You're Wrong About Houston and Here's Why

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As a Houstonian, I think this is a very accurate assessment of our city. I nominate "Not as bad as you were expecting city" as our new moniker.

City planners in America be like: "We need to make our cities more convenient for all the people who refuse to live here, rarely visit, and regularly cheer online for cities to go bankrupt."

I live in Houston and joke with people, "I don't leave the inner loop", but it's pretty accurate. This video does well to portray the nice pockets, but once you get outside the 610 beltway, it's a whole lot of suburban sprawl, parking lots, chain restaurants, and big-box stores.

So glad to see a YouTuber highlight all the things my hometown has done over the last several years to become more pedestrian-friendly. I’ve never particularly cared for other channel’s perspectives, mainly because they seem to focus on the suburban areas rather than Houston proper. We Houstonians are well aware of our car-obsessed reputation and many of us are ready to change it. Keep up the great work! P.S.: MKT stands for Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad. It’s how the suburb of Katy got it’s name, and they keep a rail car in their historic downtown district

Completely agree on your comment that one of the better ways for our society to reduce racism is just having people from various backgrounds doing day to day activities with each other.

Really satisfying to watch this video as a person who is working really hard to improve street safety and who doesn't own a car in Houston. Thank you.

CN's ability to find silver linings and positive things to say is incredible. This video isn't sugarcoating Houston, it's showing what viewers might be interested in if we ever visit (read: actual useful info for the people who actually watch his videos). Another banger from the best urbanist youtube channel.

I’ve been living in Houston close to 15 years. Both in the loop and outside the loop. The best of Houston is inside the loop. The Houston everybody hates is outside the loop. The problem is that majority of Houstonians live outside the loop and the experience can be similar to NJB’s video. With that said CityNerd assessment of the inner loop was pretty accurate. If you live in the loop or close by it, Houston can be a generally cool city. A lot of bang for your Buck. Outside of it though is the worst type of urban planning in all of the United States.

It's nice to see an urbanist youtuber highlighting what Houstonians are doing to enact change and improve their city instead of joining the "Houston Bad" circle jerk. I've never even been to Houston and this completely changed my ill-formed perspective.

Finally, an urbanist who puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak. Many "urbanist" YT channels love to dog on cities they've never been to or done research on; Houston being one of them. Flying out and WALKING around the city itself, then amending your original thoughts is a very honest way of rating cities. Looking forward to more city reviews 👍

Thank you so much for covering Houston and giving it a fair assesment. It is an agressivley car oriented city no doubt , but it has so much culture and diversity that redeems it as a great city. Most underrated food and art city in the US by a long shot.

As a fan of your channel for the past year, and as someone who travels to Houston frequently, I’ve highly anticipated your take on this city! I know your focus was within the I-610 loop but I was still a bit surprised that you didn’t note the near absence of public transit options from both Houston airports. I’ve always been floored by this when I think of smaller US cities that have rail and/or express bus into the city center. Perhaps you could explore the political and social reasons why as part of a video about the outer loop areas of Houston. Love your work!

THANK YOU! It’s wild how people use my city as an example for all the things they’re upset about.. that we have or are building. We didn’t just expand our freeways, we voted on a county level years back to build the now over 400+ miles of dedicated “bikeways” as we call them (non motor roads) or bike lanes, the 3 rail lines we didn’t have prior to 2004 and still growing, as well as a revamp of our entire bus network. Our rails are almost the nations highest used in terms of rider/mile and has helped to densify the inner city. We also have a massive underground city/tunnel system downtown like Montreal, Canada has which is why during the hot months you won’t see people usually walking around…. Its hot. Everyone’s in the tunnels lol. Shoutout to CityNerd, the most accurate and unbiased city planning channel I’ve had the fortune of subscribing to!

As someone who lives in the Houston metro & works downtown, literally nobody I have talked to about the highway expansion is excited for it. Even commuters are starting to understand that highway expansion is just construction and the inconvenience it brings for years so we can all sit in larger traffic jams.

Really enjoyed this. I felt this optimistic view shows the potential Houston has and how great it CAN be. That take will hopefully be inspiring to support projects and actually try to make a better city from the sprawl foundation. There’s a lot you can say about what Houston has done wrong but only focusing on that makes it seem impossible to ever change. Some other videos feel like “well we built the city wrong to begin with shame on us now we have to live with it” It’s not a city I would say add to a travel bucket list but it really is a great place to live. All different kinds of people and lifestyles manage here. It’s very resilient and I think the progress we’ve made on urbanism speak to that. There is a mindset too of constant progress, tear down and build better that sometimes hurts as it’s not very sentimental but that hopefully will allow the city to keep improving. A big note on “outside” factors making the city more dependent is the influence that all the oil companies here have. They tend to like it when people drive more and they do influence infrastructure projects.

As a Houstonian and huge city nerd I really appreciate this video. 😊

Shocking how actually visiting a given city can help you see it from the point of view of the residents, and not just some "Houston Bad" circlejerk members. Thank you, CityNerd, for taking interest in the struggle that makes Houston Houston.

You took pictures of a lot of places that I frequent (including very close to where I live)! I'm from Mexico City, and Houston has so far been great, although I really miss the hills and the temperate climate. It's great that you explored lots of different places, and I really liked the video! I would add to the conversation that (a) Houston has terrible weather during summer, making it almost impossible to avoid using a car if you want to get anywhere comfortably, and (b) Houston provides both jobs and housing for a big number of people that are not already wealthy, which is a huge deal for many communities. When I went to Seattle and San Diego I saw that they were much more picturesque cities, but you could certainly tell that the city was primarily enjoyed by people of very specific backgrounds and incomes. I also greatly appreciate that Houstonians are more aware of Mexico as a friendly country, instead of this classic notion of it being a faraway, barren dessert with donkeys, gangs and a beach, which is what most Americans in other places think of it.

Local here - mkt (as in the trail and development you mentioned) stands for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad. The trail was formerly a railroad (some bridges clearly use to be for trains and some road crossings are visibly changed from a train crossing). However, about twenty years ago it was converted to that great trail.