re: Most disappointing skyline

Nah, the weather is also the best in the country. Well, between L.A. and San Diego... or a tie.

At sunset.

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Coming from the airport and going thru a hilly, wooded area before entering the Fort Pitt tunnel with no view or even hint of a major city beyond and to exit a minute later with the city skyline right in front of you is amazing even after a dozen trips.

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That damn tunnel….

When I lived in Pittsburgh and needed to catch a 7AM flight, I could depend on the Fort Pitt tunnel being clogged. As would be the Squirrel Hill tunnel. And they can never widen either one of them. To make matters worse, their little subway line went so over budget that they will probably not even try to expand it for 20 years.

Super cool how the city just appears when you exit the tunnel on the way back though. Portland, Oregon has a similar setup.

I HATED those damn tunnels. Pittsburgh was cool, but the traffic and the confusing layout was a nightmare.

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Some pictures of it make it look sold old dilapidated and dirty

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That’s because it is

You have to understand that South Louisiana’s economy went completely bust in the 1980’s. So, you will find that most Louisiana cities have a bunch of buildings that haven’t had much updating or maintenance since then, and very few new buildings after that (Lafayette).

Baton Rouge faired better than most cities thanks to the stabilizing factor of State government. BR’s downtown was centered on retail before the 80’s oil crunch. When the retail emptied out, much of downtown became empty lots.

In the late 90’s, the governor sought to revitalize downtown by consolidating state government agencies downtown in new office buildings. Meanwhile, a real estate developer revitalized the residential neighborhood around those buildings, gentrifying Spanish Town as a gay neighborhood, then a young professionals hub, and now as a place full of wealthy retirees from government agencies.

About 10 years later, Mayor Kip Holden began his plan to revitalize downtown by hosting concerts, promoting festivals, attracting conventions, and helping develop bars, restaurants, hotels, and even a grocery store downtown. His plans for an amusement park, light rail, and an aquarium never came to fruition, but by the time he left office in 2016, downtown was in better shape than it had been in at least 30 years.

Then, Broome murdered the bars and suffocated the tram in the cradle. Covid wounded the demand for office space and finished off most of the remaining bars and restaurants. I have a lot of concerns about downtown’s viability going forward.

I hope to someday see all of the big surface lots filled in. In the last few years, they filled in the one between main street and north (IBM) and the one by 6th and Florida (The Heron). Hopefully, we’ll see the three big open lots near the river filled in (the two between main and Florida, and the one on Lafayette at Laurel), and some of the smaller inland ones along Convention or Laurel.

What’s wrong with Santa fe? After spending a few days there, it seemed like a really nice chill city to live in. Beautiful architecture, safe, great weather, solid food, tons of outdoor activities, nice people, etc. Sure, it’s a little small, but it’s got a lot going for it for a small city.

Kansas City skyline is really underwhelming. Most of the buildings look like they were built in the 50s and it's oddly spread out.

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San Antonio is terrible. Has almost no skyline.

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You don’t need to Google a pic since you were corrected in 1 post. Sure, it’s not NYC, but it’s decent.

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There's no point in talking about the San Jose skyline, the Fort Worth skyline, etc.

Those are peripheral cities, not metropolitan centers.

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Look at the historical population of Fort Worth. It’s not like it was some suburb that popped up in the 60’s. It is its own metropolitan center.

The issue is that lots of people aren’t accounting for population density. There’s not many logical reasons for a place like Phoenix or San Diego to have massive skyscrapers because the population is distributed over such a large square mileage.

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In 10 years Houston's skyline will stretch from Downtown to Uptown/Galleria. Massive highrise and office building developments are underway in central loop area.

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I think you're right about that and the Medical Center has grown up so much in the past 20 years or so.

The first time I visited New York City I was amazed at how many different clusters of skyscrapers there are. You always see the pictures of the Manhattan skyline on tv and the movies, but I never realized how many tall buildings there are in Brooklyn and across the Hudson in New Jersey until I saw it in person.