- Saint Honoré Near River Oaks Sets Price Record with $3.15M Townhome [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- D’Amico’s Italian Market Cafe Now Open in Katy [Houston Business Journal]
- Email Your Ideas To Name the Menil’s New Cafe by November 25 [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Conde Nast Traveler Names CityCentre’s Hotel Sorella Among Best in Texas [Culturemap]
- Proposal Would Bring Back Car Races to Galveston’s Scholes Field Runways [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Travel Website Ranks Houston Among the Ugliest Cities in the World [Prime Property]
Photo of the Fannin Bank Building at 1020 Holcombe: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Houston – Ugly? You bet. Certainly one of the worst. Thank “No Zoning” for that.
Houston was called Ugly by some no name website, who cares. Forbes loves Houston and that carries infinitely more weight.
Yes, because intricately zoned Dallas is so beautiful.
Houston is ugly, but there are pretty spots. You just have to know where to go. But I think the same is true of a lot of cities. Maybe in some cases a Denver or LA it is easier to find the nice spots but I have no problem driving Memorial from the West Loop into downtown – beautiful.
So I just wasted 5 minutes of my life on Ucityguides.com…what a joke of a website.
On the site, Houston ranks as the #7 ugliest city in the world, right up there with Luanda, Angola and Chisinau, Moldova. The only explanation offered is the “large impoverished population” and lack of zoning.
This list is only one of many “Top 10” lists provided by the site, including the all-important categories of:
–“10 Most haunting cemeteries in the world” (do they mean “haunted”?)
–“10 Countries with the most beautiful women”
–“10 City breaks for the next decade” (no idea what this means, even after reading it)
It appears that Ucityguides.com does not like anything about Texas.
You know, I can’t figure out what a lack of zoning contributes to ugliness, other than possibly to spread out someone’s notion of ugliness over a wider area.
Houston may be ugly. I mean, I’m willing to buy the idea that since it is comprised of, among other things, unattractive amounts of concrete, graffiti, etc. that one might expect of a large urban area, but lacks any specific scenic feature (like a mountain or coastal view) that might offset the blight, that Houston will never be lauded for its looks.
But because of the lack of zoning? I don’t get that.
It depends on what your definition of ugly is…I’ve seen ugly in most every US city (some real ugly especially in the top 10). All of them have beauty and ugly (some more or less of the other). Houston is more maligned because Houston haters loathe the fact that Houston has the audacity to exist out of nowhere, and be very good at it. While it will win no beauty contest, there is beauty throughout the city that even the most ugly and vicious Houston haters have to admit and accept.
Houston asks, who said a city had to have zoning? Houston purposely evolved and developed without zoning, creating at city-scape and layout that some say is chaotic(some say ugly), but is unique and distinct to Houston; for Houston, no-zoning is an attribute…the space and sprawl connecting all the business districts and urban enclaves.
Moreover, Houston is not a pretentious city and knows it’s great and beautiful in its own evolved way, and is indifferent and undaunted by what people say or think. The Houston ugly bit is way over-blown, and Houston really doesn’t give a damn what you think. At the end of the day, Houston is very successful and very popular…that’s where the hate emanates from, it just sometimes manifests itself into petty jealous name-calling. Yawn.