SuBourbon Architecture

 Ian McHarg was a brilliant thinker but the Woodlands is overrated. Its a theme park everyone wishes they could goto/live but only because of the number of trees correlates to wealth. Trees in Texas are for the wealthy. 

I find it peculiar that the masterplan intertwined with beautiful vegetation was once a prescription to fix things wrong with suburban planning and yet current day it is one of the main contributors to sprawl in and around Houston. The woodlands is pretty much one big golf course for the wealthy elite. I never got the impression that people there enjoy the quality of life as much as they enjoy letting other people know that they don't live in Houston. 9 out of 10 people I encountered while studying at Texas A&M would tell you they were from the Woodlands only because saying you live in Houston tells someone you might just be average or middle class - cant have that.

I guess it is a pretty place to live and anyone with deep enough pockets and similar social characteristics would enjoy living there, but I don't enjoy that quality suburban planning has to be for the wealthy elite now. Once upon a time the middle class moved out of Houston (wealthy and growing urban center) to where it was affordable and now the middle class can only live in Houston because the Suburbs are unaffordable. Its like regardless of any master planning or ecological considerations made that good design follows those who can afford it and perpetuates a cycle of good design somewhere makes bad design elsewhere.