RussianAmericanMormon
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User ID: 4365
RussianAmericanMormon
29d ago
I'm curious as to what your standard for walkable is. Mine is simply that commercial areas are accessible by foot with sidewalks and walkways. Sure, most of Houston is highly residential and not replete of neighborhood stores like a city with more urban bones such as NYC or Chicago, but during its population boom in the 1970s, downtown was a gargantuan parking lot, and it wasn't until the early 2000s that its utility was no longer confined to office workers. It is absolutely possible to walk to your local HEB within the I-610 loop. If you are looking for a place where you can find a cafe and a supermarket immediately at your doorstep, then as you leave major cities that simply is non-existent in most of America, and for that matter, northern Europe due to the regulatory constraints of the zoning law.
RussianAmericanMormon
29d ago
What? Densely populated urban areas will skew left just about anywhere in America (bar some pockets of Miami, thanks to Cubans, and Las Vegas, due to Mormons), but Southern cities are the ones that are more likely to have a substantial Republican minority, with neighborhoods that see 30-40% of their residents voting for Trump. Off the top of my head, you have Fort Worth, Jacksonville, and Virginia Beach (I don't consider Virginia to be a Southern state, but it's no less Southern than NC) which are some of the largest cities in the nation to have elected Trump. There are plenty of affordable, decently conservative neighborhoods around the SMU campus in Dallas and Houston's Energy Corridor/Memorial area (unsure if you mean walkable in a more purist sense, but you absolutely can walk to the supermarket and other retail spaces). Oklahoma City and Tulsa have plenty of solid downtown neighborhoods that are only 50-60% Democratic. In New Orleans, you have the tranquil Lakeview neighborhood entirely removed from the unsavory elements further east in the city, as safe as any suburb. Nashville, Memphis, and Birmingham's majority-white neighborhoods are not DSA strongholds, you have some rebellious partisan Democrat college kids but also many Republicans born and raised in the city. If you can handle a neighborhood that is only plurality-white, you'll have plenty more options made available.
If your idea of Southern is limited to Atlanta and Charlotte, then you may very well be right.
I take it you've never set foot in Houston to injudiciously repeat that classic trope. All neighborhoods within the I-610 loop are walkable by any metric. Montrose is a genuinely pleasant neighborhood replete of ambient cafes. Museum District too. EaDo's nightlife experience is just as good as any other major city in the Western world. MetroRail is a system that is utilized by medical professionals commuting to work. Rice Village and the Medical Center add a density of educated professionals and vast amenities. Hermann Park is a serious urban park and I will say that the US does parks in particular better than most European countries. Beautiful biking trails along the Buffalo Bayou in the heart of the city. You only know Houston from trite, outdated tweets. I don't get the singling out of Houston when Dallas and Phoenix would strengthen that argument, though even those cities have developed substantial pockets of walkability that were nonexistent in the 1990s.
Worth a watch:https://youtube.com/watch?v=0fMTaNYYvwE?si=b5V8XKnuqY_P5T0C
Fair enough, most of this is anything but a given in Europe, too. Unless you're in Italy or eastern Europe.
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