Cache-less area in Houston

[+peyton_lamb]

I was casually browsing the cache map around Texas, and noticed a pretty sizable gap of caches in the northwestern part of Houston. It seems pretty surprising to me that there'd be that big of a dead zone in a major urban area like that, so I'm curious to know if there's some other factor that has made that area empty. My best guess is that it's ultimately attributable to Houston's unusual urban layout, but I'd like to know if anyone has any better insight on it.

[+Wacka]

I don't know if it is still true, but you couldspot Compton on the cache map of LA. At one time there were none in Compton except for a virtual at the city hall.

[+K13]

Yeah, there are some areas of Houston I wouldn't visit, even with an armed escort.

[+Gabrielol]

I'm very familiar with the inner 610 loop in Houston. Unusual urban layout is one way to put it- the remnants of redlining would be more accurate I guess. Because I rode the metro bus system so often, I wondered the exact question you asked. I noticed that even in the gentrified areas of the 5th ward & Quitman, there are still very few caches. One day I took the bus from Kashmere Gardens to Little York Road. The total ride took about an hour, and the neighborhoods I passed were profoundly unique. Millions of people live in that cache-less area, but to the more affluent neighborhoods in Houston it might as well not exist. I vividly remember seeing one community library that looked so sad. Just like Sunnyside, that area was semi-rural, with occasionally absent infrastructure. I'm pretty sure I logged 3 DNFs that day- the caches that are in those areas are so rarely visited, it's hard to know if they are even there or not.

 

Having lived in one of those cache-less zones- the triangle just south of downtown where there are no caches- I can attest that there are just some urban areas that aren't conducive to hiding a cache. Even a micro. It's not that any of these areas are "sketchy", although at 3am it can get a little eerie. But these neighborhoods have more foot traffic and less places to park. Plus, not that many cachers live in those zones- I don't live there anymore and my Houston caches are archived now.