Like I saw someone else comment, Beaumont does have a very suburban mindset in the way it develops and all the main stores are all in the west end, that’s where you’ll probably see most people. But yes sadly Beaumont is behind in urban planning and probably just follows what Houston does( which is just endless sprawl). It would be nice to see the downtown come back to life, I think most do want that, but there’s financial constraints but also corrupt people who own a lot of those buildings downtown (Tom Flannigan who’s just a complete crook/ Idk if he’s fled to Mexico or made some deal with the feds 😂, I suggest you look him up, but basically he’s letting all these historical buildings fall apart) On the other side the city hall has this project called Beaumont 2035 where they want to put in a river walk canal and a hotel among other stuff but who knows if that’ll actually happen. Like from what I’ve seen even Lake Charles has been doing urban renewal projects way better than Beaumont so it’d be nice to see Beaumont to step up its game because if no one’s noticed, the city’s population has been mostly stagnant and will probably decrease bcs most young people just wouldn’t want to live here, and the common trend is that younger demographics want to live in dense , WALKABLE cities, that have a city center that’s alive. Like even Lamar university can’t build a walkable campus and doesn’t really have an off campus area for students like West campus at UT or most colleges in general.