Quote:
Originally Posted by jtown,man
And Houston is a beacon for the world in terms of its urbanity? No.
Dubai does have an old city which is more dense than most American cities. Its kind of like looking at Houston and avoiding looking at downtown(which is waaaay dead compared to old Dubai) while only looking at the burbs.
|
have you been to Houston...lol
It's a city of 6+ million that had to get by on true grit, not glam, and somehow managed to carve out some unique cultural pockets (montrose, museum district, hermann park, the village, Heights, etc.) that are distinct to Houston..... and Houston alone.
I can truly say that Houston is heads and shoulders above a place like Dubai. Why because they learned the hard way that the dubai way is NOT how you build a great city. True, Houston may have built a handful of trophy lifeless skyscrapers in the 70's and 80's but the picture today is totally different.
If you've been keeping up with Houston lately, you will know that they are really focusing on that urban connective tissue that really ties a city together. City parks, mixed use developments, mass transit, residential pockets, etc. are all under construction right now and it is a very exciting time for Houston.
A lesson I've learned from studying the growth of cities are that Cities are built in layers...each layer must naturally follow the last. you can't artificially create a layer of a city or artificially create demand.
Hopefully Dubai can learn form the mistakes of Houston. I don't know the debt load of those buildings or the occupancy sitiuation but hopefully Dubai can make it to its "next layer"