It's bullshit to say Houston doesn't have a few areas where you can have a Manhattan-lite experience. Take a look at all the high-rises and retail all along Post Oak Blvd. Can live in a high-rise apartment on top of a very nice Whole Foods. The area is walkable and a real BRT line which will in essence be no different than high capacity light rail running down the middle. How about on Montrose. Very walkable - can grocery shop at the Disco Kroger and shop and dine to your heart's content. Look at the density of single family stock off W. Gray between Shepherd and Montrose and the new high rise being built next to Brasserie 19.
This is an article from the Kinder Institute at Rice. The highest density neighborhoods in Houston are the ghetto shitholes I mentioned in previous posts. Those aren't applicable for people like us. The ones that apply to our situation have the following:
When we look at the next tier of dense communities—Mid-West, Pecan Park, and Montrose—the realities of what density looks like begins to change. All three communities have around 10,000 people per square mile, comparable to the overall density of Newark, New Jersey. What Taking Stock makes clear, though, is that each of these communities achieves this density in a unique way.
https://kinder.rice.edu/2017/04/17/sure-houston-has-sprawl-but-some-areas-have-east-coast-levels-of-density