Haphazardly generic, with giant dash of ghetto
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6/5/2021
I lived in the Houston area for almost three years, and more or less hated every second of it. I'll keep my list relatively brief...which is to say, it'll still be long, as I have a lot to cover, but at least I won't drone on and on with every single point.
Pros:
- Underrated local culinary scene, in terms of food quality.
- Strong job market in fossil fuel-related industries, healthcare, real estate, and, increasingly, tech.
- Well-paying jobs, among aforementioned sectors.
- Some inner city neighborhoods such as Rice Village, Montrose and the Heights haven't completely lost their personality and character. Sadly, there are few such neighborhoods for such a giant metropolis.
- Dozens and dozens of cultures and ethnicities represented.
- Memorial and Hermann are nice parks.
- Decent cultural institutions (e.g., Menil, MFAH).
- Rice and UH have beautiful campuses.
- Texas Medical Center is truly world-class in terms of healthcare-related research and development.
- A growing local brewing scene.
- Hidalgo and George are good, maybe even great, county judges in Harris and neighboring Fort Bend, respectively.
I actually did okay meeting good people I could relate to in the Houston area, whether through work or online. But the culture, haphazard low-density sprawl, and horrible summer weather made socializing an unsustainable challenge, much more so than in other places I've lived. Which leads me to...
Cons:
- I laugh hysterically when I read about Houstonians being kind, helpful and polite. Southeast Texans are absolutely some of the least charming people in the US.
- Completely, aesthetically unattractive city, in terms of manmade and natural landscapes.
- Awful, selfish, short-sighted, impatient drivers who pull maneuvers I haven't seen even in Boston, NYC or Latin America. Wow, just wow! Especially you, Cody, Miguel or Karen in the F-350/Silverado/Tundra/Suburban/Escalade.
- Generally trash culture that actively promotes anti-intellectualism and shuns any real sense of community pride. It's like Rice and UH don't even exist in the minds of most locals.
- Typical customer service: some combo of inattentive, brusque, miserable, and/or outright rude. Common with retail and healthcare, but even sometimes with dining out.
- Speaking of healthcare, in no other city I've lived in have I had such difficulty finding a GP, dentist, chiropractor, and other healthcare professionals that I liked, in terms of "bedside manner" and competency. Maybe so much for having a huge medical center...
- While the city/region might be multicultural, I noticed a lot of hostility from black and Hispanic people toward people who aren't like them, that I frankly haven't noticed in other cities.
- Even with the multiculturalism and liberalism (by regional standards), the whole Southern concepts of "traditionalism" (as nebulously ill-defined) and "gitcha a good partner and have yerselves sum kids" still reign supreme.
- Local park and bike trail systems are utterly underwhelming (apart from Memorial and Hermann).
- Regional beaches, especially Galveston, are disgusting. Not even a nice way to put it.
- Secondary streets are in bad shape in some areas, especially inside Beltway 8.
- Public transportation exists...but not really. One light rail line, buses that don't run on time, and buses that are, quite frankly, rode by plenty of the aggressive and/or creepy.
- No zoning in Houston, few aesthetic standards encouraged by other regional governments, property developers can build as haphazardly and cheaply as they want "becuz thur property raghts."
- Speaking of haphazard sprawl... It's disgusting that Cypress, Magnolia, Pearland, Friendswood, etc. have little to make them distinct from one another. Preservation of old-town character in the suburbs isn't a thing, like it is around D/FW, Chicago, and L.A. Sugar Land and The Woodlands have tried...but they don't have cohesive old-town centers, and the modern town centers they've built are kind of generic. Actual old towns that have become suburbs, such as Spring, Tomball, Rosenberg and Richmond, have really underutilized those opportunities, IMO.
- The sprawl is also incredibly low-density, not continually dense (relatively speaking) like it is around Chicago, L.A, S.F., and even Miami. Makes simply driving to Target or the gas station a tedious challenge (in addition to the insane drivers).
- Long drive away (2.5+ hours) from any other city of actual interest: Austin, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas, and New Orleans. And, with the possible exception of N.O., none of the others are that interesting after the first visit.
- Houston might be a major air hub, but flying to many other places, domestic and international, is more pricey than from Austin, D/FW, let alone the coasts.
- Speaking of airports, both Bush and Hobby are depressing, "low-rent" sort of airports. Even considering Hobby's expanded, modern security area. Rude airport personnel, too, even by US big-city standards.
- Flooding. I could care less that Houston is in a flood zone. You chose to expand your city there; haphazardly, without any real concept of land use and environmental controls. 2001 and 2017 don't seem to faze y'all. Only some of the far-flung suburbs like The Woodlands, Sugar Land and Fulshear seem to take this issue seriously by implementing drainage and retention standards.
- Pollution from local petrochemical facilities, and allergies such as central Texas cedar pollen and Saharan dust (that literally blows across the Atlantic and ends up affecting Louisiana and Texas), create a toxic respiratory cocktail for several months of the year.
- Crime and the "physiology" of neighborhoods: Yes, the crime rates around Houston might be lower, on paper, than in places like Chicago and St. Louis. However, it is the city's geographic spread over some 600 square miles, and the ensuing, lower-density demographic spread, that results in crime not being concentrated. Sure, you can expect to hear about drug deals gone wrong and carjackings in southeast Houston and Greenspoint, but you occasionally hear of those stories coming out of nicer areas like Midtown, Northwest Houston, the Energy Corridor area, etc. As cheaply-built "older" developments age, landlords care even less than before about those properties, and the upper-middle-class move ever outward for newer, shinier neighborhoods. The overall "physiology" of some "older" neighborhoods begin to deteriorate. I should also say that by "older" in Houston, I mean built before about 1996 (25 years ago). This form of gradual, creeping, suburban decline has even begun to inflict the periphery of Pearland, Katy and Cypress; likely unthinkable back in 1996.
- Summers. Enough said.
- Check this out: Pay attention sometime to the wide service roads parallel to the wide freeways and tollways. And, to the relatively short timing of stop light cycles. I actually think those psychologically "incentivize" people to drive faster, because they're comfortable doing so or they think they're going to miss a green light.
- Oh, speaking of tolls... Having to pay a toll to drive so many places.
- Service roads, too. They're actually inconvenient and impractical. I won't miss those when I leave Texas (as they are prevalent in most of the state).
And, really, other Texas cities aren't much better, in my experience and view, for their own variety of reasons (I'm living in D/FW now). I'm leaving Texas altogether soon and just couldn't be happier to move back to a region I've always loved, the West!
John | Euless, TX