Pedestrian realm cross-section showing a 15 foot minimum distance from a mixed-use development to the street [From City of Houston Urban Corridor Planning]

Raj Mankad

Houston: The Walking City

Pedestrian realm cross-section showing a 15 foot minimum distance from a mixed-use development to the street [From City of Houston Urban Corridor Planning]

The city released an implementation report for the urban corridor planning initiative, which aims to "create a high quality urban environment in areas along METRO's light rail corridors." It is the product of two and a half years of meetings, consultations, and public input. Many an expert has participated including David Crossley who posted an analysis on the new Houston Tomorrow website. I consider myself a lay person and reading the report was my first exposure to the whole concept, and my initial response was visceral. I do not own a car. I occasionally borrow my wife's and I am enrolled in Rice University's Zipcar program, but several days can go by without my sitting in a car. I mostly walk, bicycle, or ride Metro. In no sense is this behavior exemplary. Many thousands of Houstonians live without a car out of economic necessity. But I choose not to own a car, which puts me at odds with the city. Traversing the streets slowly is an exercise in alienation. It makes me weird. An oddity. It distances me from the mainstream though it puts me in much better touch with the material of the city, the dappled shade and hot concrete, the unscripted zones of semi-wildness, the massive allotments of space for utilities, the bodies at work in the city's informal economies. I have heard over and over that the defining feature of Houston is the car-centered culture and built environment. I have internalized this idea and I repeat it to others. I identify with being in the margins. To then read a document produced by the city government that outlines a series of steps for creating a pedestrian culture is a shock to the system. The implementation report encapsulates the poetry of the epic but everyday struggle of Houstonians on foot in a precise bureaucratic and technical language.
Houston has many examples of development that discourages pedestrian mobility: tall, long blank walls along sidewalks, landscape barriers between the sidewalk and building, and automobile-oriented development that places surface parking lots in front of buildings and creates discontinuity in the pedestrian environment.
"[L]ong blank walls," "landscape barriers," and "creates discontinuity." They are talking about that soul-crushing, I'm-completely-alone-in-a-cruel-world feeling I get when I am walking on Alabama under the overpass, the post-apocalyptic feeling waiting for a bus Downtown on a Thursday night, the loathing and fear, the unspoken solidarity with the other person at the stop. The core of the report consists of five bulleted points:
* The Build-within-zone would be the distance adjacent to the edge of the pedestrian realm where the front of the building is located. This is to have buildings built close to the sidewalk to minimize the distance that pedestrians must travel to access them. Since vehicle parking and circulation will not be allowed in this space, it enhances safety by minimizing pedestrian-vehicle conflicts. * Minimum built frontage means the minimum share of the lot frontage along the street (and pedestrian realm) that should be occupied by the front of the building. This provides a more comfortable environment for pedestrians by giving a sense of enclosure (versus a sidewalk abutting a parking lot) and provides direct access from the sidewalk to buildings with multiple entrances (such as a multi-tenant retail center). * Minimum transparency defines the share of the building facade that should be covered by doors, windows, soft landscaping, etc. to avoid long stretches of blank walls along the pedestrian realm. * Sidewalk entrances should be available to all properties – pedestrians should not have to travel to the back side of the building to enter, and entrances should have a maximum distance from the sidewalk if they are located on the side of the building. * Driveway spacing is vital because driveways break up the pedestrian realm, eliminate shade, and increase vehicle-pedestrian conflicts. While no property will be denied access from the adjacent street if that is their only option, driveway access would be encouraged from side or rear streets and large properties will have a minimum spacing standard between multiple driveways.
All this vocabulary stirred up strong emotions in me. "Minimizing pedestrian-vehicle conflicts." That's when I know the drivers do not want to run me over but I doubt they can see me and I doubt they have the slightest expectation someone is walking, and I wait like a chastised little boy until all the traffic has cleared before crossing a parking lot entrance. "[P]edestrians should not have to travel to the back side of the building to enter." When I read that, I recalled walking around so many buildings--getting late to a doctor's appointment, the wet grass soaking my shoes--and a lump rose in my throat. To see the policy language taking shape makes me want the changes to already have happened, or better yet, for the city-ness of Houston never to have been undone, for the streetcars not to have been pulled up and the Gulf Freeway not to have replaced the Houston-Galveston Interurban rail line. A great deal of ink has gone into Cite lamenting the sorry pedestrian experience in Houston. Now it seems that a first step has been made to end the long lament. The last third of the report, however, gets into whether these codes will be mandatory or only encouraged through incentives. I get the feeling that the document could end up far less radical than it first suggests. Let's be clear: Houston is in no danger of becoming Amsterdam. I look back at the diagrams and a five-foot-wide sidewalk seems narrow. And are there allowances for bicyclists? Kay at Richmondrail.org asks other probing questions and writes that "the recommendations in the Urban Corridors report are just that; there are still many questions to be answered and details to be worked through." The Mixed-Use/Transit Oriented Development Committee meetings are open to the public but only committee members and City staff are permitted to participate in the discussion. Visitors are asked to sign in and introduce themselves at the beginning of the meeting. The next meeting is January 14 with additional meetings to be scheduled if necessary. What: Planning Commission Mixed-Use/Transit Oriented Development Committee Meeting When: Wednesday, January 14, 3:30 - 5 pm Where: 611 Walker, 6th floor, Raia Conference Room.

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