One day before the release of the city’s Resilient Houston plan on Wednesday, a new network of resilient cities was publicly announced at the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi. Houston will be a member of the network.
Since the turn of the century, many neighborhoods in or near the heart of Houston and the state’s other large metropolitan areas — Dallas, San Antonio and Austin — have been transformed by the ongoing inflow of affluence. A change better known as gentrification.
Extensions of light rail service in areas with easy access to Houston’s major job centers have brought residential and commercial development to those areas. Researchers at the Kinder Institute wanted to find out if and how transit investments impact patterns of gentrification in the city.
Despite month after month of strong jobs reports and an economy seen as robust by most analysts, many families in Houston are struggling to make ends meet and afford basic household necessities.