I’ve always found it interesting that Arcade Fire’s 2007 album The Suburbs was written with Houston’s sprawling suburbia in mind. The band’s frontman, Win Butler, was raised in the Woodlands and wrote much of the concept album based on his experiences in the outskirts of the city:
We moved to the suburbs of Houston when we were young. Being a very young child, it’s like going to Mars or something. The blast of hot air when you get off the plane at Houston. Just trying to talk about some of the feeling [on the album].
The Suburbs is one of my all-time favorite albums not only because it sounds great, but because the lyrical content and musical atmosphere really do match the environment of suburban Houston. It sounds like where I live, and no other band has created something that hits so close to my own home. Artists can write about coastal California or New York City, but The Suburbs is the only musical work that talks about the most ordinary and, to some, boring of places – the suburbs.
Houston is the epitome of suburban America. An abundance of cheap, flat land and a lack of development regulations (zoning) have made Houston ripe for suburban development over the past 40 years. The city extends nearly 600 square miles, larger than any other city in the United States (save for Oklahoma City). Of course, this just encompasses the City of Houston – not the multitude of suburban developments that lie outside the limits yet within the metropolitan area. Greater Houston, as it is known, encompasses 1,300 square miles of urbanized area. The entire metro statistical area (not just urbanized), as measured by the Census Bureau, spreads 10,062 square miles over ten counties. Houston’s population growth rate between the 2000 and 2010 Census’ was 25.2%. This ranks among the highest in the nation, and with solid economic growth (mostly thanks to continued investment in energy), low taxes and a development-friendly attitude, it will continue. In addition, the city maintains nearly 800 miles of freeways, which radiate out of Downtown in all directions. These major thoroughfares – Interstates 10 and 45, U.S. Highways 59 and 290, and State Highways 6, 8 (the outer beltway), 99 (the outer-outer beltway, under construction) and 288 – have encouraged an unmitigated explosion of ultra-low density suburban sprawl in a rough circle around the city, with a radius nearing 30 miles from Downtown.
As discussed in my last post, this has left the inner city relatively undeveloped. To compensate for the lack of a dense urban core, Houston has developed a multitude of urban “pockets,” districts like Uptown and the Energy Corridor. These commercial centers, distributed pretty evenly throughout the city, encourage continuing suburbanization. In effect, Greater Houston is simply a series of successive “edge cities” – densified commercial pockets on the edge of a city’s developed area – that continue to push people further and further away from the center. This map highlights the major commercial districts and edge cities within Greater Houston:
Note how most of the “edge cities” are to the west of Houston – which is also where a majority of the suburban sprawl has been constructed.
I put together this animation of the last 25 years of Landsat imagery of Greater Houston to show the continuously moving boundary of the urban area:
Clearly, developers are not afraid to consume increasing amounts of land – which, in Texas, is an overly abundant resource. With the controversial construction of an unprecedented third arterial loop around the city, Texas Highway 99 – the “Grand Parkway” – suburbia will continue to crawl across the flat western prairie.
I enjoy the suburban life. It’s comfortable and roomy. While I may not life in the biggest house, there is definitely plenty of space for everybody, and the atmosphere is nice. There are few scenes I enjoy more than my neighborhood in the late afternoon, with its abundance of greenery – a canopy of oak trees, blooming flowers, lush lawns and a dazzling mix of orange, white and blue in the sky. However, I’m fortunate enough to live in a part of town that has existed since the late 1960s – that’s the only reason why there is so much dynamic scenery. The newer suburbs lack anything close to the aesthetic diversity of those east of Highway 6. Each house in my neighborhood is different, with varying architectural styles and characteristics. No two houses are identical. Yet newer developments outside of Houston are the definition of cookie-cutter; every house is constructed with the same materials, and they all follow mass-produced blueprints. They are each the product of a single developer. There are no trees in the new suburbs.
I may have gone off on a tangent, but there is an essential point that needs to be emphasized – if we continue to encourage suburban sprawl, Houston will lose its character. Nowadays, developers seem to lack interest in building anything interesting. There has become an established norm to the sprawl. New neighborhoods feature many planning ideas that contrast sharply with those from previous decades:
- a lack of intersections – new subdivisions feature more cul-de-sacs and dead ends
- a lack of vegetation
- increased sparsity and reduced density – new developments aren’t built right next to each other; they stretch further into undeveloped areas instead of connecting with already developed areas
- cookie-cutter methods – houses are more similar than they are different
Compare these two images. The first image is of a part of the Memorial district, just west of Beltway 8, which was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. The second is of an area just east of the Grand Parkway, built in the mid 2000s.
While it’s difficult to compare development from two different eras and areas, the trend is clear. New subdivisions lack almost any foliage. They champion out-of-the-way road layouts that encourage an already problematic car culture. And they bypass the concept of landfill altogether – Houston has plenty of pockets of land closer to the city that would be ideal for new residential development, yet construction continues to radiate out of the city at a disturbing pace.
The environmental consequences of such trends are disappointing. Houston has been feeling the pressure on its road infrastructure for quite some time. Just recently, the city finished a multi-billion dollar reconstruction of Interstate 10 from Katy to Interstate 610, widening it to over 20 lanes (including frontage roads) at some points. The massive project involved completely demolishing and rebuilding the stack interchange with Beltway 8, which was barely 20 years old. Plans are being developed to bring similar renovation to other roadways nearing capacity, such as U.S. Highway 290 northwest of the city. Houston already has a reputation for poor air quality, securing its place as one of the nation’s most polluted metros. The spreading sprawl will only contribute to this problem, and require more government investment in roads – already a black hole for taxpayer money. In addition, the quality of life of many Houstonians is severely diminished by suburbanization. New suburbs lack the aesthetic qualities of their older counterparts. The lack of dynamism further removes the already weak relationship with nature that is an essential part of our existence. New developments abandon the beauty of nature. They don’t encourage the planting of trees and give homebuyers little land to work with, which is ironic in a region where there is plenty of it to use. They turn what could be scenic waterways or parkland into linear ditches and barren plains. The incentive to go outside at all is nonexistent. A lack of road intersections or easy routes to commercial development or parks makes walking a ridiculous and pointless exercise. If it takes over half an hour to get anywhere at all, why walk? Car culture is already an enormous burden on the average American’s quality of life. It encourages the obesity epidemic and uses absurd amounts of energy. Houston’s outer subdivisions are the primary culprits for this continuing trend.
A friend of mine lives in a neighborhood near Katy. Like most of the surrounding area, it’s a master-planned community full of cookie-cutter houses and almost completely without trees. A sign along the entrance road ironically emphasizes how it’s a “green” community The sort of urban planning that developers champion nowadays – where neighborhoods are labyrinths of concrete roads, fences, and rows of identical houses – is the exact opposite of green. It destroys our relationship with nature – and nature itself. Houston is heading towards a future where, if unchecked, a multitude of suburban developments will cripple quality of life and hamper inner-city development and densification. If Houston wants to establish itself as a healthy and sustainable metropolis, it must counter the explosion of the suburbs and reinforce urban infill, back into the city itself.
Alternate Amnesiac 