yeh, das whut happens when ya leave yer winders down in a thundastorm. </texan> i could never live outside of texas. best country ever.
I think most of my relatives living in Houston are carpooling now. They all own gas guzzling SUVs, and the the price of gas is REALLY hitting them hard.
I know the metro area is probably smaller than NY, LA, Chicago, and DFW, but I can't think of what the 5th one is. Philly?
hehehe Yeah it was actually a really good article. They should pass this out to the free agents in the sports world..
I was one of the many New Yorkers that moved to Houston over a year ago. for many of those reasons in this article.
Houston got another plug on ABC news tonight talking about how Houston is booming now while a lot of the country is slumping. They pointed out how Houston is riding high times thanks to expensive energy but did mention how Houston has also diversified since the '70's and '80's so its not so energy dependent as before. I agree with a lot in the article but I wouldn't dismiss the problem of sprawl as much as the article does. Its not just about the energy used for transportation but there are many other problems associated with sprawl. One problem is an inefficient infrastructure spread to thinly while another is long term water quality and flood control issues. Consider all that paving prevents water from either soaking into the ground or draining away most efficiently. Plus all of the asphalt and oil on the roads eventually gets into the water table. Another problem that I have with how sprawled and autodependent Houston is how hard it is to form a cohesive community when to just go get a cup of coffee from a cafe you have to drive. Thankfully from my last two trips to Houston it looks a lot of it has changed since I grew up there and there are more pedestrian scaled neighborhoods than before. For having grown up in Houston and spent a lot of time in NY I'm not sure either extreme of sprawl or density is for me. I've got problems with sprawl but at the sametime can't stand NY for too long and start getting clausterphobic in Manhattan after awhile so at the moment I'm happy splitting the difference in a medium sized city. I live near downtown Minneapolis but still have my own house with a yard. I have a grocery store, cafe, neighborhood bar and a few decent restaurants within a few minutes walking distance and a light rail station. I can still get to most of Minneapolis by bike within 20 minutes. So for now I think I've got a good balance of the space and costs of Houston with the urban convenience like NY. Now if I could only get the winters to be warmer.
The article also fails to mention that Houston happens to be a mecca for large Fortune 500 style companies, second only to New York. It kind of makes it sound like everybody is in manufacturing or something.
