The huge urban area is pretty common. The demographic trend, IMO, has gone from trending growth OUT to trending regrowth IN.
@el_coogster Inner loop population has exploded to, and surpassed its historical highs in the 60’s.
In 2020 it was sitting at ~483k, only 13k from its peak. At the annual growth rate of 1.5%-2.5% (conservative) The inner loop surpassed its peak in 2022, and passed 500k total population in 2023. meaning people are moving into urban neighborhoods at a consistent rate.
You have to consider average household occupants too. In 1960’s for a City like Houston the average household occupants was hovering around 3.3 to ~2.2 per household in 2025. Denoting an increase in urban type developments (Townhomes, multi-family, etc.) versus the SFH, and general trend to smaller number of people in households.
This means more density is appearing, more people are moving into Houston (outside and inside the loop), and more buildings are being built. While we’re not seeing the dramatic skyscrapers of the 70’s, we’re seeing an absolute crap ton of infill happening.
@Ziggy1983 the data supports your point, along with the increase in overall population and density in neighborhoods like Downtown, Midtown, Montrose, etc. since the 80’s.
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Here’s the issue.
Schools.
Houston’s layout exists in 3 paradigms:
- Inner city/bunker hill area = private school ($20K+ per year)
- Inner city affordable = bad HISD schools
- suburbs affordable = good public schools / high property taxes
Choose 1
Oh, I believe it.
The inner loop seems to be more crowded every year.
we need more inner loop COOGS, not enough of us
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Annoyed the mods enough that he got the ol’ banhammer.
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I wanna respond intelligently to this, but I got zero idea how to rate the schools in the area, especially with the recent shake up happening in Admin. Heard Kinder, Heights, Carnegie, and Challenge were pretty good?
I am curious how you define this. Not disagreeing or agreeing, just curious.
Saying the inner loop population just past previous highs from the 1960s doesn’t really seem to be all that impressive. So according to the chart above - back to the 500,00 mark but yet the population of Houston went from 940,000 to 2.3 million in that same time frame. (not including the suburbs and whole metro area)
Got to get the better schools, as mentioned above, and get rid of the outdated concept that everyone needs to buy a house and there is room for people to grow the inner loop.
How many of yall are current students?
As a current student I attended the last part time on campus class I will take for the next 2 years before graduating.
High schools, like Klein ISD, are launching its online high school next year, we have thousands of applicants interested and have no cap.
What some of yall think is traditions is also outdated and no longer a thought process. There are AI detectors for AI detectors to help write papers and take tests on your laptop, from anywhere. My program has students in it that live out of the country.
Now I will say the campus is night and day different than my undergrad days. Events all the time, but classrooms are empty. It is wild there.
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Probably the longest tenured student here haha, you’re right on a good amount of counts. Only complaint is the events are 10-2 and not after.
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Started in 96, undergraduate degree says 2009. Masters 2024. Doctoral done in 2027.
I am working on averaging it out.
The events were non existent the first run through. Nothing. Shoot, attendance at games was minimal the first 10 years. So much has changed but the university is not trying to become a campus from 1950, it is quickly working towards being relevant and still here in 2050.
Also, there is a wild amount of electric scooters (that I have no idea how they go so fast and not run into everyone), no one is looking up from their phone, and everyone has ear buds in.
Also there are more UH shirts on than anything else, and that is a huge growth over the last 30 years.
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Moved to Houston to for college in 1995. Have lived inside the loop ever since. Would never consider living in the suburbs. We have an amazing city!
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I lived in the loop for a few years.
Got tired of it after year 3.
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Within HISD, magnet schools (Carnegie, HSPVA, DeBakey, Challenge) are your best bet. If you want a more traditional, comprehensive HS experience (espically athletics), then Lamar, Bellaire, Heights, maybe Waltrip are your only good options.
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Not a fan of HISD, having done elementary and middle school there.
If I had kids and lived in HISD zoned areas, private schools would be in order.
There’s a reason Katy ISD zoned areas keep growing.
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super religious, conservative, accents, etc
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HISD is bad because it’s rooted in white flight
White flight (not just the physical flight itself, but the economics that surrounds it) is dependent on continuous development and sprawling of suburbs.
The issue, which i have explained here before, is that Houston is going to either run out of sprawl space, or people aren’t going to be willing to travel that far anymore → which will eventually result in reverse sprawling (formerly bad districts closer to the city will become good again, and the outer districts will slowly start to fail)
Cy Fair ISD is a prime example of this, where the older schools are starting to get worse
Katy ISD schools are VERY diverse though.
Hardly a white flight situation.
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