Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas
I have no interest in having a city rivalry for the goal of bragging rights and brawls. My thing is to simply compare Austin to Houston and Dallas to see how far we've come to approaching their level of greatness because they are the next benchmarks we would come to in Texas when you're talking skylines.
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All three cities are really different.
Austin will have one very large skyline in its core. It will go from South Congress then cross the river into Downtown then cross into the Capitol District and then into the UT/West Campus area. Actually, let me re-phrase my statement since it already does this but it will beef up even more, especially after the Statesman site in SoCo gets developed across the river. I think what we'll also see is more highrise and skyscrapers make their way east of I-35 too on the other side of the freeway from downtown and begin developing there as DT/SoCo reach their limit with available space. Going east will drive them towards that Oracle Campus, which would be great. Beyond that ATX will likely only have small highrise clusters elsewhere like the Domain area.
Houston has several highrise clusters and business districts and the major ones are being stitched together into one unit. Even though HOU is a decentralized city, it still has enough centralization to where its 4 major districts are all in the core of the city; downtown, uptown, greenway plaza, and TMC and in between these are even smaller clusters of highrises and business districts that are each doing their part in stitching it all together. This will run the course over the next 25 years as it infills in the spaces in between the business districts and inside the business districts. Beyond that the next avenue for HOU will be to then fill in and integrate Memorial City, City Centre, Westchase and Energy Corridor to the west and Greenspoint to the north. The former is very likely as all it needs is infill between Uptown and Memorial City, the latter is unlikely because between Downtown and Greenspoint is nothing but lowrise SFHs.
Dallas in the city is unilateral. It has one major continuous skyline already going from Downtown into Uptown and into the tollway area. But the DFW region has so many other medium to large clusters already and is developing even more in its suburbs and the other principle city of Fort Worth. Dallas' city skyline will be large and respectable but its sheer weight will be valued at the metro level, unlike Austin or Houston. Houston does have some highrise clusters in the Woodlands and in Galveston but its not the same as it is in DFW which not only has DAL and FW but also Irving, Plano, Frisco, etc all growing and developing their own clusters. Not to mention several other cities in DFW that are doing it on a smaller scale.
TX developments are fun to watch because you're never watching a repeat of one city onto the next.