Urban Edge

In 2020, the City of Houston and regional stakeholders cemented a resilience strategy and a climate action plan, which were adapted to reflect COVID-19’s impact on urban life. The Kinder Institute has gathered information and updates on the progress made in the first year of these efforts in one place.

The stress of not being able to make rent or mortgage payments can negatively impact sleep quality and bring on other serious health problems like obesity and cardiovascular disease. There are a number of policy options that could make housing more affordable and stable for low-income adults and their families.

A new study shows large, small and midsize cities with the highest — and lowest — minority homeownership rates. The No. 1 city in the U.S. is a Houston suburb.

There’s no question the United States is living off past investments in infrastructure without building the new infrastructure we need — or even upgrading the old infrastructure we have. It’s time to invest heavily in quasi-public infrastructure and ramp up effective public oversight of that infrastructure so it will work for us in emergency situations.

How rebuilding freeways has helped heal mid-20th-century transportation scars in cities like San Francisco, Dallas, Syracuse and Washington, D.C., along with a cautionary tale from Houston.

Like many resources in Houston, access to the COVID-19 vaccine is concentrated on the west side of the city, while the greatest need and impact of the disease is concentrated among the residents on the east side. 

Shifts in travel habits because of the pandemic, including less driving and more active transportation, drove the metro’s improved ranking among the most climate-friendly areas in the U.S.

A major, federally led infrastructure strategy is vital to meeting the nation’s challenges. A new Kinder Institute report shows that to be truly responsive to the needs of America’s cities and regions, a bottom-up consultation process with regional and local leaders and a focus on three priorities will be necessary.

Whether you ride a bike full time or part time, just for fun or for transportation, BikeHouston’s new executive director wants to make it safer to ride a bike in Houston. It’s why he left New York to come here.

Responses to an essay on music and place lead a writer to reconsider his musical relationship with the two big cities he knows best — Los Angeles and Houston.

In the past 10 years, the number of people who have died while walking in the United States has shot up by more than 50%. In Houston, pedestrian deaths have more than doubled in that time — spiking 125%. In “Right of Way,” Angie Schmitt examines the crisis of pedestrian injuries and fatalities across the U.S. — a crisis that disproportionately impacts low-income and minority communities.

I know, it's weird — the thing about how music always associates with place. I first heard the Beach Boys on a snowy winter's day in my brother's chilly bedroom — and decades later became the mayor of a surf town. And even though I have been listening to "Born To Run" for 45 years, I now always associate it with a drive from Austin to Houston a few years ago.

We couldn’t help but notice that the suburb north of Dallas consistently ranks high on many of those “best cities for (fill in the blank)” lists we see so often. What is Plano’s secret?

Since 1983, the innovative SPARK parks program has taken a multi-use, community-based approach to increasing park acreage by turning school playgrounds into community parks. The effort has helped put many Houstonians within walking distance of active green space.

Making the cities of tomorrow more resilient to pandemics and other threats won’t require completely rethinking planning and design as we know them, but it will require functional problem-solving, practical solutions, better data mining and analysis, and more flexibility. All of which have helped the beloved grocery store chain improve its bottom line during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From an eviction moratorium to support for infrastructure, transportation and affordable housing, there are many moves President Joe Biden may make that will benefit cities. Here’s a look at some of them.

A recently released traffic index shows the dramatic effect remote work and stay-at-home orders had on congestion levels in more than 400 cities around the world, including 80 in the U.S. Houston saw 33% less traffic in 2020 than in 2019, and the congestion level dropped from 24% to 16%. But as the COVID-19 vaccine is more widely distributed and driving habits move toward pre-pandemic levels, the declines are expected to disappear.

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.”

What does cancer treatment have to do with fighting climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and neighborhood-level urban planning? Taking preventive steps today can literally save us all tomorrow.

A shocking 70% of the nation’s 1,036 majority-Black ZIP codes are considered “distressed,” while only 19 — 1.8% — rank as “prosperous,” according to one analysis. Two of those prosperous ZIP codes are in Fort Bend County.