Urban Edge readers had expansive taste in 2025.
Articles about public housing, rapid population growth, a fast-changing workforce and several other topics ranked among the most-read Urban Edge stories this year drawing on Kinder Institute researchers’ expertise.
The diversity of issues reflected the wide array of challenges confronting Houston in 2025, a period marked by dramatic federal policy upheaval that changed the lives of many local residents.
As 2026 approaches, here’s a look back at the top stories that intrigued Urban Edge followers this year.
Public housing is effectively over in Houston. What comes next?
Kinder Institute researcher Steve Sherman’s article about the Houston Housing Authority getting out of the public housing business touched a particular nerve.
Sherman detailed the “quiet successes and loud failures” of the decades-old program, while also foreshadowing the shift toward publicly subsidized but privately run housing.
Houston’s 15-year growth in three charts
Even in a city known for its rapid expansion, the sheer scope of Houston’s growth continues to astound.
Urban Edge unpacked the Kinder Houston Area Survey’s analysis showing the addition of 1.5 million residents over a decade and a half, expanding at a rate only eclipsed by Dallas-Fort Worth.
Half a million Houstonians could soon change careers. Is the region ready to help them?
Don’t love your job? Neither do a decent chunk of Houstonians.
A Kinder Institute Houston Population Research Center survey showed nearly 20% of respondents in the workforce said a career change was very or extremely likely over the next five years. If that rate holds across Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, about a half-million people will be looking for a new line of work.
A new state plan calls for big investments in public transit. What it could mean for Greater Houston.
Getting from Houston to Dallas, Austin or San Antonio via public transit is way too difficult. State transportation officials admitted as much this year, unveiling a plan that outlines potentially major spending on public bus and rail transit across Houston.
Transit advocates hailed the proposal as a long-awaited acknowledgment of underinvestment by the state. But will the Legislature get on board anytime soon?
Abandoned properties are making Houston hotter. Could these changes turn down the heat?
Some cool drone-assisted research out of Texas A&M revealed that abandoned buildings and paved-over properties are causing higher temperatures across parts of Houston, an issue that Kinder Institute researchers explored this year.
Demolishing these spaces is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, so lead researcher Dingding Ren suggested repurposing the spaces into urban greenhouses, vertical gardens and community hubs.
Houston region projected to attract millions more residents by 2050. Will it maintain its appeal?
Demographers expect Houston’s size will continue to swell over the next 25 years. But several factors — including broader economic trends, climate change, immigration patterns and shifting political winds — figure to shape the region’s population growth.
As Dan Potter, co-director of the Kinder Institute’s Houston Population Research Center, said: “Other cities around the country who have seen their population size plateau or, in some cases, decline serve as a reminder: Attractiveness is not guaranteed.”
Do Houston residents support mass deportation? Here’s what 9,800 of them said
Immigration policy might stoke strong passions, but Houstonians are largely united in their attitudes toward the issue.
A Kinder Institute survey of nearly 10,000 people, the largest in the organization’s history, found a strong majority of local residents preferred creating pathways to citizenship over mass deportations. Most Houstonians also backed people living in the U.S. illegally who arrived in the country as a child or owned a small business, though they widely supported deportation of those arrested for drunken driving.