Been living in Houston since May - My observations

I have lived in New Orleans, BR, Mandeville, and The Woodlands. Houston and it's suburbs make Louisiana seem like a third world country, period. I love the culture and food of LA, but it's not an ideal place to work and live.

To begin, Houston is exploding with development throughout the entire metroplex. It is entertaining to witness.

- I currently live in Midtown in a four-story townhome - it is awesome and Midtown is a great area with tons of different bars and non-franchised restaurants. Midtown is your typical young professional sanctuary, which is currently going through a gentrification period and exploding with high-rises and low rise apartment complexes, and more bars and restaurants.
- The inner loop area in general is awesome with multiple different cool neighborhoods.
- Rice Village is comparable to Magazine street area, but less ratchet and bigger.
- The Heights will remind you of Uptown NOLA in a sense, but way less crime. Washington Heights is more young professional with a lot of restaurants and bars.
- Uptown Houston seems like a completely different downtown. Someone not from Houston visiting for the first time would likely believe that Uptown is downtown. It's extremely nice with a lot to do.
- The Texas Medical Center is it's own skyline and very impressive.
- Montrose is the gay/hippie area but still very cool with a ton of cool restaurants and bars.
- Upper Kirby and River Oaks is very nice and in a great location of the city. Also, being right next to Joel Osteen is a plus.

The cons of Houston is the traffic, although it's rarely ever a problem for me - just a lot of people on the road. Having 12-14 lanes of interstate on nearly every highway helps. The quality of the non-highway roads are very spotty. Lot's of road construction everywhere, so it's definitely getting better. Humidity sucks but I grew up in it and used to it. Also, Houston does not have zoning laws. This is sort of a head scratcher but development these days seems to have intentions of blending areas in. Maybe not, hard to tell.

To close, Houston is GIGANTIC. It is the energy capitol of the world, the medical capitol of the world, and shite, we even have NASA. Clearly, Houston is an attractive city. If you hate big cities, don't even think about moving here. Cost of living is relatively cheap and there are tons of opportunities for careers in all sectors. People who bitch and moan about Houston are just miserable people who probably have a shittey job in BR or NOLA because they got a general business degree from ULL or LSU and can't find jobs elsewhere.

Inb4 TL;DR

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