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<p>Good point. The light rail is just a single strip running up and down Fannin from the Texas Medical Center up to downtown, but I believe they’re currently expanding it along Westheimer to reach Uptown and possibly The Heights, which are cool areas of the Inner Loop. </p>
<p>It will still pale in comparison to the DART in Dallas, which is the light rail system you can board at Mockingbird Station near SMU and go anywhere in the City of Dallas, or Plano, Irving, etc…and you can else go over to Fort Worth. Even though you’ll want a car for showing off, it’s completely possible to live without a car while someone attends SMU. Not sure if the same is possible for Rice…I’d have to say hardly. </p>
<p>The Inner Loop of Houston is wealthy, but not as affluent as Dallas, and probably a lot more diverse. There are other colleges in the area too, like the U of H, and St. Thomas University, albeit much smaller. I’m pretty sure the top public school in the state is Lamar High, which is the inner west side of Houston, and it probably has some very diverse statistics that would be indicative of the River Oaks/Rice Village areas of Houston.</p>
<p>You can do fine at Rice without a car. My daughter had one, and it came in handy (especially for trips home to Dallas at breaks), but most students don’t have cars. She much preferred Houston to Dallas, by the way.</p>
<p>A light rail in Houston! I’d like to see that! Anything to get out of that traffic!</p>
<p>A very nice neighborhood, area of Houston is Westchase. My mom is in an assisted living there, and my brother lives in that neighborhood. It is a little pricey, but convenient to stores, restaurants, shopping. I stay at the Fairfield Inn Westchase whenever I go. It’s a great hotel, exceptional staff, and very inexpensive. I’m paying 69 a night for my rooms this weekend while I hook my mom’s new “digital” TV up.</p>
<p>Gosh, I so wish I could get son to tour Rice while we’re there, but I’m not going to push my luck.</p>
<p>We will go to Dave and Buster’s as a reward for him tagging along for the trip.</p>
<p>Westchase is between the 2nd and 3rd loops of Houston, but yeah it’s a good area to raise a family and get away from the city bustle. A lot of the energy corps have satellite campuses on the far west side of Houston so that people don’t have sit in traffic for an hour each way to downtown. The area around Rice is much more urban… and I personally like the urban Inner Loop a lot better (Although one look at me and ppl would assume otherwise), although I think Dallas is superior in every way to Houston.</p>
<p>The area on 2 sides of Rice is beautiful residential. On one side is the medical center complex which has a few hotels. On the 4th side is Rice Village, which has restaurants and shops. I preferred Dallas in many ways, but it does lack a university the equal of Rice.</p>
<p>Providence is not Jesuit either.</p>