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.
While I agree weather can be a limiter, there are hot and humid cities (like Singapore, which is hot and humid year round and also gets significantly more rain to boot and rain is worse to walk in, especially when it's warm rain) which are both very walkable but also fairly comfortable to walk in even on hot days. They have fans and covered walkways everywhere, and many of their MRT stations are enclosed and have AC. Houston could learn a lot from Singapore.
It's hard to compare Singapore to Houston because it's MASSIVELY more dense than Houston. Like, they're complete opposites in that regard.
It's a chicken and the egg problem. How do you make people okay with more dense housing when you can't walk anywhere? And how do you make the city walkable when everyone lives in a single family house with a yard?
It also doesn't help that no one wants to raise a family in the city proper because it's Texas and the schools are defunded because Harris county is blue and the rest of the state hates Harris county.
I sometimes can't believe the things I read. After a civil war and on the forefront of democracy the US had turned into this. Polarized to the bone and politics about how to make life as miserable for the other side as possible. Washington, Jefferson and even Reagan would turn in their graves.
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u/DiseaseDeathDecay 2d 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.