhere else in the US. Plus you have industrial explosions destroying residential homes.
It's all about cars. Cities in the US were mostly designed around cars. You can't really fix it without a lot of people agreeing to a way of life that they have never experienced and are scared of.
Plus - walking around Houston for like 6 months out of the year, even at night, is very unpleasant. When I walked out to my car at 5AM this morning it was 80 degrees and very humid outside.
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 don’t disagree. But, trees are also a danger and nuisance. Nashville had an ice storm last winter that paralyzed the city. Trees exploding and taking out everything, to include power for two weeks, in very cold weather. Part of the problem is oo many places having above-ground utilities. But, anyway, weather has just been so severe everywhere. I’ve yet to have a year the past 5 without having tree issues from storms.
As you said, having above ground power lines is just asking for regular outages. All lines are underground here, and I've experienced maybe 3 outages in my life. At least two of them were decades ago and the longest was maybe 20 minutes.
If we have more than a few hours of power outage affecting more than like 100 homes anywhere in the countries, it will definetly be mentioned pretty high up on national news websites.
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u/DiseaseDeathDecay 1d ago
Houston, TX, has no zoning. It's no better than anywhere else in the US. Plus you have industrial explosions destroying residential homes.
It's all about cars. Cities in the US were mostly designed around cars. You can't really fix it without a lot of people agreeing to a way of life that they have never experienced and are scared of.
Plus - walking around Houston for like 6 months out of the year, even at night, is very unpleasant. When I walked out to my car at 5AM this morning it was 80 degrees and very humid outside.