Why does Houston invest so little in "city beautification" yet it is one of the most powerful cities in the world? (Dallas: home)

[SAFLTX]

Well, after living in Houston for quite some time, I have yet not seen anything that really impresses me from this city other than its huge size and amazing highways. I have lived in a few different places, and it impresses me how Houston, a city with a budget that many places envy, invests soooo little in making the city look a little bit "nice." Few places in Houston are good to the eye, including the Galleria area, Downtown when you look at it from the highway (because once you walk on it, you only find people drinking in the streets and trash all over the place). Don't mean to be harsh on the city, I'm thankful to find a place where you can buy a nice home for less than 300,000 bucks; but seriously, why does one of the most important cities in the U.S. look as messy as houston does?
Streets are dirty, cracked, streetlights are cheap and sometimes even hard to see. There are signs and advertisment posters all over the place. There is visual contamination, to call it so.
Look at these facts that I took from wikipedia "The Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown MSA's Gross Area Product (GAP) in 2008 was $440.4 billion,[76] slightly larger than Belgium’s, Malaysia’s, Venezuela’s or Sweden’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."
^^^ Yet, we got a city that constantly keeps being named ugly, trashy, and messy. That makes no sense to me. Where does all that money go to?? Why don't they use it to mow all the grass that is scattered all over the place all over houston. Why don't they use it to build better roads and take care of those signs??!
WHY!!??

[wstaffor]

Have you considered that the two might be related?

Also, you must have never been to other major cities. Our roads are downright AWESOME compared to the skinny-laned, hole-ridden crap you get in older cities. Street lights much better as well.

[hsw]

Don't know an economically powerful urban region anywhere in world that's clean and has smooth roads everywhere (and has no smelly homeless or animal waste on sidewalks)

Only regions in world that exceed Hou in economic power (esp HQs of valuable cos.) are SiliconValley and Manhattan; direct rival is Dallas (Exxon alone is worth about as much as all of Hou's cos. combined); LA and Chicago are arguably economically weaker regions than Hou/Dall as they are not home to many critical (or valuable) industries or cos.

But NYC and CA have >10% income tax rates vs TX's 0%...yet same filth and potholes in NY/CA/TX/IL

[dv1033]

I would answer your question, with Houston is more than what you see from the highway.

[texas7]

Houston is powerful but also affordable ..... sometimes the tradeoff is affordable for pristine beautification. You pay to live in a beautiful place.

[Oildog]

Flame thread, its closed.