A thing that's happened during my lifetime is that cities with no cultural footprint at all have gained wildly in population, so that they're "top U.S. cities" despite having no distinguishing features. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Jacksonville are all in the top 10 in population.
Houston's distinguishing feature is a complete lack of urban planning.
Nobody paves over bayous and builds top of them like Houston!
Houston is extremely distinctive.
Between the five of them combined their cultural impact is limited to Dealey Plaza, The Alamo, the Riverwalk, and that's it. I've been to Jacksonville a dozen times and couldn't tell you a single interesting thing about it.
Easily one of the top 10 swamp cities in northeastern Florida.
I'll defend Houston (Dallas sucks), it only became a major city when Galveston was taken out of consideration by the 1900 Hurricane, it's very multicultural due to its port status (it had a Chinatown before NYC) and was the main landing spot for Vietnamese/Taiwanese), has great arts/sports...
... I mean obviously the humidity and sprawl are awful, but being Space City for 60 years (until DOGE killed it) is as arguably an American contribution as a commodities market or Hollywood (which is now in Vancouver).
Jax also gamed the system by annexing all of Duval County back in the 60s, and yeah: Only notable for the through-or-around I-95 decision.
Beach is okay
Anthony Bourdain did a whole thing on Houston's SLAB culture, well worth a watch explorepartsunknown.com/houston/swan...
Uhhhh DJ Screw? Chopped and screwed? Slowed n throwed? Big Hawk, Fat Pat, Z-Ro, Trae Tha Truth, Paul Wall, UGK, Chamillionaire? Houston walked so Atlanta could run. A mecca of hip-hop
There are eight places that matter in hip-hop: The Bronx, Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Long Island, California, and Detroit. Everything else has its cute little attempts at a hip-hop scene, and good for them, but let's be serious now.
Lmao ok you absolutely lost me on this one.
Houston at least has NASA (for now) and the trite overused phrase "Houston we have a problem"
I’m always surprised when I remember how large Columbus and Indianapolis are
Like 1.7 million people between the two of them, what
What are you talking about? Dallas IS a soulless hellscape, ok, but San Antonio? Freaking 18th century San Antonio has no culture?!?! Listen, buddy, if you’re ignorant about something it’s better to keep your mouth shut.
Like, what is culture to you? A thriving arts and culture community? Rich history and surviving architecture? Unique language, customs, food, music? Festivals galore? San Antonio has all of that PLUS gorgeous parks. Get off the riverwalk and see what makes San Antonio a jewel of the US.
Imagine a city. Think of a person who has never been in the same hemisphere as that city. A person who does not speak any of the 3 most commonly spoken languages in that city. A person who is educated, but not a cultural expert - a dentist, perhaps. What do they know about the city?
If you want to think of what cultural impact San Antonio has, I would ask "what does a random dentist from Makassar on Sulawesi know about San Antonio?"
Oh, okay - so it’s only culture if it’s something Hollywood wants to make a movie about? From that standpoint, I guess Sulawesi doesn’t have any culture either, huh? I’m not sure an average Joe in Iowa could tell you anything about it, if we’re picking random folks to tell you about other cultures.
Correct; there are perhaps a dozen cities on the planet that are culturally significant.
YIKES. Well, I’ll give you that, I guess. If only Hollywood gets to decide who has cultural significance, a whole bunch of awesome unique places just kinda don’t exist, huh. But at least you’re logically consistent 😬
Have always found Dallas to be rich in culture: dma.org Agree, the rest are dismal
