* Economy comes and goes with natural resource boom bust cycle.

* America's most obese city

* A huge sprawl with bad traffic and poor public transportation

There are other cities that match some of those qualities that I don't much care for, but I can see why a lot of people wouldn't mind and go for the cheap housing there as a decent trade off.

But in my original comment, my only point was that you can't judge how great a city is based on how cheap its real estate is (and the correlation often goes the opposite way).

I think you're imagining all Houston real estate as cheap/affordable, when in reality the city has lots of extremely expensive real estate. It just also has affordable housing due to widespread construction of townhomes, apartments, and condos. Something like Gary just isn't comparable.

I wonder what sinking into the Gulf of Mexico is going to do for property values.

I'm not sure how the criteria are different, the above is looking at big cities. The other list seems to have a bunch of small cities (e.g. Jackson MS). The difference could also be in study year. Neither list is very surprising to me.

> * A huge sprawl with bad traffic and poor public transportation There are only a few cities in the U.S. that have good public transportation and while it's really nice it's also super expensive to live there.

Look there is no reason to live in Houston if you're rich. It's much nicer to live in a nicer city with great public transit and driving distance from some amazing natural features.

But if you're not rich and you want to be able to raise a family, own a house, and experience nice entertainment on 50k a year, Houston is a wonderful city.

it's a bit like someone arguing that Land Rovers are bad cars because they are built poorly, and then someone else coming in and saying well at least they don't cost the amount that a lamborghini costs, they must be doing something right. and then a third person coming into that argument and saying "well, actually you can't use price because a bicycle costs 200$ and that doesn't mean a bicycle is better than a Land Rover based on price alone" ...the point they're driving could be correct, but the comparison is apples to oranges. you can't compare bicycles to cars to drive the point, just like i wouldn't use Gary to make the argument that low prices does not mean a thriving city. a better argument would be to use something that is comparable to a Land Rover (Houston) like say, a car that is within 10-20k range that does the job but is still largely a piece of crap to argue your point that price alone doesn't dictate success.

There are tons of places with very cheap housing and no jobs. Nobody moves there except maybe a few teleworkers looking to optimize hard for surplus or people with other reasons to go there like family ties.

Are you kidding? Its easily worth twice that. Wait until I show you the upgrades, new paint and wall to wall carpet. The bathroom's been renovated with new fixtures, and that is genuine imported Mexican tile. You'd be a fool to pass on this. Just think of the possibilities.