An ICE 3M train near Montabaur, on the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed railway line. [Wikimedia Commons
Originally published in the Houston Chronicle on November 16, 2008 By Tory Gattis, Carrol G. Robinson, and Christof Spieler
The Great Depression was a tough time for America, but it left us with an enduring legacy of good infrastructure. Bridges built in the 1930s bring commuters into San Francisco. Dams erected in the 1930s power the Northwest. An electric railroad from the 1930s carries high-speed trains from New York to Washington, D.C. A 1930s national park in the Great Smoky Mountains has twice as many visitors as any other national park. And in the 1930s, power lines brought rural Texas into the 20th century.
Today, as our economy continues to stall, congressional leaders are discussing a second stimulus plan.
In the Nov. 2 editions of the Chronicle, New York Times’ columnist David Brooks suggested building infrastructure. That makes sense: Unlike cars or flat-screen TVs, highways, railroads, and parks are made from local materials by local labor, so stimulus dollars circulate longer in the local community and in the country.
If there is going to be a stimulus bill, we need to make sure that Houston gets its fair share. That should mean funding the projects that are already in the funding pipeline, like light rail expansion. But it also means an opportunity for new projects.
So what projects can the Houston region build now that our grandchildren will look back on in 70 years and say, “That was a great idea”? Here are six.
• The Brain Train from College Station through Houston to Galveston. Today, cities gain much of their economic strength from their intellectual strength, from engineers, scientists, medical researchers and MBAs. So we can strengthen our region by connecting intellectual centers and employment centers. That’s what regional rail can do: one line, connecting Texas A&M, Prairie View A&M, University of Houston-Clear Lake, the Johnson Space Center and UTMB-Galveston to the urban rail network that will include Downtown, Uptown, the Texas Medical Center, Rice University, Texas Southern University, and the University of Houston-Downtown and Central campuses. All that brainpower, connected by fast, convenient, Wi-Fi-enabled trains, creates one connected, more prosperous, region. And the same rail line also carries commuters to work.
• Greener, more effective bayous. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers lined Houston’s bayous with concrete. Today, we know better. Natural banks actually handle floodwaters better, and they’re not eyesores. Reconstruction of the bayous, and protection of upstream open space like the Katy Prairie, reduces flooding, reduces water pollution and creates wildlife habitat. Moreover, the crowds on the jogging path in Memorial Park, the families picnicking in Hermann Park and the kids filling the fountains at Discovery Green demonstrate that we need more parks. The bayous offer an opportunity to create new public parks all across Houston and its surroundings, as the unfunded master plan for Buffalo Bayou proposes. Projects like these are already underway on Sims and Brays bayou; we need similar improvements along the rest of our waterways.
• A less-congested U.S. 290. Serving a huge swath of northwest Harris County, 290 makes for a miserable commute. That can be fixed by adding new lanes in the form of the proposed Hempstead Toll Road, rebuilding the 290-610 interchange, and bringing on- and off-ramps up to modern specifications. The same project could also grade separate the adjacent railroad line, reducing congestion on surface streets while enabling commuter rail and add a bike path. Studies have been done and design is under way; what we need is funding.
• Twenty-first century freight rail. A locomotive can move 10 times as much freight on a gallon of diesel fuel as a truck, and it doesn’t take up space on our freeways either. Moving more freight by rail would reduce costs, reduce congestion and reduce the demand for oil. But our freight network is at capacity, and its antiquated infrastructure is disrupting neighborhoods, especially in the East End. We need upgraded lines, grade separations and new freight yards. And since Houston is one of the country’s largest ports and railroad centers, federal funds for upgrades here would bring benefits across the southwestern and midwestern United States. The recent Houston-region freight rail study lays out a blueprint.
• An air pollution superfund. The pollution in our air isn’t all our doing — Houston refines oil and processes chemicals for Dallas, Denver, Detroit and countless other places. But we’re the ones who breathe those emissions. These local costs stemming from a national benefit are a strong argument for federal grants to pay for upgrades to pollution control equipment.
• Complete streets. We’ve been upgrading our freeways for decades. But surface streets haven’t gotten the same attention, as anyone who’s driven to the Galleria knows. A good surface street moves cars effectively, safely accommodates bicyclists, pedestrians and transit riders, provides access to homes and businesses, and beautifies the urban environment. To get there, we need to rebuild streets, upgrade intersections and add streets where there are gaps in the grid. That won’t be cheap. But if surface streets are more effective, they’ll actually reduce how far people need to drive and take loads off of freeways, reducing the need to spend money there.
Building these six projects would help the local economy in the short term, but it would also help us in the long term by building connections to research and education, improving access to job centers, reducing flooding, adding parks, cleaning the air and moving goods more efficiently. That’s stimulus we can believe in and that our grandchildren will thank us for.
During the summer of 1999, when my wife, Rhonda Radford-Adams, and I stepped out on a limb and decided to both quit our jobs to begin on an incredible journey now known as the Museum of Cultural Arts Houston (MOCAH), we had no idea what impact our work would have on Houston. What we did know for sure was that we were committed to the idea of bringing public art and creative learning and life experiences to inner-city youth and communities. Through a myriad of public/private partnerships and collaborations involving development authorities, schools, community organizations, and major corporations, MOCAH has been enabled to fulfill its mission of using art and creativity as tools for social and community development.
Almost ten years later we are both honored to be co-founders of an organization that has actively and deeply engaged more than 11,500 youth, ages 8-18, in the design and production of more than 90 murals, sculptures and other public art projects. The public/private partnerships that have been forged to facilitate this body of work has supported more than $2 million in social investments in some of Houston’s most underserved neighborhoods.
MOCAH’s two most recent partnerships embody the power and potential that such collaborations can have, not only on the community but on the lives of people in the community. This summer young MOCAH artists created public artworks for Buckboard Park, which is a development through Greenspoint Redevelopment Authority in collaboration with Knudson & Associates. The Dinerstein Company, in collaboration with Clark Condon & Associates, sponsored the design and production of a series of three mosaic murals for the swimming pool courtyard of the Millennium Greenway Luxury Apartments. This summer more than a dozen high school students from all over Houston converged in a downtown studio for MOCAH’s Public Art Camp (MPAC).
The big picture for MPAC is to provide middle school and high school aged youth with indelible vocational experiences in designing and producing public art. The young participants must accrue 50 hours of community service with MOCAH in order to become eligible to receive a paid apprenticeship through MPAC. During the 50 hour community service period the young artists learn how to enhance an environment using public art. They experience a transformation of their own as they spend more than 400 contact hours working alongside professional artists to learn about teamwork, planning, design, and production of public art. The artwork for Buckboard Park includes 12 mosaic sidewalk medallion inlays, five mosaic hopscotch patterns, and a giant 40-foot-long and 5-foot-tall mosaic caterpillar play structure. The second half of the apprenticeship was spent creating the three mosaic murals for the Dinerstein Company apartment development.
Jessica DeAlba, a 17 year old senior at HSPVA, is a great example of how this work can impact the life of a young person. Jessica became involved in a MOCAH project when she was a fifth grader at Edison Middle School. During her stint at Edison MS, Jessica was involved in the design and production of over 25 mosaic murals that line the hallways and exterior walls of the campus. From then on Jessica found a way to keep herself engaged in virtually every public art project that MOCAH produced. She now has more than 40 public art projects in her portfolio and she has not even graduated from high school. Because of her intense project experience and aptitude for leadership, this summer Jessica served as the MPAC Youth Project Manager, a role she carried out with the confidence and determination of a seasoned professional. “It’s a big challenge and a lot of responsibility to have to be in charge of people who are as old or even older than you, but it’s also fun to work on these projects and help other teens realize that they can do something positive and creative that makes a difference in the community,” says DeAlba.
At the end of the day, these types of partnerships are playing an incredibly vital role in supporting local artists, empowering youth, revitalizing communities, and creating lasting legacies for residents and visitors to Houston to appreciate for generations to come. Oftentimes the process alone takes years to plan and sometimes longer to complete, and because of the sporadic occurrences of these types of projects in neighborhoods and communities across Houston it’s not always easy to see and even more difficult to measure the impact of these partnerships. Nevertheless, the effects are real and the transformations are taking place one brush stroke, one ceramic tile, one child, one block, and one community at a time.
Businesses and organizations that initiate and embrace such partnerships are accelerating the transformation of Houston into a truly world class artistic and cultural destination. These partnerships are helping change the lives of youth that may never know exactly what a redevelopment authority or commercial developer does but they will never forget what these types of experiences have done and are doing to make their life and the community they live in a better place.
Reginald Adams
Executive Director/MOCAH
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