08 February 2022

"They paved paradise... put up a parking lot"


Downtown Houston, 1970s.  Not to imply that before the 1970s Houston was "paradise," but Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi seems so appropriate here.  Some relevant comments re Housto at the via.

5 comments:

  1. I understand BYTaxi to be about cutting down forests and fields and putting up malls and shopping centers.

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  2. The tree museum must be just out of frame.

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  3. If you have an old building in downtown, a really old building that costs more to maintain (repairs, taxes, its size and shape, etc.) than you can make from it, and downtown is going skyscraper, then it pays to tear it down, pave it over, and have a parking lot making you money, all while you wait for the skyscrapers to creep towards your empty lot, at which point you sell it to a developer who needs it, and a couple of others around it, to put up a big based skyscraper.

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  4. Houston has changed a bit, but it's still easy to find an intersection surrounded on all 4 sides by parking.

    https://goo.gl/maps/A3s2ZSzkgHvkgD4k9

    What a waste of land.

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