COMMENT OF THE DAY: STILL LONGING FOR THE COMMERCIAL COMPANIONSHIP OF DAYS GONE BY 
“I miss the billboards of my youth. I grew up in a world where the freeways were surrounded by them, and never thought much about it. Now that they are almost all gone, I realize they gave the city character. I don’t understand the hate for them.” [Memebag, commenting on Comment of the Day: What Keeps Houston Billboards Standing Tall] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT KEEPS HOUSTON BILLBOARDS STANDING TALL 
“If you only knew how much the city has gone through to reduce billboards. Their billboard ordinance was pioneering. Existing billboards in the city are under an abatement condition – if you take one down, you can’t replace it. However, many billboards are highly, highly profitable, and the industry has a formidable lobby to defend what they already have, and try to reinstate the ability to add billboards where they’ve been banned or removed. From a property rights perspective, sign regulation is already an iffy business. So while yes, most of us would like to see further reduction in billboards, please try to appreciate what’s already been done.” [Local Planner, commenting on City Inspector: Those Who Want You To Live In The Glass House Should Not Post 130-Ft. Signs] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY DENSITY DOESN’T WORK IF YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE DOING IT 
“I used to think the whole ‘Tower of Traffic’ slogan was BS — that greater density will increase walkability and reduce the need for cars. However, the way many highrises are sited in Houston completely eliminates the benefits of a highrise. They basically become vertical culs-de-sac, still car-dependent, because each one is located in pockets of lowest land value either next to freeways or in the middle of single-family-home neighborhoods. If I recall correctly, city council or the planning department passed a rule that forces developers to stick to building heights that are close to those of neighboring structures. Is this really the case? I think it’s a great way to better cluster high-density developments and walkable areas.” [Derek, commenting on A Bird’s-Eye View of the ExxonMobil Campus; The Ashby Highrise Effect] Illustration: Stop Ashby Highrise
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LEASING THE SKY AND OTHER ACTS OF VANTAGE PRESERVATION 
“Only guarantee to protect your view is to buy the air rights. (Not sure it is possible, but you can buy mineral rights — why not air rights?) Maybe this will be a new trend in real estate, to protect and guarantee views. Otherwise, buy the land so you can determine what does and does not go up.” [HouCynic, commenting on Cosmopolitan’s Condo Association Preemptively Sued by Would-be Nextdoor Highrise Developer in Uptown] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THOSE I-45 EXPRESS LANE PLANS ARE CUTE NOW BUT JUST WAIT UNTIL THEY GROW UP 
“Fine with these updates, provided the Pierce [Elevated] still gets torn down. Express lanes might seem like a good idea, but they’ll most likely be hindered by limited ingress/egress and often shunpiked. I’d imagine they’ll also be pretty expensive owing to the proposed modifications to the design. It’s a good design if you’re trying to center transportation around private auto use, but at some point, that can’t be the primary design consideration anymore.” [TMR, commenting on What Happens When You Decide To Redo That Downtown Freeway Plan in Your Spare Time] Photo of Pierce Elevated: Russell Hancock
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT ’THERE’S NOWHERE TO PARK’ REALLY MEANS 
“People would rather circle for hours for a spot that is 3 ft. from the door they wish to enter than to: A) pay to park B) walk.
So please keep in mind, when someone says ‘there’s nowhere to park in the village’ what they mean is:
There’s nowhere within 3 ft. of my destination to park.
Of course, everyone knows where they can park, but the last thing they want to do is walk from their car to their destination.” [toasty, commenting on Shake Shack Will Take Over La Madeleine’s Rice Village Space] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT IS AND ISN’T RISING IN THE MEYERLAND FLOODPLAIN 
“Last night I rode my bike over to an area of Meyerland that I kept seeing listed in the Daily Demolition Report (this is the pocket just south of S. Braeswood, west of S. Post Oak). It was worse than I imagined. Many houses have been removed. Many others are still standing but vacant. A few have been rebuilt or are in the process of being rebuilt — these are all 2-story ‘McMansions’ and elevated. Visually, it’s a weird looking place. The new houses stick out because of their scale to start with, and putting them up on pedestals next to empty lots exaggerates the effect. When the floods come again, they will be surrounded by a giant McMoat.” [Memebag, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where Houston Stayed Underwater After the Memorial Day Flood] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A PROCLAMATION OF DRY TERRITORY FROM THE KING OF THE HILL 
“There actually are a few places in Houston that have never flooded and never will, due to strange and highly-localized factors. My house is one of those. I am up above the Hwy. 288 pit between 59 and Brays Bayou. Even during the worst floods, when cars were floating down there, the water would have had to come up another 25 feet, completely filling the pit with God-knows-how-many acre-feet of water, before my street would have been under water. Even then, the water would have had to climb another 5 feet up the hill in my front yard to reach my elevated house. This protection is a combination of close proximity to a huge man-made sink, the elevation of the grade of my lot when my house was constructed, and restrictions upstream that cause flooding in Meyerland but more-controlled flow downstream because of the upstream pinchpoints.” [Superdave, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where Houston Stayed Underwater After the Memorial Day Flood]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE HOUSTON STAYED UNDERWATER AFTER THE MEMORIAL DAY FLOOD 
“Was there ever any kind of press writeup on why so many homes in Meyerland did not come back from this last flood? I’m saddened by all the vacant lots, and on some streets off Endicott, there are clusters of teardowns. Was insurance plus flood insurance essentially useless for all of those homeowners? Or was it the new city building requirements? Genuine questions, because I’ve been in the area 30 years and this [flooding] seems to have been so much more devastating than Allison (and Ike).” [Heather, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: As Is, Where Is] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SCOUTING THE NEXT BATTLEGROUND FOR HOUSTON’S DISYLLABIC REBRANDING “
‘Near Northwest’? . . . Cute . . . so in 5 years from now, are we gonna be calling this place NeNo?” [JoeDirt, commenting on Bayou-Side White Oak Village Hopes To Woo Cyclists, Ninja Warriors, Coffee Shop to Antoine Dr.] Rendering of neighborhood signage: Near Northwest Management District
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WILL HOUSTON STOP TURNING ITS BACK ON THE BAYOU GREENWAYS? 
“This is revolutionary…they will make a building FACE the bayou, rather than back up to it with a solid concrete wall lined with putrid dumpsters. I have been waiting for this day for decades! To my knowledge, the only business in Houston that has proudly claimed its bayou-ness is Brenner’s on the Bayou (I’m sure there are others, I just can’t think of them right now). I bike many of the trails in Houston’s bayou network and still marvel at how segregated the trails are from city life. The stretch along Brays through the Med Center is the worst – it is a gallery of the backs of parking garages, 2 sewage plants, security fences, and sheer walls on high rises. It’s so barren and inaccessible that hospital employees go there to secretly smoke their cigarettes (some hospitals fire their employees for smoking now, so it’s a big deal to not get caught).” [Superdave, commenting on Bayou-Side White Oak Village Hopes To Woo Cyclists, Ninja Warriors, Coffee Shop to Antoine Dr.] Proposed siteplan: White Oak Bayou Village
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ART OF SLIPPING AWAY 
“The luxury real estate article says that a lot of owner/CEO’s of small oil companies are selling their mansions to help save their companies. That’s an assbackwards way — there’s a reason you stash a few million in your homestead: It’s exempt from creditors and bankruptcy. Let the dying company fold, file bankruptcy, sell the house later, and boom, you’re liquid again and start with fresh paper and zero liabilities.” [commonsense, commenting on The Typical Home Buyer’s Salary; Getting Creative in the Luxury Housing Market] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HSPVA’S BUILDING SWAP COULD LEAVE HOLES IN STUDENT CULTURE 
“My son is a graduate of HSPVA. His reaction to seeing the photo of the proposed school: ‘Windows?!’†[Colleen, commenting on Scenes from the Set of HSPVA’s Upcoming Downtown Campus, Now In Progress] Rendering of under-construction replacement campus of the High School for Performing and Visual Arts: Gensler
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DRIVING HOME A ROSY VIEW OF HOUSTON’S BLUE TILE DAYS 
“Hopefully [the tile signs are] not just a trend, but a desire to revert to a time when life was much simpler. Maybe one day you’ll be able to walk into a gas station and ask for directions, and if not, call the operator from the closest pay phone to ask where the nearest diner is, because it’s late and you’re tired and hungry from your long drive into Houston. Maybe at the diner the friendly waitress will give the kids an extra cherry on their sundaes while chatting up where a few of the best nearby motels are located. Afterwards, as you drive your 10,000-pound Honda Civic with whitewall tires to the closest motel, you’ll get there by way of curb tiled street signs.” [Toby, commenting on Brand New Vintage Blue Tile Street Sign Now in Place on Upper Kirby Curb]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: 2 ONE-WAY TRAJECTORIES FOR HOUSTON TOWNHOME DEVELOPMENT 
” . . . The big concern that I have about townhomes is that perhaps about 15 to 30 years out, and as they start to show their age in the predictable ways (never mind the less predictable ways that relate to the regional economy or transportation), that some individual owners in fee simple arrangements will shirk repairs and bring down entire clusters or neighborhoods. They are different from condo regimes in that way, but also in another: fractured land ownership and deed restrictions make redevelopment and land use change basically impossible. Forever. It’s possible that state laws and municipal ordinances would change to cope with things, or that Houston will become so affluent as to render the concern moot, but I see it as a risk.” [TheNiche, commenting on Raising the Bar for Upscale Housing; A New Hospital for Galveston] Illustration: Lulu
