Some nice limestone, some nice brick. Those steets are tres' cool. But ya, ewwww. :yuck:

Were you hoping to drag Lubbock through the dirt? Sure seems that way. I look forward to your VIEW of Tech.

Thanks for the tour, I can't say that I'm in love with Lubbock after it, but I can say that I know a lot more about the place than I did 15 minutes ago.

You peaked my curiosity so I went to live.local to get a birds eye view of the place. Now I have a few questions:

What is going on in this vast empty swath between Texas Tech and downtown?:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...d/lubbock1.jpg

When I zoomed in even closer, it switched to an older image and a whole neighborhood popped up:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...d/lubbock4.jpg

Has this whole area been abandoned in the time between when the two sattelite images were taken?

I switched over to a bird's eye view, and everything was empty again:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...d/lubbock2.jpg

Other than what is obviously going to be a Wal-Mart, I have no idea what is going on here:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...d/lubbock3.jpg

I hope for Lubbock's sake that it is all some massive re-development and that so much of the city hasn't simply been abandoned.

That is the site of the Overton Park mixed-use development that will supposedly house 8000 people. A 325 acre neighborhood between the Tech campus and downtown that when finished later this year or in '08 I believe, will have apartments, lofts, restaurants, etc. The Centre at Overton Park is an apartment building that is already opened...

http://www.lubbockapartments.com/sea...otos/big_1.jpg
http://www.lubbockapartments.com/sea...unities_ID=219

As for that Wal-Mart, they kinda got in after the Overton Park plans were announced and a lot of people in Lubbock were pretty pissed about having a Wally World there...

http://www.sprawl-busters.com/search.php?readstory=1586

Wow.....
 

....aint much shade there...:whip:

When did Texas pass the law banning pedestrians? I just got back from Dallas and saw 3 pedestrians in a week. I see Lubbock suffers from the same. I can't believe people who live there think that's good. Street life makes a city interesting, not a highway system.

Why not post some pics of the really nice areas near the Tech campus? Like many others, I'm not in love with Lubbock but I was very impressed by the neighborhoods of beautiful homes and trees in some parts of town. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos. Wouldn't it be more fair to show a more balanced view of the city?

Come to Austin. ;) Austin loves its downtown. It's the playground of the city.

lubbock: hey, at least we have brick streets. :banana:

first off, really nice pictures.

second, it's a slightly unfair depiction of the city. Lubbock is the Texas equivalent of...say, Newark, NJ, or Bakersfield, CA. Not in relation to the built environment, but in the fact that everyone in other parts of the region seem to dump on it constantly. In Texas, Lubbock is the butt of all sorts of jokes...for the flatness (like that matters in a city) or for the smell (very rare for it to smell like cowshit, although it does happen) or for the wind (actually not much windier than Dallas) or because it's isolated. Whatever the reason, even places like Midland and Amarillo like to have a joke at Lubbock's expense.

The truth is, it's not THAT bad. Lubbock is actually a very important city in it's large but sparsely populated part of Texas. It serves as the hub for the best cotton-producing region in the world and there's moderate oil deposits not far away. Those two resources have lent a considerable amount of wealth to Lubbock, and there's a surprising large number of very wealthy areas.

Now, keep in mind, it's not at all an urban place. The city didn't even come into being till the '20's, so it missed out on the golden age of the streetcar and dense downtown shopping districts. It grew slowly and steadily in a suburban manner, but never developed much of a downtown core. After the tornado, the downtown was more or less left for dead, and the retail growth of the city took place on auto-centric strips further and further away from downtown.

Lubbock is actually kind of an interesting place if you're curious about suburbia - because it's so flat with absolutely no geographic boundaries for sprawl, you get a taste of the development of suburban aesthetic the further you travel south of downtown. 19th Street - a mile south of downtown - is mostly 30's buildings that come up to the sidewalk but leave room for parking to the sides. 34th Street - two miles from downtown - is all retro 50's; early strip malls that are now dying, drive in burger places with space-age lines, etc. 50th Street - three miles from downtown - you begin to see the early indoor shopping malls with large parking lots. 82nd street - five miles from downtown, you get your big boxes. 98th Street - exburbia. Tacky faux historicism in auto-dominated parking areas. It's interesting, but in a subtle way. Greenwich Village it is not, but it is a microcosm of suburban development as its progressed throughout the past 80 years. Anyone who's interested in cities should have an interest in how and why they've developed the way they have, and Lubbock, with its massive sprawl and linear growth, showcases that history better than almost anywhere.

It's a town of probably 150 square miles, all the pictures from this thread were within half a square mile. There's districts with beautiful well preserved homes from the 20's and thirties along tree-lined streets. There's districts with McMansions like you'd see in Plano or The Woodlands. There's poor, gritty neighborhoods with hole-in-the-wall local restaurants. The Texas Tech campus is actually very attractive.

Just remember, there's far, far more to the town than what's shown here.

Anyways, that's my defense of the place. I graduated from college at Tech, and I'll always have a soft spot for it. Not the greatest place in the world, but it is honest and for the most part unpretentious. Sometimes I even miss it.

You have an excellent eye for photo composition. You make good out of a minimal subject. Great work.

No need to apologize for Lubbock. It seems to revel in its blandness. In all my travels I've never been to a state that so epitomizes America as Texas.

16-lane highways, endless strip malls, tons of fat people dressed in silly outfits, and an American Flag waving in the wind every 1/2 mile.

16 lane highways? Not in Texas. Houston doesn't even have them. I do agree with you, though. There's plenty of ugliness to be found here and there.

8 lanes on each side. I couldve sworn I saw that in Dallas.

Anyway, I haven't been to Austin yet and I hear that place will change my tune on Texas.

The largest I seen in Dallas was 5 lanes on each side and that's Stemmons.

Yeah, I guess they do. I wasn't sure how you were measuring them either. Aren't there highways in California, (and a few other places), that have 16 lanes on each side? I can't imagine a highway being that large. Freaky.

I know a guy that recently moved from the Metroplex to the Atlanta area and said he had never seen highways as big as those in Atlanta. Texas has the largest highway system in America, but that's just because the state is so big. There are much, much larger individual highways in Atlanta, Southern California, etc.

What did you say to this kid? Looks like you almost scared the pants off him (like you were a cop about to bust him for illegal skateboarding):

http://www.southflag.net/photography...7/DSC_2669.jpg

Maybe, but not because Houston doesn't need them. I never saw worse traffic than Houston.

You may not have been to Houston. I don't know of any place that rivals Houston for large individual highways within the city.