Placemaking

From the hills behind the City Hall in my adopted hometown of Ventura, California, it’s less than 1,000 yards southward to the Pacific Ocean. This constrained piece of topography creates a small urban gem of a downtown: streetscapes, restaurants, stores, offices, residences, parking garages and a beachfront promenade, all within eight or so square blocks, creating a lively street life that connects a historic downtown to the beach. 

A few months back, Joe Cutrufo and his family packed up and moved from New York to Houston. Since arriving in town, Cutrufo says he’s been doing a lot of eating (taking advantage of the city’s talented roster of Vietnamese restaurants; riding his bike (he’s spending more time on his bike now than he did when he was in New York); and working. He’ll have to maintain his pace, both on the bike and in the office, to accomplish all that he wants to do as the new executive director of BikeHouston.

In 2001, the trailblazing Eleanor Tinsley told “American Forests” magazine about her father’s solution to the shortage of public spaces such as parks and community centers: “Use the churches during the week and the schools in the evening and on weekends.”

Preventive health care as a concept isn’t anything new or exciting, but there are parallels that can drawn from it to both the current pandemic and climate change crises. Early in the time of COVID-19, the U.S. was caught flat-footed in its response — unprepared to successfully track the spread of the disease and unable to adequately protect many frontline health care workers because of personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages. Who wants to spend money to manufacture and stock up on respirators and surgical masks that may never be used?

Carol Coletta, president and CEO of the Memphis River Parks Partnership and a thought leader on urban issues, believes in the power of civic commons to benefit the common good.

My favorite street is closed to cars at the moment. But not to people. And that’s just fine with me.

Walkability. It’s hard to know what that means in a city built like Houston.

Punch in an address on the Walk Score website and it’ll spit out scores — from 0 to 100 — for how walkable and bikeable a location is, as well as a transit score based on public transportation options.

Earlier this summer, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research released its 2020 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report, which set up a foundation of consistent and accessible information about housing-related issues that are relevant to all Houstonians and Harris County residents. It’s the first of what will be an annual report on the continued analysis of year-to-year data, with the goal of tracking trends in the region’s evolving housing system.

Since the death of George Floyd, the United States has been in nothing short of a reckoning with systemic racism — a reckoning that has, in part, focused on how we remember our past.