SAM SAVELL
THE SIGNAL
Houston, the fourth-largest city in America, and my hometown, is a city designed for progression. Just like the freeways that run through it, the city is always making changes in the name of improvement.
I’ve always felt that Houston only grows in what it has to offer its inhabitants and travelers, such as our expansive city culture, an abundance of activities and our still-rising job market.
Recently, I came across a statement about my beloved residence on ucityguides.com, a website with travel guides geared toward the “modern urban traveler.” What I found was clearly offensive: Houston is the seventh-ugliest city in the world and number one in the United States.
Ucityguides.com’s reasoning was not because of a disagreement with the city’s overall appearance or even the lack of efficient public transportation; it was simply because of “a large homeless population and a cityscape with no formal zoning regulations.” These two lone points placed Houston higher than Atlanta and Cleveland, both cities ucityguides.com also found unattractive.
For the sake of statistics, data researched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rated Houston as number six for the largest number of homeless people in a major city in 2012. New York, Los Angeles and Seattle were among those whose homeless count was a large jump ahead of the Bayou City.
If it’s any consolation, Houston was also listed number two for largest decreases in homeless population, shedding off 15.2 percent since 2011. Again, we are a city of constant progression, and I think the numbers fare well against the rest of the country, especially when you consider our low population density.
Our lack of zoning laws is also another example of our progression, as we are the only major city in the United States that doesn’t apply zoning laws to the makeup of our city’s design.
A lack of zoning means the city government won’t restrict the nature of buildings constructed solely on the location they are built. This doesn’t open a free-for-all for building owners, as there are still many other city ordinances that would make it illegal to open a restaurant inside a home or refine chemicals in a neighborhood.
This does allow someone to own a home right in the city, outside of the typical suburban neighborhood. This is what makes areas like Midtown, which mixes homes, businesses, restaurants, clubs, museums and schools, even possible. This is the very charm of Houston culture itself, since the city is such a huge melting pot of just about everything.
Let’s look at some things that make Houston unlike any other city, and show that we aren’t ugly, but rather attractive and captivating instead:
For those looking to relocate, Houston’s job market and economy has been growing where other cities have dramatically lost work due to recession. In light of this, Houston has seen many young professionals as new faces to the city. Forbes recently gave kudos to this fact, declaring us the “coolest city in America.”
Houston has a large international community and shines in the availability of cuisines offered in the metroplex. It’s possible to find food authentically cooked from every continent without ever leaving the city. Departures.com says Houston is “redefining American cooking.”
The four major performing arts: opera, ballet, music and theater, are all proudly represented by Houston-based professional organizations. Many Broadway acts visit Houston regularly. We are also home to America’s second-largest concentration of theater seats in a downtown area.
As long as you don’t want to see mountains or snow, Houston’s landscape offers various environments: from the tall woods in the north, the open country in the east and west, to the coast line of the Gulf of Mexico in the south. Outdoor-life is abundant outside of the busy city for those who want to get away for some hunting or fishing.
As a native Houstonian, I don’t think it’s right that we were called an ugly city. Not just because “ugly” is a bad adjective to describe characteristics that rate unattractiveness, but even more so because there’s a lack of credibility here and the shots fired on my Houston pride feel unwarranted.
