The Suburb With No City | Killeen, TX

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In central Texas lies the city of Killeen, which from above, looks like a giant suburb with no town in the center. Why is that?
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God Bless!
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Edited by Reid Cummins (unpaid intern)
Script by Ryan Green and @retro1029 on Twitter
Field footage gathered by Ryan Green, Kai Gray, Tyler Earl

[CardinalNorth]

Appreciate y'all watching! Looking back on this video a year later, and a year wiser (finished one year in college), there is many things I can change. One thing I want to add on is this: Yes, I know that the reason for the housing in the first place is the military base. The purpose of the video, as I describe in the video, is to address how building the city out was unsustainable and led to problems for present and future day. Subscribe if you want to see more of this type of content! God Bless!

[Dr.C_Stag]

I use to live in this $hithole place. The reason it looks like this is to the extreme is because of the population that it contains. It’s a military town. Soldiers come and go and they just need a place to live for a few years. They don’t care about where they live or even the services the city has. The “neighborhoods” just look like on-base housing without the gate guard. This is important context you forgot to mention.

[StylistecS]

I grew up here. My mom still lives here. There is no amount of words I can say about how I hate that place. It's your typical run of the mill military town but if you don't have a car, your life will be extremely miserable. Absolute terrible neighborhoods with fourplexes. Stay far far away from those. Everything is centered on the highway. 0 percent of is walkable. 0 percent of is bikeable. There aren't any good positive words I can say about this cesspool. BTW, most of Central Texas is this way. Waco and Temple aren't much better if they are at all.

[NateClay]

0:56 It's next to Fort Hood, where all the Army guys and their families live. It's also near Temple, super hub for CTX crime because it's a shipping area.

[folumb]

It's not a suburb of no where. It's a suburb of a giant military base. Everyone from central and south central Texas knows that

[dansburns]

Killeen exists because of Fort Hood. It seems like you left that very big point out to push a point of view.

[flipsolo]

Killeen is 100% military town. US Army could care less about urbanism, land use, public transit, economic growth, etc. That this video never even mentioned that is wild.

[azulaquaza]

Killeen is 1 of 3 Central Texas small sized cities in Bell County that sit in between Austin and Waco. Its sister cities are Temple and Belton which are much safer and appealing. The only reason it’s so big is the giant military base next door.

[choatican]

I own property near downtown Killeen. The city was originally built next to the largest military base in the US (that has shrunk to about 30k today). Those soldiers used to live off base but from 1985-2000 the military built thousands of new housing units for all the soldiers.... so it destroyed the Killeen real estate market.

It's basically become a city in the middle of Texas where poor people, convicts released from prison, and people with criminal records/no credit are able to find cheap housing.Its a short drive to Austin, Temple, Waco, and south Dallas.

[txmeats]

In 1991 there was a mass shooting at a Luby's. A guy drove his truck through a window and just started shooting people. It's actually one of the deadliest in the country.

[jonoghue]

Love seeing these types of videos quickly becoming more common. Maybe we can actually have some real change in the US.

[CPhillips]

I also grew up in killeen. It's way different than it was back then. Seemed like it was way more to do compared to now. I go back because my mom and dad retired from the military in old Ft Hood. Man I couldn't wait to leave that

[benwaffleiron]

the simcity 2013 music is so perfect. it reminds me of my time playing that game and desperately struggling to collect enough taxes and grow enough in a game that confines you to a tiny city plot while being so car-centric in how you can design cities

[kaymiller]

I’m surprised to hear Killeen is making changes. A big reason for it being the way it is with sprawl is it being a military town. Over 43, 000 work on base of for defense contractors where the next biggest employer is the school district with 6800. There was never any diversified economy for a downtown to grow.

[ant.]

I lived in Killeen for years. It's basically your average military town. 99% of people there are military affiliated and has access to base and everything it comes with.

Round rock is like 20 minutes away, Austin is like 40, harker heights and cove is like 5-10 away (give or take 5-15 minutes, really depends who's driving) then there's temple that's also very close.It's really not as secluded as you're making it seem lol but I'll agree you definitely need a car

I actually enjoyed living there.

[theral_karatgarrett]

I think I saw this place in a dream. Everywhere I turned, it was just endless houses with no personality behind their drywall facade. It was strangely horrifying. It felt so dead.

[guyatridaskerr]

Finally managed to move out of Killen last year and I am SO happy. I hate Killeen so muchh

[Anomaly-uzpr]

Im a soldier stationed at hood currently. Killeen is a terrible place but it only exists because our base is here if the base wasn’t here the town wouldn’t exist. End of story

[ToyotaCamrySEv]

honestly super excited that killeen recognized the problem and is making an effort to become more sustainable. I bet in the future everyone still making the mistake of sprawl will wake up soon.

[schneesdog]

Thank you for talking about this issue! Killeen has been my hometown for a great while but I never really noticed the issues with it until I lived in South Korea for about 2 years and was subsequently orange pilled as well

The main issue with Killeen lies with how its economy is solely based on Fort Cavazos, and most of the residents from here are military residents (myself included). Alongside that, crime has been a huge issue here for quite some time, with the crime rate being nearly higher than the national average. Now, Killeen has realized this issue and for the past 3 years they've been working to make the area much more walkable, although if I'll be honest, I think a really good area to start would be Stan Schleuter; that area is right outside of Fort Cavazos, and also encompasses CTC as well so it would gain increased traction from soldiers and community college students (it's also nearby Shoemaker High School, so high school students too if KISD was better funded)

I think in about a decade or so, Killeen will actually become slightly better due to how its trying to revitalize its city, and considering there's a factory being built somewhere right outside Killeen, that would also bring more jobs that are outside of the military. I really am excited, as I'm only in high school right now, but I'm quite optimistic about the future of Killeen especially since the improvement in infrastructure would also bring down the crime rate by a ton.

^ they just built a new set of apartments too called Station 42 on the north side of Killeen (basically the old side where downtown is at) and I think that's a really good start to revitalizing Killeen's economy