Quote:
Originally Posted by tgannaway89
Over 700,000 residents live outside Loop 410. Developers are just following the residents. Projects like Vistana and Vidorra struggle to find residents while new apartments near UTSA/medical center fill up before they are even built! People like depending on their automobiles. People like spacious houses and large yards. People like living in the hill country. San Antonio's inner-city tends to be fake urban redevelopment. Block after block of single-family residence is not urban.
|
You have it reversed; the residents are following the developers, and it is an outward march.
...and thank you for proving my point.
Block after block of single-family homes? It sounds like the suburbs now (except the block part; it's more like acres and acres.)
At one time (80-100 years ago,) those homes in center city were new, and the main arterial roads were lined with stores. Once those homes got "old," newer homes were built out around 410, and business followed it. With such a huge population boom, 5 malls were built, of which 3 still exist, 4 if you count the Rackspace HQ's, and one of those is hanging on by a thread.
At one time, the area around 410 was considered "high-end." As the suburbs kept expanding, businesses followed the housing, and that brings us to about 15 years ago (Huebner) and where we are today.
Do you see a trend here? What's pretty today will not be so pretty tomorrow. There's a reason the newest development "latches" on to the first available space in the "city." Even developers know that the suburbs have a limit. If people "want" to live in the hill country, and want cheap housing, then towns like Boerne and Bulverde would be filled with developments.
Think 10 years from now, and in the meantime, I encourage you to travel to larger urban areas in our country, even those outside of Texas can be picked for comparison. American trends are very similar and you can see the evolution of a city in other cities across the country (Think: what did Houston look like when it had 1.8 million people.) If we compare the two, I think we might actually have a pretty good head start on "urban" living. Sometimes we skip through "eras" but for the most part, the evolution is fairly similar in cities with a "sizeable" suburban population.
We've had this discussion before and yes, center city is more urban based on it's walkability and connectivity.