Probably go to North Hills like Advance Auto anyway. Innovation District and I can’t remember what the adjacent district under construction is called, would probably land something before downtown . People will live downtown and commute to North Hills, it’s going to be backwards.
Dorky post ahead, lol:
This weekend I did a whirlwind (27 hour) trip to Houston, Texas to run another half marathon (TX = State 28 of 50). I learned that Houston (or Texas in general) is not my favorite place. The freeways with their access roads were more difficult than I realized to navigate. And the drivers just sucked. The race was awesome and I met some interesting locals. Downtown Houston was actually pretty cool from what I could see. To the west of downtown there were lots of highrises sticking up at random places (Houston’s lack of true zoning has been discussed here). Over all it was a good trip and I checked off another state towards my goal.
Being a geologist, I spend a lot of time looking at aerial photos of my various sites. Here are a few I took from the flight back yesterday. (If you zoom in, you can see all the highrises heading to the west of DT Houston.
Really bad pic of Memphis. The pyramid by the Mississippi River is what gives this city away, otherwise I would have missed it.
And Nashvegas right before we landed. It has been several years since I spent a lot of time here for work. It may be worth a weekend trip back to see what is new.
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I lived in Houston for nearly a year a good while ago and HATED it. It’s by far my least favorite city so far in Texas. For the 4th largest city in the country, it’s incredibly car dependent and traffic clogged. It’s the example of not being able to widen your way out of traffic with the Katy Freeway being the widest freeway (by lane count) in the world. IMO, it’s one giant nightmare.
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Omaha actually closely mimics Raleigh statistically as it, Raleigh, and Colorado Springs are usually clumped together yearly in the population stats. Omaha isn’t really growing all that much, but they’ve been annexing already developed land for quite some time now to keep up with Raleigh’s and C.S.'s growth.
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I did drive down to Galveston on Saturday afternoon. It was all such a wasteland of refineries, tank farms, etc. With so much oil infrastructure down there, no wonder they love their cars so much.
I always thought The Triangle and Triad were sprawled out, then I went to Houston…
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Oh, I made that mistake too when I lived there. I thought Galveston would be charming and cool, but it was dumpy and gross. You’d think that it would be a cool beach getaway since it’s so close to all the wealth in Houston, but no. I never went back after that initial visit.
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Funny, I mentioned that to one of the ppls I met at the race. They said the exact same thing. haha
I told her I was spoiled with the Outer Banks being so close to us. She said South Padre was their go-to beach of choice.
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It would be nice, where would it go?
Hah, I was born in Houston. I love it as a visitor because the museums and architecture and food (so much food! From all over the world!) and nightlife are all absolutely top notch, but you definitely have to drive through a whole mess of swamp and highways and traffic to get between all of them.
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Kind of the opposite of Houston, I ate lunch in South Boston, Virginia this weekend - what a perfect little Main Street perched on a high bluff overlooking the Dan River. Just clinging on economically, sadly, but what wonderful bones.
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I lived in Houston for seven years. Went to Galveston many times. I have zero complaints about anything. I thoroughly enjoyed my time down there. I think it’s all about attitude and just living in the moment.
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The food in Houston was top notch when I lived there. I would guess that it’s the same today. After my time in Houston, none of my clothes fit anymore. Still it is not enough for me to want to live there again.
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This is not such a good “show off”, but this is an interesting video that touches upon a lot of things that get discussed here among a variety of topics.
On my second year living in Orlando and in comparison, Raleigh almost seems urbanist to me. Even the worst of Raleigh’s car infrastructure/ traffic pales in comparison to what I see here. The difference between the two as both fast-growing metros is insane.
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Zero comparison between Orlando sprawl and toll road connectivity and the Triangle. Perhaps there are some comparisons but damn, Orlando is so spread out with no good way to get from A to B without a toll road.
I do appreciate their (Florida’s) investment in rail though.
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You’d be the expert on Orlando for sure, and nothing you are telling me is a surprise. I’d only add that Orlando has to plan for millions upon millions of annual tourists in cars that clog its roads and freeways.
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I think I just appreciate Raleigh’s standing with sprawl after seeing what it’s like to live somewhere else in the US where sprawl is not only tolerated but encouraged. We have a long way to go, but it’s a lot more dire in other areas of the country. Also I do want to add that places like NYC also see millions of tourists, they just choose to accommodate them with transit systems and a place like Orlando (or Houston) could too if they really wanted.
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ceasers casino and convention will be in nearby danville in a few years…also danville will be redoing an old mill property right on the dan river. the area needs some boosting.
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Well the tourist traps in Orlando are all car oriented, so there is that!
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We took our kids to Disney last summer and actually looked into taking the train to Orlando. At the time, there was no way to get from the train station to the resort without taking a crazy expensive Uber. We ended up just renting a minivan that sat in the parking lot at the resort with a daily fee. It was kinda crazy to pay to rent a vehicle AND pay for it to sit in a parking lot for 5 days, but it was less expensive than 5 train tickets plus Ubers to and from the park.
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