This is it: The next-to-last category in this year’s Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. So far, we’ve opened nominations for Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Teardown, Parking Lot of the Year, Drive-Thru of the Year, Walmart of the Year, the Washington Ave Award, Most Improved Neighborhood, and Least Historic Neighborhood. Have you added your thoughtful suggestions to each of those categories?
The category this time is Neighborhood of the Year. What qualifications does a neighborhood need to meet in order to be declared Houston Neighborhood of the Year? You tell us — as you make your nomination! Of course, a neighborhood might be considered for Swamplot’s Neighborhood of the Year award for vastly different reasons than another one might be considered for an award of the same name from, say, the GHBA.
Please note that entrants in this category — as well as all the others — need not be located strictly inside Houston’s municipal boundaries. Swamplot tries to track the idea of Houston as it regularly travels outside the city limits. (In fact, last year’s winner of the Houston Neighborhood of the Year award was . . . yes, Galveston.)
We’re ready to receive your nominations in the comments below, or in an email. If you need more guidance, consult the official rules. Who are the contenders for this award?
- Previous category announcements: Now Accepting Nominations for Houston’s Least Historic Neighborhood, What Would You Consider To Be Houston’s Most Improved Neighborhood?, Announcing the Washington Ave Award. Your Nominations, Please?, Next Award Category for the Swampies: Walmart of the Year, Now Taking Your Orders for Drive-Thru of the Year, Your Nominations, Please, for Houston Parking Lot of the Year, Best Teardown of 2010: Who Are the Contenders?, What Are Your Nominations for Favorite Houston Design Cliché? [Swamplot]
- The Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate 2010: How To Make a Nomination [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Award Nominations 2010 [Swamplot]
Montrose. Just won the top 10 neighborhood in the US award.
MONTROSE
Glenbrook Valley.
From the unhip east side comes a desire to live modern w/o pretension or outrageous prices. Well done. I tip my hat.
Eastwood, because I live there and I am a neighborhood amenity.
North Montrose….
Montrose!
As we head into Lights in the Heights, I have to nominate the Woodland Heights for giving the City of Houston the best gift of all, an alcohol fueled night of debauchery, fun for the whole family, dedicated to the holiest of Holy holidays. Plus, I understand that the Woodland Heights is home to one of the main leaders of the anti-Walmart movement, as well as both sides of the Heights historic preservation movement. Way to go WH! We do Houston proud!
Camp Logan! Wouldn’t live anywhere else!
I would like to nominate the exclusion of Woodland Heights based solely on injecting this Walmart crap into the conversation. Now we will have folks on both sides snipe back and forth into a posting list of name calling and innuendo.
Brookesmith.
Amenities of the heights without heights prices, suprisingly little crime, airline farmers markets, teotihuacan, and the day of the dead celebration.
Stating the obvious… was your post meant ironically? I can’t tell.
Lindale Park. Moderately priced homes, a great neighborhood feel, wide, tree-lined streets, the fabulous Fourth of July parade, the Mexican bicycle ice cream man, the Teotihuacan that gives a great picture of Houston’s diversity on any given day, and the hundreds of trick-or-treaters at Halloween!
It honestly goes to Montrose. No other neighborhood can compare to the housing, culture, and amenities. Just wish it was more affordable… but that’s life.
HEIGHTS
just won the best neighborhood award in the united states
Westbury/Parkwest: Affordable homes on spacious lots. Tree-lined streets. Award-winning Westbury Community Garden. Willow Waterhole Greenspace with monthly bird surveys by Audubon Society. Active Westbury Garden Club. Westbury Pool is operated by city and had highest number of adult water fitness participants in Houston this summer. Friends of Chimney Rock Park volunteers organize adult programs for the city Platou Community Center.
montrose !
I love my hood and all you good people chiming in and saying Montrose…
The Heights. The resentment that this neighborhood generates on message boards and reader comments is just classic. When people in the Heights point out that it is crazy to stick a Walmart supercenter on a skinny Yale St., Houston reacts like residents of the Heights wanted to set up concentration camps for low income earners and minorities and ban capitalism. When people in the Heights got tired of builders tearing down historic bungalows in order to put up massive 4500 sq foot suburban monstrosities, people equate the subsequent revisions to a very weak historic ordinance as somewhere between Stalinism and a Cinco Ranch HOA (which may very well be modeled after Stalinism). Yet, Lights in the Heights will draw tens of thousands and the nascent White Linen nights draws huge crowds for a steamy summer night. Not to mention the fun run, bike rally, home tours and monthly arts market. Admit it Houston, you love us, you really do.
Southampton, because it pisses off Matt. Oh, and I like the trees.
What constitutes the best neighborhood? Good people who look out for one another and actually know their neighbors. A true sense of community that welcomes a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Residents with a passion for preserving their neighborhood and ensuring quality of life. A central park that provides a gathering place for “official” and informal gatherings, children to play, and dogs to run. Affordable housing. Varied and eclectic offerings of nearby dining establishments. Beautiful historic homes with mature trees, varied wildlife and actual topography (hills in Houston!). Convenient access to all areas of inner-loop Houston (no 20-minute treks through Heights traffic to reach home after exiting the freeway). Well, although expressed in poor sentence structure, I can say that Idylwood fits all descriptors and will only grow in popularity as the Heights and Montrose reach yawn-inducing levels of boredom through yuppie-vanilla culture and house-rich, life-poor residents.
Westbury. It’s close to everything yet affordable. Plus lots of original owners are still there, which says a lot about the area and the residents’ commitment to the neighborhood.
Sherwood Oaks….awesome location near City Centre at Beltway 8 and I-10, low housing costs because we’re a little tucked-in, unknown neighborhood. Everyone knows each other, we’re very close and it’s very safe and quiet. Huge trees, well-maintained yards and second generation home owners now moving back “home”.
I second the nomination of Brooke Smith. Great up and coming neighborhood!
I want to add more to my earlier nomination for the Woodland Heights:
The Woodland Heights is a town, within a town (the greater Heights), within a city (Houston). Among our greatest achievements is the eclectic group of people who call the WH home, including: chicken ranchers, farmers, writers, beekeepers, gardeners, musicians, artists, political bloggers, community activists, chefs and biodiesel fuel manufacturers. And these are just their hobbies! And how do I know this about my neighbors? Simply because we are a front porch community, which means we live outside as well as in. We know our neighbors, socialize with each other, our kids attend the local elementary school and play at the local parks together, we sweep the leaves out of each other’s gutters, bring in each other’s trash cans and mail, keep an eye on our neighbor’s kids, watch movies together at the park, and together, as a community, play host to the city for the best Fourth of July and Christmas parties in the city (if not the State). The Woodland Heights is a small town nestled in the big city, and I am proud to call it home. Don’t believe me? Ask one of our more famous residents:
http://woodland-heights.org/cominghome.htm
Houston Heights
I propose Cinco Ranch – perfectly imperfect. It’s not the perfectly imperfect straight roads; ideally angled to convince you that you’re not driving in any one paricular direction, but rather coursing through a wandering maze of pleasure. It’s not the view-obscuring landscaping that makes left hand turns impossible (especially when considering the perfectly imperfect straight roads) or, for that matter, the fact that everyone is jammed on two main drags driving twice the speed limit with elderly pedestrians leering across the perfectly un-crosswalked-left-hand-turn-anomaly intersections.
It’s not even the perfectly imperfect convenience; the lucky few lust for only pizza, furniture, and tires. The mentally deviant desire a car wash or cell phone reception. In this category of perfect imperfection, you must venture to Mason… a Westheimer reinterpretation brought to you on the fringe of Cinco Ranch complete with bill boards, normal signage, and American built cars. The horror… the horror.
What makes this neighborhood a model of perfect imperfection is the commute. You are relegated to either pursue the pleasure of 1)the newly revamped I-10; a model of capitalistic, over-exuberant, suburban, orgasmic pavement vomit, or 2)the more-likely Westpark; aptly named “Park” as you will most certainly spend ($4.65) your time sitting between the hours of 7 and 9 and 5 to 7, to avoid even the sight of the typical Houston commoner (absent the random homeless dodging traffic near the 59 interchange). Truly though, would you expect anything else in the search of perfect imperfection 25 miles from downtown?
To add to Mel’s comments: The Heights west of Studemont used to be more like that, but since the invasion of the McMansions with their 6 foot fences and alley access garages, things have changed.
It is a truism, as taught in Soc. 202, that people without lots of money rely on other people for things like child-care, help moving, car fixing, borrowing stuff, organizing things like a Citizen’s Watch program. These things build relationships. People with money buy what they want and hire constables. Besides the big fences and no reason to ever go in their front yards, many of the McMansion folks have other homes where they spend their weekends.
We lost our community spirit but gained fine dining.
Cinco Ranch? Please see my comments in response to Cinco Ranch’s nomination for Most Improved Neighborhood. There is nothing “perfect” about mass produced artificial communities.
Idylwood!
Braes bayou, Houston’s oldest golf course, and Forest Park Lawndale create a permanent boundary of green on three sides of this neighborhood. In addition we have rolling hills, mature trees, and enjoy carillion bells chiming the hour and playing hymns on Sunday.
A strong civic club, sense of community, and over 700 trick or treaters this past Halloween.