Demystifying Downtown: an introduction

Downtown Houston gives a false impression of the city it represents. In fact, for the past couple of decades, Downtown has experienced the opposite of the rest of the region: while the city’s population has practically exploded and the metro has become a haven for both mega-corporations and immigrants seeking to flush money into a prosperous resource-driven economy, the Central Business District has stagnated and rotted. Whatever vitality that colored the city in the 1940s – before the Interstate Highway System – has fled to the suburbs. Downtown’s Manhattanized street grid, once filled to the brim with business, is now a high-density relic in a sea of dozens of no-density surface parking lots. Sure, a cluster of attractive award-winning skyscrapers continues to fuel Houston’s national image, but behind that facade is a disappointing story of extreme suburbanization and long-wasted opportunity.

Unfortunately, the story of Downtown Houston is not unfamiliar to many other Sunbelt cities across the country. For many places, urbanism simply ceased to exist for most of the latter half of the 20th century – and the more extreme the rate of growth, the more devastating the impact on the traditional city center. Houston’s economic boom in the late 1970s was nothing short of insane. The region built and then overbuilt, spreading the suburbs to their geographic extremes and sapping the Inner Loop dry of wealth. There are many lessons to be learned from Houston’s poor planning during this time period – and many of the city’s most troubled districts are a direct result of a failure to accommodate any sense of foresight into the region’s growth (not that I don’t have some forgiveness for the leaders at the time, any city would get overly excited about that sort of economic opportunity). I could go on extensively about the garden apartment problem, the food deserts, the suburbs lost in time… but the focus is on Downtown, which is quickly (and thankfully) seeing its fortunes change.

The primary theme of urban development for the 20th century was suburbanization. In the 21st, it will be reurbanization. The suburbs have been ousted as an inefficient and undesirable form of land-use policy. Their propagation has created a society where most are forced to become dependent on homes that are isolated, cheaply built and expensive to occupy (especially when transportation costs are taken into account). These cookie-cutter developments lack a sense of community and force individuals to rely on their vehicles – and the traffic that they create – to have any sort of life whatsoever. This is especially prevalent in Houston, where thousands upon thousands are forced to endure grueling rush hour traffic, accidents ranging from inconvenient to deadly, and psychological degradation that breeds road rage and stress.

The most recent development boom has seen a sudden reinvestment in Houston’s densest districts – Downtown, Midtown, Montrose, Upper Kirby and Uptown. After decades of development being focused almost exclusively on suburban tracts at the edge of the metropolitan area, traditional density has become fashionable again. Indeed, this animation is especially useful at portraying the sea change:

Residential is fast approaching the Downtown core. Indeed, this is in no small part due to efforts by the municipal government, especially a new residential incentive that provides a hefty per-unit discount to developers who construct apartments in the city center. However, supplanting surface parking lots and derelict warehouses with new upper-class residential projects is a tall order. A lot of additional efforts will have to be undertaken to ensure the success of any sort of revitalization vision for Downtown. At the moment, the city center simply isn’t poised to take full advantage of pro-development economic conditions. Downtown lacks grocery stores and basic retail (barber shops, dry cleaners and the like) amongst other things. And, of course, the oversupply of surface parking lots severely detracts from the district’s walkability.

It can be safely assumed that, with time, the basic residential amenities that Downtown lacks will come with the new development. However, if the City of Houston truly wants to turn the CBD from a really big office park into a bustling high-density neighborhood, it’ll have to take some significant initiative. Over the next few months, I’ll present a number of ideas that I feel could help turn Downtown into a mixed-use gem. These include:

• Establishing dedicated retail and shopping districts that provide a true walkable experience.
• Beautifying traditional vehicular entrances to Downtown, especially on the northside of the district.
• De-spaghettifying and rebuilding the freeway infrastructure that surrounds Downtown as well as mitigating the impact of these concrete monoliths on inter-neighborhood transportation and interaction.
• Turning the stretch of the Buffalo Bayou that traverses Downtown into a unique asset to the city.

Houston is among America’s next generation of great cities. However, our lack of a proper urban core – or the mixed-use amenities that Americans are increasingly demanding – will only work to our detriment. What does it mean when Houston is considered one of the most ugly and pedestrian unfriendly cities in the nation? It means this city become unattractive to the newcomers that fuel its economy. And while most outside of Texas far overexaggerate Houston’s negative attributes (and often completely ignore its positive qualities), it’s still important that this city emphasize the availability of a lifestyle that isn’t rooted in the suburbs – an urban approach to city living which is quickly becoming the norm across the nation. Houston should be a city where both the urbanist and suburbanist can live in harmony. A reinvigorated Downtown will go a long way to making that a reality.

Houston wants walkability (even if it doesn’t want to admit it)

This is the first of a series of posts about Houston that I’ll be completing over the summer. Personal posts will be few and far between.

Houston is often labeled one of the most – if not the most – automobile-dependent cities in the United States. Of course, that label isn’t without a harsh dose of reality: Houston is defined by its car culture. The freeways are enormous and grow bigger by the year; the mass transit system is woeful for a city of six million; the sprawl keeps sprawling and the drivers keep driving. Empirical data doesn’t help Houston’s case for urbanity. Neither does the media. It’s difficult to argue that Houston’s residents actually desire the walkable urban environments that most of the city so desperately lacks – after all, it’s the people who live here who made the decision to accept the car culture, right? An outsider may assume that the city is stuck in its ways. It’s easy to point to massive highway projects like the Katy Freeway as evidence of Houston refusing to abandon the automobile as the most inefficient form of transit.

There’s a heavy dose of truth to that as well, unfortunately. I could easily drive twenty minutes to the “edge” of town, out on the Katy Prairie, and watch construction crews erect more and more far-flung suburban McMansions. If you drive westward down Westheimer past Highway 6, the cityscape becomes immensely depressing. Houston’s sprawl has finally reached Fulshear of all places – well over 30 miles from the Downtown core – yet nobody has questioned this insane inefficiency. I fear that, in a few years, Fulshear’s cute little sixteen-block town grid could be enveloped by the suburbs like so many rural communities before it (Alief, Clodine, Cypress, and Katy itself). And what happens after that? Will the suburbs and their fleets of F150s and Tahoes march to the shores of the Brazos? Time will tell.

But even in these upper-middle-class enclaves of traditional suburbanism, there is a desire for walkability. Even the most sprawl-inducing developers know better than to eschew the powerful draw of walkability, as much as they contribute to the metro area’s lack of it overall. You’d be hard-pressed to find a new suburban community that hasn’t been blessed with extensive systems of sidewalks and trails that stretch on for miles. Drive through Cinco Ranch on a warm evening and you’ll see a plethora of suburbanites jogging along the avenues. They may be the top contributors to the sprawl, but even they need to get outside every now and then. Jogging is a big deal in Houston.

It should be noted that suburban walkability isn’t true walkability. It’s still hard to access basic retail out in Greater Katy, much less be able to walk or bike to your job. Things like buying groceries or getting haircut still require a vehicle – and in the hot Texas sun, walking for any reason other than exercise on treeless trails (like shown above) is borderline insane. It’s obvious that the suburbs are not built for people who want to be able to walk places – but even they don’t completely abandon walkable environments. Further evidence of this can be found in one of the classic American icons of urban sprawl: the shopping mall.

If you look past the fact that the mall is a dying breed of development that relies immensely on car culture, its high density of shops packed in an exclusively pedestrian environment is inherently walkable. Malls offer a number of key qualities that make them attractive replicas (but unfortunately, not actual representatives) of the sorts of urban environments you’d find near Downtown:

• They are exclusively pedestrian. They provide wide concourses for walking that are far separated from vehicles.
• They feature dynamic and attractive storefronts and public art. Go to any decently constructed mall in Houston (like the Galleria or Memorial City) and you’ll notice that the stores feature “urban” facades that utilize exposed bricks, false windows and other architectural details that imitate a conventional outdoor storefront. Malls usually pay attention to installing public art displays (like the Memorial City clocktower and carousel) and creating plazas where people can meet and relax.
• They incorporate a wide variety of amenities into a small space. More successful malls have gone as far as to construct their own playgrounds, ice skating rinks and other leisure facilities.

When malls are carefully constructed to enhance the walkable environment, they thrive. There’s a reason why Memorial City and the Galleria are so immensely popular: they create walkable environments that their competitors sorely lack. Town & Country Mall was once Memorial City’s chief rival on the westside, but once MetroNational started pouring money into the latter’s revitalization, the former didn’t stand a chance. T&C simply lacked the attractive, lively pedestrian experience that Memorial City continues to offer. It was an outdated, quiet place that never really excited nearby residents. (Of course, being obscured by the monstrous Katy Freeway/Beltway 8 stack interchange didn’t help).

But its location is not to blame, because CityCentre replaced Town & Country a few years ago with incredible success. In my opinion, CityCentre is the prime example of Houston’s potential for walkability. It is a defining development that sets a new precedent for land use in the metropolitan area – one that deviates from the car culture. CityCentre does nearly everything right when it comes to mixed-use.

CityCentre’s main avenue and central plaza in the evening.

CityCentre presents a miniature urban environment in the suburbs. I recall a lingering skepticism when it first opened about four years ago – could an upscale urban mixed-use development really succeed in the middle of Houston’s leafy suburbs? – but that has since given way to immense success. There are a number of compelling reasons why the development has made such an impact on the sprawliest side of the city:

• The development features large, handsomely decorated sidewalks lined with vegetation, artwork and other aesthetically appealing details.
• Ground-level retail is abundant, and the storefronts come right up to the sidewalk, eschewing the traditionally Houstonian habit of separating the pedestrian from the shop (or, even worse, not constructing sidewalks at all).
• The design limits automobile traffic, encouraging visitors to park in garages on the edges of the property. (This in itself isn’t necessarily walkable, but it’s about the best that can be done in the context of Houston’s automobile reliance and lack of transit connections.) Cars that do make it onto the narrow streets travel slowly and yield to walkers.
• Streetside parking separates pedestrians from the road, creating a safer and more comfortable streetscape. In addition, street parking is metered, restricting the number of cars that enter the property looking for a good spot. This cuts down on congestion.
• The development features a central plaza (pictured above) that is surrounded on all sides by restaurants. Live music events are often held there. This creates a lively outdoor environment and nightlife that encourages locals to visit in droves.
• CityCentre also features a large Lifetime gym, a Studio Movie Grill and an upscale hotel. These businesses add immense entertainment value and make the area a weekly destination for locals.
• Finally – but most importantly – CityCentre is mixed-use at its finest. In addition to providing office space, the development is stacked with hundreds of apartments (and more on the way).

Of course, there’s a limit to how much a “car-independent” development can do in the nation’s most car-centric city. CityCentre still relies heavily on having abundant parking for visitors and residents and has developed an unfortunate conflict with the neighboring Town & Country shopping center over visitors using up their parking spaces. Mass transit connections are virtually nonexistent – which is, of course, an issue that requires government action. (I’ll always dream of a streetcar connection between CityCentre and Memorial City, but that’s best left to a later post.) CityCentre also benefits from being an “upscale” development in a wealthy area – it doesn’t really exemplify the densification that needs to take place in some of Houston’s middle- and lower-class areas (especially around Downtown). Walkability shouldn’t be limited to serving rich urbanites, although it will probably be some time until these new design philosophies trickle down to those with lower income levels.

We can expect future mixed-use developments around Houston to emulate CityCentre’s pedestrian-centered design philosophy. In fact, some proposals further down the freeway are already looking to do so. Along Park Row north of the Katy Freeway at Highway 6 developers are already constructing Central Park, a mixed-use development that may not end up being quite as walkable as CityCentre is but still relatively dense. Even more exciting is a proposed redevelopment of the nearby former ExxonMobil Chemical headquarters into a $1 billion mixed-use center that would feature the same sort of pedestrian amenities as CityCentre. Closer into the city there are high expectations for the Downtown USPS center, which is about to be closed and sold to developers. That site was the focus of an urban design competition by Hines in 2012, which produced some truly incredible visions for how the valuable bayoufront property could be utilized. There’s also two new developments along Westheimer – River Oaks District and the beautiful Azalea Court – that will bring some beneficial density to the area. Across Houston, mixed-use is becoming a mainstay of new development proposals. The city can expect great changes from significant densification in the years and decades to come. Of course, this is all driven by an increasing demand for walkable, urban lifestyles – a national trend that is especially prevalent in Houston, where last year’s Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey by Rice University found 50% of metropolitan residents desiring to live in mixed-use communities. As much as Houston loves its freeways and sprawl, it wants walkability – even if it doesn’t want to outright say so.