Glass and steel office towers on a tight angled grid, with light rail down Main Street and the Wortham Theater Center corner RoboCop 2 turned into a future Detroit.
What Downtown Houston looks like
Downtown Houston is a grid of about four hundred blocks, tilted roughly 55 degrees off true north to follow Buffalo Bayou. Glass and steel office towers rise straight off the sidewalks, the tallest among them the 75 storey JPMorgan Chase Tower. A handful of low rise blocks from the 1920s survive at street level, their cream terracotta and red brick fronts under painted signs and awnings.
The METRORail Red Line runs at street level down the center of Main Street, sharing the pavement with turning traffic at every cross street. Sidewalks empty out fast once the office towers close for the day, and the core stays quiet through most weekends. An underground pedestrian tunnel system links many of the towers below the street, its own retail concourse running the whole way.
On the west side, the Main Street Market Square Historic District keeps its early twentieth century commercial buildings at a much lower scale. The Kress Building's ornamented terracotta front and the painted Home of Easy Credit sign next door still face the light rail tracks on Main Street. Buffalo Bayou runs along the northern edge at , the water sitting well below the towers behind it.
East of Main Street, the Theater District holds the Wortham Theater Center and the a block apart, with and a short walk beyond them. Tranquillity Park's mounded lawn and fountains sit at Rusk and Walker streets, one block from the plaza in front of City Hall itself.
Shot in Downtown Houston
RoboCop 2 shot its finale around the Wortham Theater Center in the Theater District, with the mayor's press conference scenes staged a few blocks away at Houston City Hall. Houston stood in for a near future Detroit for both.
RoboCop 2, 1990
Played Detroit, Michigan, near future
The production staged its finale in the streets and plaza around the theater, with a stunt sequence at its entrance shot by the second unit. The Alley Theatre stands directly across Texas Avenue, and both appear in the same sequence.
What Downtown Houston can double for
Campus Martius Park in Detroit, Michigan
RoboCop 2 used downtown Houston to play a near future Detroit, and Campus Martius has the same ring of glass office towers and a few older stone buildings around a central plaza. Houston's tighter, angled grid photographs as a denser downtown in a wide shot. Detroit's own towers run in a straighter grid, so a long lens flattens the angle difference better than a wide establishing shot. Try searching glass towers around a plaza now.
Uptown in Charlotte, North Carolina
Uptown Charlotte's street grid is skewed about 45 degrees off true north, close to Houston's own angle. Glass bank towers ring Independence Square the way they ring Houston's core. The Lynx Blue Line runs light rail straight through the district, the same kind of transit Houston has on Main Street. Uptown's towers sit lower and closer together than Houston's tallest blocks, so a skyline shot needs a tighter crop to hide the difference. Try searching glass bank towers now.
Downtown in Dallas, Texas
Downtown Dallas has its own grid of glass and steel towers built up through the same decades as Houston's, with DART light rail running through the core and a grade separated pedestrian network under the streets, the same trick Houston's tunnels use. The two skylines photograph as close cousins in a wide shot. Dallas towers cluster tighter around Elm and Main, so a Houston stand in needs a longer lens to match that density. Try searching glass and steel towers now.
