Furniture
Alright, you wanna say our buildings are boxes?
how about the williams tower? largest building outside of a downtown area in the country (world?)
or how about the pennzoil building?
or the bank of america building?
or maybe the enron building (1500 Louisiana, whatever it's called now)?
or the wells fargo building?
He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
Furniture
boxes, all of them. just glorified boxes. i don't see any conical/spherical buildings there. just pathetic.
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I mentioned Williams Tower before when talking about bad planning. Yes, it's a pretty tower, but the fact that Houston just lets 1,ooo foot towers sprout up outside the CBD is disgusting. It proves without a doubt the absence of zoning in Houston.
Don't get me wrong, Houston has a handful of attractive buildings which took the part of visionaries like the late Phillip Johnson, but the fact remains that lack of zoning will let relatively tasteless, corporate looking, bland towers (if you ask me Wells Fargo falls into that category...it just has two rounded off corners). They don't necessarily need to be 'boxes,' I guess what I'm trying to say is too many of Houston's imposing buildings are waaay too overlooked by developers who don't have any rules to follow or anything in terms of taste to give back to the community. What about JP Morgan Chase? What about 1100 Lousiana? What about One Shell? One Houston? Three Allen? Exxon? Marathon? KBR? Devon?
Compare Houston's place in planning and architecture to Philadelphia's, a city of similar size. There are but a small handful of truly bland buildings.
DOn't get me entirely wrong. I enjoyed Houston, but in terms of architecture and planning, it's almost entirely forgetful, save a few jewels like BofA.
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER
Furniture
I don't see the problem with a big building a mile and a half away from the CBD...?Originally Posted by Esperante
How big is Philadelphia? I didn't realize it was that big. Houston's technical city limits are almost 3,000,000 but the metropolitan area is almost 6m.
He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
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Well, the Williams Tower does look rather silly among 5 foot tall structures.
Furniture
no, it's in the Galleria area, the largest shopping mall in Texas, which is 4 stories, but then there are alot of hotels and other 25+ story buildings around it
He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
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In short, the Williams Tower is built in an inappropriate area. It lacks the proper infrastructure to support such a building, and the whole area needs improvements in it to make full use of such a massive developement. Large, suburban developements put massive strains on sewer systems and need lots of money to upgrade, as well as power grids and roads, seeing as in such case the only option to get to such a place is via car. On top of that, you steal away jobs that the CBD should be getting, and help the city planners that think there should be no zoning to prompt economic growth. It's a pretty vicious cycle:if Houston gets hit by a hurricane, mark my words it will be the next Detroit. An entirely suburban dependant city with a completely dead core and central city.
Philly's city population is about 1.5 million but metro is only about ten thousand short of 6 million (by the way, you will always want to rank the size of cities by their metro population, due to density and border extent. Technically, the city of Milwaukee is greater in population than the city of Boston, because Milwaukee's city limits extend almost to the country. Boston's only reach out to dense, rowhouse neighbourhoods).
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER
Furniture
Inappropriate area? you must've not seen it in person? It's only about a mile or so from the "CBD" and as mentioned, surrounded by other large buildings, and the largest mall in Texas. Really the Galleria area is just like a second, smaller downtown. Or a SBD, if you will, second business district.
He came dancing across the water
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Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
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Lets just keep it at Toronto Ownz.
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It doesn't matter how far away the building is from the CBD unless you consider what was there before that construction. It's one thing if you're going to build a 1,000 footer in, say, Brooklyn, where the infrastructure already exists. But you have to remember that Houston's extreme growth didn't arrive as early as NY's:before Williams Tower/Galleria construction that neighbourhood was a considerably less dense one, one that clearly couldn't support such development. The damage is already done. Now your tax dollars are paying for it.
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER
Furniture
how? what damage?
He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
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You're paying for all that sewer reconstruction (which is pretty nastily expensive, too). You're paying for all the necessary upgrades in electric infrastructure (substations, transformers, new lines, increased usage/higher rates). You're paying for all the redone roads (which are also painfully expensive), and which need to be redone very often.
Wouldn't you rather your millions (possibly billions) of tax dollars go towards new schools or parks improvements or the police of the fire department instead of new, high capacity sewers for Joe White Guy to have a place to work fifteen minutes closer to home and (best yet) not downtown?
Last edited by Esperante; 09-29-2006 at 06:16 PM.
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER
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Look at it this way. Eventually all those little buildings will get knocked down and bigger ones will replace them. Then that big ugly building that isn't downtown will be downtown.
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Heh, yes, a couple of hundred years from now. But that doesn't save it from awful planning.Look at it this way. Eventually all those little buildings will get knocked down and bigger ones will replace them. Then that big ugly building that isn't downtown will be downtown.
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER
Furniture
What sewer stuff? What upgrades? and the raod construction isn't around the tower, so I fail to see how the tower caused it?
There is a big park and waterwall (kind of a Houston icon) on the williams tower grounds, by the way, on your parks theme.
I still also fail to see why you're so downtown centric? Whats the problem with not working downtown?
Like I said originally, unless you've been here extensively, I would very much doubt that you understand my city. "Urban Planning" textbooks aren't the be all end all.
He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun
On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
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