And what it could teach me about the core needs of human-centered infrastructure design.
Background
This week marks the six-month anniversary since I left my family home for good, for a new life about two thousand miles away. Here, I remain until I finally graduate with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. I am in my early twenties. No big responsibilities await me, compared to the caregiver and stand-in-parent lifestyle I had over there. Work and school, and feeding myself, is all I need to do. A full life, certainly: but the amount of freedom I have is unreal.
I ask myself, constantly during this transition, “Am I doing what it takes to be happy?” Is this it? I plan to move again within three years, to Australia of all places. And this place I currently find myself in is the most car-centric, overheated place, in a U.S. state I never saw myself living in for social and political reasons. But here I am, having moved from Upstate New York to a small city in Texas: The only place in the nation I had left to go.
How dramatic I sound. But social relationships make it true.
Focus of this post
I’m interested here in speaking on human nature that surpasses culture, and at the end, I will try to theorize about how that perceived human nature should be met by urban design. I am still yet to start my real career (I’m a student), so all of my theorizing is based on incredibly limited experience (an internship or two, and life). Hence, I will try to also use this post to expand my ability to think for myself. Design by myself. Not just rephrase current theory.
In this post, I will follow my six-month journey of life in a new place, so far. I will compare the old and the new cultures, and draw similarities and differences from both. And I will hold them against what I think should matter, too. The categories will be the similarities or differences themselves.
Culture & Ethnicity
Cutting straight to the chase: I grew up in a very white suburb, about as far from the city center as you could get. I now live in a city that’s around 90% Hispanic. This accounts for a ton of differences, as you might imagine.
Housing & My Perspective on Average Life
In older U.S. cities like the one I grew up around, there were always little pockets of residential harmony to be found. You could actually walk around and see houses that were within safe human walking distance to something more than just more houses. I lived in the city as a young kid before relocating to the suburbs, and while I always appreciated the city life more (feels like there’s life at all…), I have to be honest now and say that as far as suburbs go, mine wasn’t too bad, and I walked to a lot of places with friends as a kid, making my life much more enjoyable. True, they were all fast food restaurants… But there was a little patch of “nature” (undeveloped commercial land) that kids rode dirt bikes through behind the houses. So I wasn’t really missing anything grand, on an infrastructure level. We didn’t have sidewalks, though. This was the poor side of town: The rich kids did actually live in those depressing subdevelopments where you’re always being watched like a hawk. Their houses were big, empty, and weird, and the parents were the lords of their own little castle. Subjects: The children and the pets.
And then I moved to Texas. Supposed to be temporary, but here we are. Everything has a fence. Blinds are never opened. Homeless are quickly swept away by the grand police presence in equally grand transportation. My current home’s only entrance is via an alley. Everything is huge: including the housing, which is why I have two bedrooms and two walk-in closets for my first apartment ever, because one bedroom apartments in this city barely even exist. In Texas, sprawl must be the only word they know. Everything is very much focused on what you own, and protecting it, as the stereotypes got right. Half of everyone owns a truck, the biggest they can find. And yes, you do see people carrying their guns at their hips and entering stores like the coolest guys around, sometimes.
Life here is very focused on the home, and on your own family unit. You’re not really expected to go out and find community, as far as I’m aware, and to me it felt awkward when I did. You’re supposed to already have it… one of the tradeoffs of living in a nearly-ethnically-homogeneous town. And so the housing follows. In other places, you hear the rich claim that they wish to move to a subdevelopment to get away from the speed of the city life. Somewhere to raise their kids, quietly and easily (keep them in their little box). But here? It’s quiet EVERYWHERE. So what are we building these subdevelopments for?
The answer is they tend to just like the gates around their houses. They’re scared of something out there… I don’t know what. They just like the gates and fences and drama of it all, I suppose? Acting like someone is always out to get you. I’m gonna be honest, it affects me into thinking that people here must be more of a hassle than people up there, and I feel more eyes on me as a result. But what else am I supposed to make of this difference? Why would someone build as far away from other people that they seem to get so well along with, as they can? Which side of their behavior is lying, here? (I sound so childish… But seriously, why can’t we just all get along? Why do we need to own little castles to make ourselves adults? Why can’t we be proud of something besides how far we’ll go to keep others from seeing even the most minute detail of our lives?) American subdevelopment living means you only really interact with your family, your coworkers, and the cashier at the grocery store. And what is Texas? American living on steroids.
I understand I’m ignoring gun violence, the very thing Texas is known for, for why people would choose to live in what feels like a jail. I’ll return to it later.
But what is there to say about happiness? Family connections certainly breed happiness. I’m really not sure if I can consider the subdevelopments everywhere down here to be an organic statement that the people are happy enough to deal with that lifestyle… or if people are just adaptable. I can’t rightly say much on the happiness levels of the average person here or there, mostly because this is a less wealthy area than I grew up in, and I don’t want to overstate the negative mental effects of poverty or other low economic statuses. But if I’m being non-scientific, I would say that people here are absolutely happier across comparable economic levels than back home. For one… the sun does shine. But I’m trying to write about urban design: Things we CAN change, not geography-based climate, which we can’t.
I do think that living in this subdevelopments isn’t so bad when you actually see family and maybe friends more than once a week. The cultural difference in happiness becomes very large, then, because I know for a fact that all of my white family and friends would need a great amount of notice if I were to ever hang out with them, something that the Hispanic people here do not let get in their way. I’ve barely ever seen friends down here “by appointment” like I used to do back home. Same with family. You can drop in whenever, with a short notice alone, if they like you. Where I’m from, people lived in subdevelopments often because they wanted to get away from their oppressive family back home. Up there, and in much of the U.S. and in much of the white people, they want to never be bothered, simply never approached, or something like that. This has been a way of life America has been able to keep up during its few hundred years of consistent growth, which since the 1950s has emerged as isolating, suburban sprawl. Before then, it was the ability by white people to get dirt-cheap bloody land from the government and feel like they somehow deserved it, earned it. It has always been a moral myth that has only been possible in this weird transitional post-industrial period of extreme, unrestrained growth. It happens over lifetimes, so it might not feel so fleeting to us, or our grandparents (referring to Baby Boomers). But this is like saying a curved line is flat just because you can’t see far enough. Like saying the Earth is flat just because you can’t see grand perspectives with your own eyes… which I wish could just be a theoretical statement on idiocy but of course those people now actually exist.
Businesses
The RGV is not very financially well-off, to put it nicely. We have hospitality and food and healthcare, and a little bit of tech near the Gulf. I think they’re also building a data center in Brownsville in the future, so we also get to be one of those places the rich people exploit the natural resources of, and in this dry climate’s case, leave everyone else in a drought. Eventually.
The education rates are also pretty bad, going hand-in-hand with poverty levels. We have about 28% of individuals with no high school diploma1 and 23% of families beneath the poverty line.2 Overall, I see a lot of small businesses, lots of food catered to workers.
The business models I see are honestly as much from Mexico as you can get while being in the U.S., which shouldn’t be a surprise due to this being a border region and all. The old places and the businesses in the sparser areas are quite Mexican, just less vibrant than the real thing. There’s newer places, though, for retail and dining/fast food that go all in on the American Dream vibe… drive-thrus and giant parking lots and cars, cars, cars. And then there’s the absolute newest places that can be accessed by the public, that are starting to cater to the area’s rich. Texas rich, which is still “bigger is better” and still “cars, cars, cars”, but with an attempt at a more cultured approach once you’re inside. I’ve seen a lot of AI art on the walls of places, though, so take “attempt” literally. It’s stale.
Where I grew up, there were a lot more amenities (focusing here on the paid ones). I could go to the zoo, or an art gallery, or whatever else. We didn’t really go out to eat as much, although I was only a kid and a college student up there, so take that with a grain of salt. As far as I’ve seen, people here go out for food together more than drinks as a social event. And weed is illegal down here, so there’s somewhat less of that. Life here… is certainly more boring.
Overall, I really can’t look away from the straightforward differences of a richer area versus a poorer one on the amount of “vibrancy” a human life could have. You have family, which is not based on infrastructure but the types of connections are slowly affected by such, and then you have the “level of excitement” I’d say of a life, which is directly drawn from the amenities, entertainments, et cetera that your community provides… which is directly due to the amount of money your community has.
Not everyone needs that excitement factor to be happy in life… but most people want some part of it. Some part of those nice things. The valley is an area that people move away from for better things, just like so many other places, and the better places are cities with job opportunities and shinier amenities. This is the movement of people, yes, based on material need, but it’s not based on what would make a person happiest. I’m pretty sure people would be happiest if they had the chance to stay near a loving family, and have agency in life at all stages (infrastructure can provide that second one!).
Pedestrian Infrastructure
Where I live now, I can attribute a decent amount of logic to the notion that “much pedestrian infrastructure is lacking here due to the intense heat year-round”. It is extremely hot. But they also cut down trees like any other good American town, which makes everything hotter, and then they flood the earth with asphalt, which makes everything hotter, smell worse, and gives a big giant middle finger to the environment.
Let’s ignore the animal extinctions… I wonder how many petroleum-byproduct industry workers could keep their jobs if they had to kill a bunch of impoverished people across the globe who will keep starving to death as the crop seasons and floodings get all weird from climate change. Just equally transferring blame. What job is really worth it at that point, even if you only work with people who “are to blame”? And don’t just blame the big guys… you’re the one going to work every day, not them. They pay you, but nothing would get done without you. Cement (in both asphalt and concrete) is responsible for around 8% of global emissions3, and the heat it generates and the cars driving on it don’t exactly help.
If you just built better pedestrian infrastructure, and yes I do know sidewalks are made out of concrete, then I could stop complaining. People walk around here, regardless of the heat, because even if you pretend everyone has a car, everyone does not actually have a car. Who’s building for them?
I recently took a walk to the park, and documented my journey in a notebook. It was short, about two pages. The trip in total took about three hours. It was the closest park to me. It is genuinely 1200 feet away from my house. There’s no sidewalks most of the way, and I’m of course unhappy about that. The roads are big and gross, the car exhaust smells, and I don’t know, man. Because after years of living in these built environments, I start to see things different, and the lessons they teach you about the world start to really set in. You need those walks and those moments of what would otherwise be peace to snap into it, to understand, to see the world for what it really is.
I walked for a pretty long time. I thought about how country roads are set up: You don’t really get sidewalks until you hit a large enough population density. And of course that makes sense, because of limited resources for such a long stretch. And I think about how close suburban sprawl gets to being like those country roads, in terms of actual length, mostly because they’re just, like, the same roads, but now they have some population density because they’ve been all sprawled over, over time. That is very much the case here. You can really see the march of change when you’re walking like this. Not progress… I’m not gonna use that word. Isolation from each other isn’t progress, and suburban sprawl brings isolation. Feeling like you might get hit by a car and die just to be able to go to the park is not progress. Not ever.
Every time I get to this point in my writing, I think I drop off just before I hit the real goal. I miss the goal because in my head, I am taking everyone’s opinions into consideration. I’m being moderate. But I shouldn’t be. The closest I can get this time to the real point is that car-centric city design is to the benefit of the rich, and the detriment of the poor. It’s also to the detriment of everyone very young or very old. And that’s a fucked-up thing to be.
What people think they want
Especially in Texas.
They want things bigger. They want more money. They want life easier. They are individualistic. I would like to say narcissistic. They want to turn off their brain and “just live” within the world they find themselves in, not figure out how this world got this way. Yes, this is an extremely right-wing state, and the area I’m in follows, although not as heavily. I am not that way. And it’s not everyone, but… it’s a lot of people here. I’ll be honest, the education levels don’t help. Critical thinking where? Harder to find.
Where I’m from, of course there’s those types, but not nearly as much. Statistics paint a perfectly accurate picture of NY versus TX, and you could imagine how many conversations go, if I could actually bring myself to talk politics and policy here. The picture is of course painted red and blue.
People just genuinely don’t know what they want, especially when they have low critical thinking skills on average, due to lower education. I can’t imagine breaking through to a realization in many people here.
I’m not gonna be a hypocrite, though. All of the critical thinking in the world still leaves much in a society to be desired. Where are all the city amenities and good infrastructure the people deserve? It’s not just lack of critical thinking skills that keep us in the same boat as last year, last decade, and getting worse. It’s simply the status quo. It is my firm belief that the infrastructure and city design we all live in are some of the greatest handicaps towards a better world. For some reason, we keep all building a worse one.
I believe I may be missing the point again. I think I need to do some more research and get some figures about where the funding of infrastructure projects, subdevelopments, shopping plazas, etc. come from, and why that money can’t be going somewhere better. I’m pretty sure, though, that by the end of my research, it’ll all be revealed as just a case of “benefit the rich, detriment to the poor”. But it is increasingly important in this world to have real figures and research to back your statements up. That research is, however, for another day.
I need to say right now that my career is not going to be about giving people what they think they want. I don’t like listening to those loudest, usually ignorant voices. I am here to listen to the real needs of people who have it harder. I am not here on this Earth to make life that much easier for rich people, for people already privileged. I’m here to make a real difference, on a bigger scale than any individualistic humanitarian type could ever.
I don’t know exactly how much I will even be able to do with my career alone, separate from my voice in this blog. A career and individual connections can only bring you so far. I have the internet right here, and a little voice on it. I have a creeping suspicion that this voice, my blog, will be what changes things in the ways I want in the world. If so, I’m glad I picked a career that’s enjoyable regardless of being deeply beneficial to the improvement, not just the maintenance, of society.
Conclusion
There comes a point in research, every time, where my headache gets so bad and our government, organizations, and policy decisions including infrastructure design all feel so hurtful to everyone and everything living on Earth, to me, that I can’t do the thing I wanted to do, can’t make the point I wanted to make. I want to work in the public sector forever in the future, and make things right and more humane to us all, if I can help it, but living in America… really puts a damper on things. I can’t deal with the march of increasing political repression and the surveillance and the inability to speak freely and safely here. Guns are a lot of it, and this hell-hole of an administration is a lot more of it. Everything that was maybe sort-of okay is getting replaced by a genuine dystopia, week by week, year by year. Half a decade since women lost the biggest piece of bodily autonomy (abortion), and women’s rights here are getting flooded away including voting rights if you changed your last name, and these are the things no-one cares to talk about. I’m glad I’m an adult, and have free time enough to not be so discouraged and drawn away from what really matters: Women’s rights and livelihoods. We sort of bear the brunt of the world’s shit, and we’re very used to never being okay or safe 100% and just having to deal with it and pretend like the world should in any way deserve to go on while we fall apart. We get walked on as a class of people on Earth, truly. We build so much and it keeps being taken away in the most traumatic ways possible, both individually in many of our personal lives and then as a class of people looking for simple respect.
If you can’t tell, haha, this is one of these days.
My blog is not professional yet, I could say. I’m more content just journaling today. The focus of this post shifted, but it’s because the world seems to move on ahead of me so fast. I didn’t complete the promises that I started writing this post with. I didn’t speak enough on how human needs can be met via infrastructure design. I just said what was wrong with what we currently have, briefly, and spoke about how we should be increasing pedestrian infrastructure, also briefly. I think in the future I can take the heart of this post and edit the rest somewhat and make it professional-sounding and coherent… But today is not one of those days, and it’s been too long since I made a post, and this one already took a month to get around to publishing. I needed to write again, and clear out my in-progress set of posts a little bit. Hope everyone understands, the two or maybe three of you there are around here.
Notes
- “Education Data for Region: Rio Grande Valley”, RGV Health Connect, updated March 2026 at https://www.rgvhealthconnect.org/demographicdata?id=281259§ionId=938. ↩︎
- “Families Living Below Poverty Level”, RGV Health Connect, last updated April 22 2026 at https://www.rgvhealthconnect.org/indicators/index/view?indicatorId=240&localeId=281259. ↩︎
- “Annual CO2 emissions from cement, 2024”, Our World in Data, accessed April 29th 2026 at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-cement. ↩︎
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