US Cities development projects

[Jaeger]

what are some things that Houston has done to even remotely tried to move away from the oil industry if so? which city between Houston & Chicago have a better transportation?

Houston has moved away from the oil and gas sector for quite sometime, even though it's still a major hub for that industry, however they have biomedical industries, Aerospace, a huge medical district (30 of 85 Hospitals) are located here, then you have your typical foodies, which Houston is quickly to surpass San Francisco soon and they are trying to form a "silicon bayou" (a smaller equivalency that of Silicon Valley). tbh though Houston itself needs to upgrade/expand more into tourism, make sight-seeing places across the area instead of just newer parks and renovations on Museums, in fact Houston relies on some tourists from Galveston to bring in "tourist money". but the city does still indeed rely quite a bit on the oil industry, so when the oil industry hits low the community will feel it's effects almost immediately.

Chicago has the better Transit system setup, with the City Taxi service, Buses, Water Taxis and L-Train taking you all across Chicagoland. The CTA is always constantly making sure the Trains, Taxis and Buses are in fair service, and also renovating or building new station.
Houston on the other hand is very well known to have horrible transit authority, operating very few buses and trams and the most major thing they done was upgrade 2 bus routes. It's said that Houston will now start focusing on a new major upgrade for the Houston-Metro Transit, building a tram service to go to and from Katy and add newer buses, however this will most likely take a year or 2 to completely finish before all said and done.

 

[Yıldırım]

Houston has moved away from the oil and gas sector for quite sometime, even though it's still a major hub for that industry, however they have biomedical industries, Aerospace, a huge medical district (30 of 85 Hospitals) are located here, then you have your typical foodies, which Houston is quickly to surpass San Francisco soon and they are trying to form a "silicon bayou" (a smaller equivalency that of Silicon Valley). tbh though Houston itself needs to upgrade/expand more into tourism, make sight-seeing places across the area instead of just newer parks and renovations on Museums, in fact Houston relies on some tourists from Galveston to bring in "tourist money". but the city does still indeed rely quite a bit on the oil industry, so when the oil industry hits low the community will feel it's effects almost immediately.

Chicago has the better Transit system setup, with the City Taxi service, Buses, Water Taxis and L-Train taking you all across Chicagoland. The CTA is always constantly making sure the Trains, Taxis and Buses are in fair service, and also renovating or building new station.
Houston on the other hand is very well known to have horrible transit authority, operating very few buses and trams and the most major thing they done was upgrade 2 bus routes. It's said that Houston will now start focusing on a new major upgrade for the Houston-Metro Transit, building a tram service to go to and from Katy and add newer buses, however this will most likely take a year or 2 to completely finish before all said and done.

what has Houston done to try to increase their tourist attraction as a city/destination? and that is very good for a significant sized city like Chicago

 

[Jaeger]

what has Houston done to try to increase their tourist attraction as a city/destination? and that is very good for a significant sized city like Chicago

these are the current and potential projects that Houston is trying hard to complete or start,
~POST Houston, renovating a former Post office in Downtown Houston that will feature a rooftop park + 360 degree view of the city's skyline
~redevelopment of the Museum of Fine Arts, (been under construction since 2012, finally to open this year) +Lynn Wyatt square for performing arts(that part to open next year)
~Railway Heights Market which is to be equivalency to that of NYC's Chelsea Market to be open this year
~Memorial Park Golf Course renovation to be opened this October or November
~Southern Downtown Park which is to be finished next year
~redevelopment of the Houston zoo, phase 1 to be finished by 2022
~largest project : Memorial Park Master Plan: to relocate ~6-7 ballparks, running complex, land bridge, etc. they have until 2028 to finish, even though the city and private investors claim it'll be done by 2025 (which some are doubting)
~Houston's own Botanic Garden
Houston is trying very hard to get more tourist attractions, which is a great start, however they need to keep creating more in order to compete against NYC, Chicago, Dallas etc.

 

[Jaeger]

Chicago is developing the 78th district which is to be the city's largest project in it's history. The new district will be located between the South Loop and Chinatown.
the city hopes this will bring at least ~10,000 jobs, however the city says 24,000 could be created, that's excluding a potential Amazon HQ bringing in 50,000 jobs. The Chicago CTA will create a new L-Train, Bus route as well and a new major road will be setup connecting Chinatown and the 78th.

 

[Jaeger]

the new Parcel F Skyscraper for San Francisco will be completed by 2022,. It will be built in the Transbay district. Parcel F will include 165 condos, 189 hotels, 325,000 square foot for office space. it is one of 4 new skyscrapers planned for San Francisco. It will include a pedestrian skybridge connecting it to the Transit Center Rooftop Park

 

[Strike Eagle]

in an argument of Houston vs Chicago, which city do you think has a more better economy?

 

[Jaeger]

in an argument of Houston vs Chicago, which city do you think has a more better economy?

that's a tricky debate right there tbh, however I'm going to defend Chicago since I live here.

Chicago is the "global city" of the Midwest, we are the largest midwestern city and most people from other Midwest states will tend to either move here or live in North West Indiana but work in Chicago.

we are recently experiencing a major Amazon growth in the area, almost every suburb has some sort of Amazon facility whether it be a distribution center, fulfillment center, or delivery center, Amazon is growing. Amazon also owns 2 grocery chain subsidiaries : whole foods and fresh, and which both grocery chains are expected to grow, (whole foods is already large in dozens of suburbs and the actually city of Chicago) and Amazon fresh just opened their first store in Naperville, a suburb.

In the Metropolitan area, Chicago also has 3 refineries, a BP Plant in Whiting, Indiana, an ExxonMobil in Joliet and Citgo refinery in Lemont. City is also focusing on renovating the port which could see the city receiving double in revenue, and you also have the river boat industries, which we have with the main route from St. Louis-Chicago being the busiest. Tech companies are also picking Chicago when they move from somewhere else, because those companies are expected to double or triple revenue in the city.

Chicago is also known for tourism, in 2019 we had 60 million tourists visit the city. with the help of Chicago growing in popularity thanks to NBC's Chicago Med, Fire & PD, the city expects the tourism to continually grow in the next decade. city is also expanding on the Riverwalk, Northerly Island and a few other projects will increase tourism.

the main thing Chicago has, I think many forget is we are the "pulse of America" literally meaning we have more railroad ways connecting the city from the center of the country to both coasts and the South, BNSF Train company is the largest operating out of Chicago. Munster, a city in NWI that's part of the Chicagoland area also was granted to build a train line from Munster to Chicago so people from Indiana who work in Chicago have another way to work.

 

[Strike Eagle]

what causes Houston not to expand and surpass Chicago then? I mean Houston has been making heavy steps in becoming the 3rd largest city.

 

[Jaeger]

what causes Houston not to expand and surpass Chicago then? I mean Houston has been making heavy steps in becoming the 3rd largest city.

well, since Hurricane Harvey Houston has experienced a major slow down in growth. after Harvey, a god percentage of Houstonians decided to pack up and move due to the city's poor lack of funding towards flood prevention projects.

another main factor that drives Houston down is the diversification in the job market. in Houston you really only have 4 major job industries to chose from which are Oil, Medical, Culinary and Aircraft Maintenance, with every other job being in very little numbers to nothing. Houston did make a major push when they accepted Amazon, Google and now HP to open either a warehouse, office and move their HQ to the area (with Amazon operating in Fort Bend Co. and HP in Spring) though, still quite a push but not enough to diversify the job market.

Houston relies way to heavily on the oil industry, they claim to have "broken away", but anybody will tell you the local H-Town economy is still balanced by the oil market, literally you will know once the market goes bad or good depending on jobs coming to the area.

 

[Strike Eagle]

@Bundeswehr the oil industry in Houston helped grow their metropolitan area, and probably will do so even if it does at a slower rate in modern times.
I do believe Houston needs to focus on the following
- reform their zoning laws and create more flood prevention projects
-build a public transport to the Bush International Airport, improve on public transportation
-attract more innovation, tourist attractions
-indeed quit relying on the oil industry being the only economic factor, and bring in more job industries.

 

[Scorpion]

@Bundeswehr the oil industry in Houston helped grow their metropolitan area, and probably will do so even if it does at a slower rate in modern times.
I do believe Houston needs to focus on the following
- reform their zoning laws and create more flood prevention projects
-build a public transport to the Bush International Airport, improve on public transportation
-attract more innovation, tourist attractions
-indeed quit relying on the oil industry being the only economic factor, and bring in more job industries.

The oil industry in the US under the Biden administration is going to get a big hit. Workers already whining on Twitter and elsewhere. This might affect future plans unless the Rep move collectively against the madness of the left.

 

[Strike Eagle]

The oil industry in the US under the Biden administration is going to get a big hit. Workers already whining on Twitter and elsewhere. This might affect future plans unless the Rep move collectively against the madness of the left.

there is people, even unions that are having a "buyers remorse" over Biden's goal with the oil industry, anyways specifically talking about Cities relying on oil as a growth to shine, isn't successful no matter what someone may or may not like.

Houston already had this problem once before, back in the early 1980s. they relied so much on the oil industry, without any other major industries really backing their economy, it caused a major heartache for many, and with that said Dallas, Austin and San Antonio all flourished over this.

at this time, Houston banks were literally on the verge of collapse, took Houston's largest skyscraper project away, 210,000 people were unemployed, more or less Houston was the "Detroit of the 1980s".

starting in the late 80s-early 90s, the entire state of Texas decided to diversify their economy, however I'm only going to focus on Houston.

Houston had a major growth spurt starting in 2004/5-up until Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Houston started accepting aircraft maintenance companies to set shop up down there, and still to this day, they are growing into a "culinary city", which means they are making dishes from local dishes to cultural dishes and so on, which I believe they surpassed San Francisco a couple years ago.

they also began promoting tourism, creating Buffalo Bayou, improving the Museum District, Cloud Column, etc.

they also began building up their medical field, and constantly building up

however, what many people don't tend to understand, want to believe etc. is Houston is still indeed VERY RELIANT on their oil, which is actually quite sad, considering they want to surpass both LA and Chicago, but yet it's not happening. at least Chicago is actually attracting other people from other Midwest cities + NYC, no one I know anyways wants to move to Houston for jobs or anything, unless they are from a small town, or a metro area the size of like Omaha, Nebraska

 

[Jaeger]

@Strike Eagle, there is several reasons why Houston won't succeed as the 3rd largest city in the US
~Houstonians believe in having their own vehicle, not riding public transportation, it's just the local attitude they have, but that considered Houston is considered to have the most advanced roadway system in the entire nation.
~Houston does indeed need to reform their zoning laws, I know Dallas did, and Dallas has so far had way more companies move up there then companies moving to Houston.
~I know POST Houston is to have a 360 view of the skyline, alongside a new observatory in a tower down there, to compete against New York's "Edge" and Chicago's "360" and "Skydeck" Observatories, but for a lot in tourism can't say they actually improved on a lot, and probably won't focus on
~Houston has taken great strides to move away from Oil and invest in other industries, for example Aircraft Maintenance and Medical Industries, are the next 2 biggest job industries in the Greater Houston area, they also allowed HP to setup their new office in Spring (a suburb), as well as accepting an Amazon facility in Richmond (a suburb in Fort Bend Co.) and a google storage site, and was actually at trying to promote Tesla to set up the gigafactory, the SpaceX HQ, a Solar and Wind Farm, and a Battery Production line, and from what I heard all Tesla agreed to was a dealership.

 

[Strike Eagle]

San Francisco's Treasure Island Development Project: its a major redevelopment project set on a former naval base that is in between Oakland & San Francisco. The project will include a retail center, a ferry terminal to allow people to go back and forth from the Island to San Francisco, 3 residential neighborhoods, a 40 story tower and a 14 story residential tower, alongside hotels.. it will also feature a 400 boat marina and a beach.

 

[Strike Eagle]

Amazon to open new delivery station in League City

New job alert! The delivery station may not open until early next year, but if you're interested here's where you can apply.

abc13.com

Amazon is planning on opening a new180,000-square-foot delivery station there in 2022. The new delivery station will power Amazon's last-mile delivery capabilities to speed up deliveries for customers around Galveston County, according to a post from League City.
The station is expected to be at 2455 Tuscan Lakes Blvd. Starting pay is $15 per hour, with additional benefits.

Apart from its League City location, Amazon will also be opening a delivery station in La Marque later this year.