The other problem in Texas specifically (Houston in particular) is you have massive suburban school districts in largely unincorporated areas without strict development regulations.

I think smaller township led suburbs with smaller school districts helps with some of the above. Unfortunate for Texas, our growth is largely into prairieland.

I think it Can be explained this easy.
Cops are concentrated in the bad areas. Thugs move to the unprotected areas and take over. People with options moves to a better area . Rinse and repeat.

This thread is in my head. I'm seeing multi residential everywhere in The Woodlands. It used to not stand out. All nice now of course.

Went to north shore park over the weekend. Thought I was at a United Nations family outing, Impressively international and diverse.

None of the above is a bad thing for the short term, but I'm just wondering where things land in a decade.

If you want your community to stay up. No apartments, larger house lots with top level building restrictions. Cities want tax revenue so they allow lots of development.

126233 said:

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EclipseAG,

Thank you for your wonderful multi-post analysis on this issue. What's interesting to me is that, given the clear evidence that apartments eventually lead to decline (both demographic and socioeconomic), why do residents allow this?

Plano residents for instance valiantly fought and sued the city over the "Plano Tomorrow" plan in 2020, which wanted to turn every remaining vacant plot of land in Plano into a high density multi-family or mixed use development.

The leftist race-baiting media of course immediately insinuated that Plano's rejection of "Plano Tomorrow" was due to racism, while ignoring valid complaints about density, traffic, a diminished suburban character, and the very strong correlation between increased apartments and declining schools (economically disadvantaged students perform poorly overall).

Only problem was this fight came way too late, since tens of thousands of apartments were built in Plano between 2010 and 2020. No matter what developers or city officials say about apartments being needed, they ALWAYS lead to brisk demographic shifts and decline. Residents know this, and yet, rather than fight to preserve their neighborhoods character, they just up and leave once too many poor people start moving in. This trend is already playing out in other Collin County suburbs like Allen, McKinney, and current suburban darling Frisco, which is hot now, but probably won't be 10 years.

Southlake is the only suburb in DFW which has fought successfully to ensure that no apartment complexes, even ones billing themselves as "high end" ever get built there. Southlake may be the first DFW suburb to stay nice indefinitely because of its strict ban on apartments.

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Southlake isn't the only one. I live in Lucas and we don't have any apartments. The neighboring towns of Parker and Murphy don't have any apartments either.

Bao was no saint but the centerpiece of her campaign was restricting uncontrolled apartment development. Not like it would have made a significant difference, Plano's fate was already sealed by around 2010. But maybe she could have curtailed the tens of thousands of additional apartment units that are in planning as of 2024.

I've come to accept Plano's unfortunate destiny. It like so many suburbs before it, was predetermined to become sh*th*le once the apartment building spree took off around 2010 and the problem people started moving in. As those apartments age, the problem only worsens, and when you have cities like Plano, Frisco, and McKinney building thousands upon thousands of units per year, it all but ensures these communities will continue to decline for the next decade, and within two decades be total dumps.

Be careful OP, by stating the obvious many on this thread will call you a racists...