{"id":402462,"date":"2026-08-10T10:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T10:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/402462\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T10:36:15","slug":"houston-ranks-among-worst-u-s-cities-for-outdoor-socializing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/402462\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston ranks among worst U.S. cities for outdoor socializing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study from Maxwell Social<\/a> ranked Houston No. 43 out of 45 major U.S. cities for outdoor socializing, putting the Bayou City ahead of only Los Angeles and Phoenix. Even worse for Texas’ reputation, Houston wasn’t alone. Five Texas cities landed among the country’s bottom 10.<\/p>\n

Researchers ranked cities based on the number of patios, rooftop bars, beer gardens and breweries per 100,000 residents, along with Google search interest for outdoor venues. Maxwell Social also surveyed 1,000 adults about their outdoor social habits.<\/p>\n

Houston’s problem wasn’t necessarily a lack of interest.\u00a0The city ranked No. 19 nationally for people searching for outdoor venues<\/a>, according to the study, but nearly bottomed out when researchers looked at what’s actually available. Houston ranked No. 44 for patios, No. 42 for beer gardens and No. 41 for breweries.<\/p>\n

Somehow, Texas managed to make up half of the bottom 10.<\/p>\n

Dallas ranked No. 37, followed by El Paso at No. 38 and Fort Worth at No. 39. San Antonio landed No. 41 before Houston checked in at No. 43.<\/p>\n

Austin, perhaps unsurprisingly, performed better than its Texas counterparts\u2014but not by much. The state capital ranked No. 22 overall despite placing eighth nationally for search interest in outdoor venues.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum, Long Beach, California, was crowned the country’s best city for outdoor socializing, followed by Oakland and Atlanta. Denver and Washington, D.C., rounded out the top five. Maxwell Social said cities were scored on a normalized 0-to-100 scale across the five categories.<\/p>\n

The findings aren’t necessarily saying Texans don’t want to be outside. In fact, that’s part of the problem the study was trying to capture.<\/p>\n

Nearly one-in-five Americans surveyed said they’ve wanted to hang out outside with friends but couldn’t find somewhere good, legal or comfortable to do it. Another 31 percent said better outdoor social spaces would encourage them to go out more often, increasing to 41 percent among Gen Z respondents.<\/p>\n

Restaurants and bars may want to take note, too. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they’d visit a business more often if it offered a garden, patio or another outdoor gathering space.<\/p>\n

Houston’s poor showing also creates a pretty amusing contradiction.\u00a0In December,<\/a> Houston was somehow named the second-best winter city in America for walking, largely because of its mild temperatures and lack of snow, which raised eyebrow from Houstonians familiar with the city’s sidewalk situation.<\/p>\n

So apparently Houston’s weather can make it a great place to walk outside during winter. Finding somewhere to sit down with your friends once you get there may be another story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study from Maxwell Social ranked Houston No. 43 out of 45 major U.S. cities for outdoor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1836,1704,85744,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-402462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-chronnews","tag-chronstaff","tag-chrontexas","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}