The popular perception is that Texas’s metropolitan areas are sprawling all over the place because the state has so much land. The truth of the matter is a little more complicated, however. Yes, all the metros in Texas are sprawling – but they’re densifying as well. And when you “net it out,” the density is winning over the sprawl in the big metros – while the sprawl is winning over the density in the smaller ones.
The city has eight months of ideal cycling weather each year and has taken some sizable steps in building out its bike infrastructure in the past decade. But is anyone outside of Houston paying attention?
When a west Houston intersection was retrofitted with infrastructure to protect pedestrians, City Observatory’s Joe Cortright called the redesign hollow and ‘performative.’ But it’s not that simple.
Urban planners and designers sometimes think they have an exclusive “lock” on an understanding of place. But in fact everybody can develop their own “place gene.”
Influenced by the Garden City movement, Badin, North Carolina, is a small gem of urban planning whose design called for green space, residential areas and commercial development in proportionate amounts. The planning of small towns like Badin can serve as an example for larger cities as they continue to grow.
After a car-centric urban renewal plan irrevocably changed the town where he grew up, a young urbanist found the essence of Auburn, New York, in Southern California.
A failed plan to breathe life back into the economy of the beautiful, walkable city where I grew up left it half the place it once was, broke my father’s heart and shaped me as an urbanist.
Our public transportation systems were built on a foundation of racism, and the only way to truly fix them may be to raze them and rebuild from the ground up.
In the past decade, as home prices and rents have increased faster than incomes for many residents of Houston and Harris County, buying a home has become increasingly difficult, according to Kinder Institute research.
From funding, planning and infrastructure, to design and policing, many transit agencies essentially have built two systems with different standards for “choice” and “dependent” riders (that is to say white and Black).
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered “BLACK LIVES MATTER” to be painted on a street near the White House. The act would have been considered vandalism had it not been done by city workers.
Public art is an important part of urban design that strengthens community identity and pride. It can have cultural and economic benefits for neighborhoods and it’s accessible to everyone. Great and unexpected pieces of public art can be found across Houston. And best of all, it can be enjoyed at a safe distance from others.
American cities are caught in a cycle that goes something like this: Expand roads to mitigate gridlock, which encourages more people to drive, which produces more congestion, which is addressed by expanding roads, which encourages more people to drive and on it goes. According to a new report, the continual expansion of roads only treats a symptom — congestion — and not the disease — sprawl.
But what if we’re focusing on the wrong thing?
