Houston vs. Dallas (Austin, Galveston, Atlanta: airport, architectural, metro)

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by majicdonjuan

Fair enough. Houston is a transportation hub as well, but DFW plays a much larger role from the land and air side, while Houston is preeminent on the maritime side.

Losing DFW would deal a huge blow to national flows of transportation moreso than Houston because while it would be difficult to quickly replace Houston's refinery complexes, the nation does have other major seaports that could pick up a lot of the slack, at least in the short-term.

There is no way to easily replace what's arguably (Chicago) the nation's largest inland transportation hub.

Originally Posted by majicdonjuan

Frankly, he's correct. Think about it. When one refinery anywhere in the country has unexpected outages, gasoline prices at the pump go up as supplies tighten.

Greater Houston has about a quarter of the nation's refining capacity. If all of that capacity were just to disappear overnight, we as a nation would be royally screwed.

DFW, by comparison, is a transportation and logistics hub. If it disappeared overnight our lives would be made a bit harder primarily due to longer and less efficient supply chains. But in terms of catastrophic disruption, that's not even close - the US, albeit wounded, but be fine.

By this hypothetical measure (since it actually won't happen), I don't think there could be any question which of the two metros is more important.

Majicdonjuan I am confused as to which argument you are making here. In the first post (#7613) you argue that Houston is the more important area, then in your next post(#7615) you seem to flip and argue that DFW is the more important area. Which one is it or are you just confused ?

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by dallasboi

Probably so,but we are only speaking about Houston.You are further proving my point. If Houston magically disappear overnight; those other ports will pick up the slack as was mentioned earlier sir.(or madam)

Also you would have to keep in mind that if Houston wasn't here, that would make DFW a less central location and a lot of the transportation hubs would move to lets say OK City? Without Houston, Dallas would become less important while on the other hand without DFW Houston becomes more important.

[majicdonjuan]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

Majicdonjuan I am confused as to which argument you are making here. In the first post (#7613) you argue that Houston is the more important area, then in your next post(#7615) you seem to flip and argue that DFW is the more important area. Which one is it or are you just confused ?

I'm arguing that Houston is the most important area overall because of the petrochemical facilities, but in terms of transportation and logistics, Dallas is the more important of the two. In essence, I'm saying that if you were to lose one of the two metro areas, losing Houston would hurt the national economy much more than losing Dallas because though Dallas is huge transportation hub, a lot of the transcontinental truck and train traffic can be shifted to other routes in the short term and bypass what was formerly DFW. You can't easily replace petrochemical processing capacity.

Sorry for the ambiguity.

[jd433]

This argument is futile, if neither one will ever be lost then that argument is futile. Using hypothetical rebuttals in a debate is ineffective. Please, lets start using some hard facts instead. For instance one could say that Washington D.C. is very important to the country because that is where all of the federal laws are made and also all of the foreign embassies are in that area. One could argue that New york is important because it has many fortune 500 companies and is the financial capital of the world. Los Angeles could be argued because of it's huge contribution to the movie industry, fashion and arts. San Fran for it's incredible contributions to the Tech world.

You see these things are valuable and it sounds a lot better that saying "What would we do without Washington D.C. and San Francisco?"

[Cowboys fan in Houston]

Originally Posted by jd433

This argument is futile, if neither one will ever be lost then that argument is futile. Using hypothetical rebuttals in a debate is ineffective. Please, lets start using some hard facts instead. For instance one could say that Washington D.C. is very important to the country because that is where all of the federal laws are made and also all of the foreign embassies are in that area. One could argue that New york is important because it has many fortune 500 companies and is the financial capital of the world. Los Angeles could be argued because of it's huge contribution to the movie industry, fashion and arts. San Fran for it's incredible contributions to the Tech world.

You see these things are valuable and it sounds a lot better that saying "What would we do without Washington D.C. and San Francisco?"

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!! Im glad someone else besides me finally came out and said it.

[majicdonjuan]

Originally Posted by jd433

This argument is futile, if neither one will ever be lost then that argument is futile. Using hypothetical rebuttals in a debate is ineffective. Please, lets start using some hard facts instead. For instance one could say that Washington D.C. is very important to the country because that is where all of the federal laws are made and also all of the foreign embassies are in that area. One could argue that New york is important because it has many fortune 500 companies and is the financial capital of the world. Los Angeles could be argued because of it's huge contribution to the movie industry, fashion and arts. San Fran for it's incredible contributions to the Tech world.

You see these things are valuable and it sounds a lot better that saying "What would we do without Washington D.C. and San Francisco?"

Are you aware of the thread that you're in? It's 7,000 posts long and I guarantee you most of it is even sillier debate than this topic. This isn't about LA, SF, or DC. Houston and Dallas have a unique relationship to say the least, and this thread is a prime example of that.

Sometimes its fun to discuss the hypothetical, and trust if you've read through even a fraction of this thread you'll know that most of the concrete arguments about the two have long been made.

This isn't what I would call a serious debate thread. It's like everything else Houston and Dallas - competitive for the sake of competitiveness. Looking at it as anything more is definitely seeing this through rose colored glasses.

[Metro Matt]

Originally Posted by justme02

And Houston's port has nothing to do with geography???

Its the same thing exactly. DFW is the logistics center because of geography and Houston is a huge port because of geography. Are you trying to make it something different than it is?

The Port of Houston is a marvel of the nation because of what it took to build it. The Fred Hartman Bridge is pretty amazing in & of itself.

Dallas' inland port & airport is just a very large mass of plain old concrete & steel, nothing aesthetically pleasing or architecturally spectacular about it.

[Cowboys fan in Houston]

Originally Posted by Metro Matt

The Port of Houston is a marvel of the nation because of what it took to build it. The Fred Hartman Bridge is pretty amazing in & of itself.

Dallas' inland port & airport is just a very large mass of plain old concrete & steel, nothing aesthetically pleasing or architecturally spectacular about it.

Im glad weve determined that aesthetic appearence is what determines value.

[dallasboi]

Originally Posted by Metro Matt

The Port of Houston is a marvel of the nation because of what it took to build it. The Fred Hartman Bridge is pretty amazing in & of itself.

Dallas' inland port & airport is just a very large mass of plain old concrete & steel, nothing aesthetically pleasing or architecturally spectacular about it.

Save it Matt...you sound stupid

[Austinite101]

Originally Posted by dallasboi

Save it Matt...you sound stupid

I know right. Boosters are particularly verbose these days. Lol.