There's something to be said for some of Houston's hodgepodgey urban spaces; you get these weird juxtapositions and odd hidden corners that can give the city a strange and surreal feel. Except but let's not kid ourselves: 90% of Houston is just straight-up suburban sprawl. There's no way around it. It's not like the developers here used the no-zoning thing to do anything really creative or cutting edge or try to re-define what cities can be - which they totally could if they wanted to. No: they just recapitulate the same old aesthetically depressing, unsustainable, anti-pedestrian, anti-community, anti-environment modes of growth that have dominated urban development in this country since World War II. And since the vast majority of Houston's land area has been developed since World War II, Houston is far sprawlier than most places; i.e., it's a city which, from an urban design perspective, has much less personality and unique character than most cities, even by the pathetic standards of US urban design. I don't say this to knock Houston - only to remind people that there's a huge amount of potential here that has gone unrealized, and it doesn't have to be that way. Houston could be a totally unique place, and parts of the city are so tantalizingly close to actually fulfilling that potential... but of course those very neighborhoods - the ones with the most character, which therefore are among the most desirable - are some of the prime targets to get levelled and replaced with Perry Homes. I mean, will Montrose have any distinct character at all ten years from now? Will the East Side or the Heights?