They Love Parking Garages in Houston

There is a major brouhaha beginning here at PT headquarters and with some readers. I have received three different links from correspondents about this article. It's an unusually favorable article about parking garages set in Houston. Author Lisa Gray got it right and beautifully written, too. A few graphs:

Ugly garages. Gorgeous garages. Above ground and underground. Garages that match their buildings. Garages that are part of their buildings. Garages that stand on their own. Garages that, generally, we don't pay much attention to.

Even the best of them is never your real destination, only part of the journey. And because we're so used to free parking, paying to park in a garage bugs us. It feels like being charged to breathe.

But garages are worth thinking about. Maybe more than any other kind of building, they show the city that we're becoming: a city that's growing up in a different way than the old-style cities of Europe and the East Coast. Instead of starting out with a tight-packed core and then sprawling, we started out sprawling, and are now developing tight-packed cores

She juxtaposes the ubiquitous surface parking lot with the parking buildings she describes above. It's a good article and worth following the link.

Just to be clear, however, I commented on the article four days ago here. OK, it wasn't in the headline, any maybe people didn't read it because the head glorified my ego rather than a Texas city, but thanks to Mark I am on top of things, sort of.

I did notice in the article that there is a factual error but didn't comment. John Hammerschlag did and went back to the author and a correction was made (having to do with the square footage of a normal parking space.). It turns out it was a typo, and there you go. In the mean time a fellow Texan from a nearby university got in the mix, and Andy ended up having to defend himself to me that he had in fact read the blog.

None of which I really have great concerns about. I'm glad people send in articles, and keep them coming. If you see errors, let me know. But in the mean time, let it be said that I do read the Houston Chronicle, sometimes, and did get this one right, even though it took me two days to get it up here on PT's blog.

So there…..

JVH

Comments

[Carport]

I’m not much of a commenter on things I read on the web but I felt that the presentation of the information on this subject was so well done that it deserves to be recommended to all with an interest in the topic. Professional writing and thorough subject knowledge make this a great read. Metal Carport

[Carport]

good stuff!