| Houston -- a review and comparison to San Antonio |
| February 2003 |
| I first traveled to Houston in the Summer of 2002, to visit the campus of the University of Houston. After a long and remarkably boring drive on Interstate 10, we entered Katy. Katy is to Houston what Helotes is to San Antonio: formally a small town, now becoming more like a suburb. The big draw to Katy for most Houston-dwellers is Katy Mills Mall. The Mall is a one-story complex, with some anchor stores that I've never heard of. Just passed Katy is the beginning of Metro's extensive HOV network. If you stay on the Diamond Lane, which is on the far left lane (so people often treat it like a passing lane), you'll eventually enter the barrier-separated version. This will take you past Highway 6, Beltway 8, and Loop 610. The HOV lane dumps you onto the mainlanes, past 610. San Antonio has no HOV lanes, even though some were planned for I-35, at one point. I can't say how effective they are, except that naturally if the traffic is congested, and you have more than one passenger, the benefits are obvious. Based on my observations of the Interstate 10 in San Antonio, there is enough room for the kind of HOV lane that exists on I-10 in Houston. The street system of Houston is somewhat grid-like. Most streets are long, straight, and intersect at right angles. San Antonio's street system is an excercise in confusion. Downtown's streets "follow the river" so to speak, with many curves and such. Houston's downtown allows one to play chess on a map of it. Outside of downtown San Antonio, the streets do take on a grid, but the hills make it less obvious than in Houston. However, starting at the outside of Loop 410, the streets resume a kind of twisty confusion. The purpose may be to hamper newcomer's ability to get around. Not only do the streets twist, the names change at intersections, and some intersections have curves in them (that is, you crank the steering wheel to continue "straight" on your lane). Toss in some hills for fun. If geography and "planning" make San Antonio difficult, Houston just goes fast. Honestly, traffic appears to move 5 - 10 mph faster than in San Antonio, or about 10 - 15 mph above the posted speed limit. Tailgaiting, red-light running, and frequent passing make Houston seem like a Xerox of Madrid's style of driving. For local streets, Westheimer is the street to be on. If you can't find a store selling what you want, start on Elgin in mid-town, and drive westward. The street is 23 miles long, going from mid-town all the way to...the end. In terms of status and stuff-to-buy, it's like Broadway in San Antonio. Only, put North Star Mall at the junction of Broadway and Loop 410. Feed it steroids, and you have the Galleria. The Galleria is like cocaine -- if you shop there on a regular basis, you have too much money. After driving on I-10 and Westheimer, you may wonder why the city looks so jumbled-up. That may be because this city has no zoning. You can build whatever you want wherever you want. That said, Houston is perhaps the most likeliest city in the United States to urbanize due solely to market forces. The Texas Medical Center is denser than downtown San Antonio. Houston's subdivisions don't cover whole square miles of land. It's surface street traffic even seems less than San Antonio, which seems to have this weird phenomenon of having traffic congestion within subdivisions. Perhaps the only downside is that virtually nothing in this city is preserved. There are some old houses in the Montrose-Shepherd-Westheimer area, and few old buildings in downtown, but that's about it. Houston's skyline is evident -- the majority of this city is post-1970. San Antonio has done its hardest to not be modern. Most of its downtown was built before 1970, and what little has been added since has not been an improvement. Historical-preservation forces are way more powerful in San Antonio than in Houston, at first glance at least. The Houston City Government often seems to more pre-occupied about being a "world-class" city. I haven't heard them say what exactly a world-class city is supposed to be like, and I have doubts that even they know. Perhaps all they want is Houston to be as well-known as London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, and so on. Unlike those cities, however, Houston has very little history. It got its start as a land-scam, and then Enron happened. Compare to San Antonio, which got started at something a bit more honest -- converting the natives to Christianity and/or killing them. Then there was a Battle at the Alamo then Henry Cisneros got the Alamdome built and a football team never showed up. Houston has a football team -- the oh-so-uncreatively-named Texans. Can't wait for the Pittsburgh Pennsylvanians (or Quakers)! This was a replacement for the Oilers, who left for Tennessee, found out that Tennessee isn't known for its oil, so they got renamed the Titans, as if ancient Rome had anything to do with current-day Tennessee. San Antonio has basketball team -- the Spurs, which is a much better name than what they were called before, Chapperelles. Can you imagine saying "Go Chapperelles Go!" instead of "Go Spurs Go!"? Enough negativity -- what's good about Houston? The city is far more business-like, and "forward-thinking". I mean, there is more emphasis on what can/will be, versus preserving the heck out of whatever was. In that sense, Houston is a more positive city. Thanks to its lack of zoning, and less conservative population, it's much easier to start a business here than in San Antonio. San Antonio has zoning, and a conservative population. Not necessarily George W Bush conservatives, but less adventurous and open. Catholicism is big, with Baptist-ism being second. Houston, for all intense and practical purposes, is atheist. Good Friday is not a holiday. This may be because there is less of a Hispanic influence on Houston. Indeed, with nearly 4 million people, and lots of ethnic groups, it's hard for one group to dominate. Money doesn't need a language. You can see just how really, no REALLY, diverse this city is in mid-town and Sharpstown. Which reminds me, Houston is much more race-conscious than San Antonio. San Antonio is somewhere between 50-75% Hispanic, depending on whom you considered Hispanic (I'm 1/8th Mexican, am I Hispanic?). Hispanics in San Antonio, in general, don't care about race, the way Houston does. This permeates everyone else's mindset as well. I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist in the Hispanic culture -- it does, but it's different from the black/white frictions that dominate. In any case, living in San Antonio allowed me, personally, to grow up sans racial identity. In Houston, racial identity is almost second nature. This is the one thing that I think is the most backward of Houston, and most advanced for San Antonio. |