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Valium Buy

• Architecture, Place
• Comments 0

Map of HCC/Ensember area [Courtesy Morris Architects]

Cite Valium Buy, Editor, Raj Mankad, and Editorial Chair, Christof Speiler, spoke on KPFT 90.1 FM radio's Connect The Dots with host Robert Muhammad on Wednesday, December 9, 2009. They were on during the final fifteen minutes of the show to discuss the new issue of Cite (number 80) and an article about the future of Midtown and Houston's other "inner loop neighborhoods".

The full audio of the Cite magazine segment can be downloaded and listened to below in mp3 format:
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Buying Adipex

• Architecture, Place
• Comments 0

Buying Adipex, Originally published in Fall 2007, Cite 72 is now available free online in pdf format. Click on the titles below to download.

Letter from the Guest Editor

By 2035, Pics of adipex, the Houston Area will grow by 3.5 million people. That’s the forecast from the Houston-Galveston Area Council (HGAC), and while there may be argument about the numbers, formun on adipex, there’s no doubt the region continues to become more populous. Buy adipex from us parmacy, The big question is how Houston will grow. There are fundamentally two choices: Extend outward or densify inward. The former has been the pattern for 150 years, but it comes with high costs, Buying Adipex. Low-density housing takes up vast tracts of land, cheap adipex, requires significant new infrastructure, Weight loss average on adipex, and forces residents to drive more and more just to meet everyday needs. The HGAC extrapolates current trends and redicts the loss of virtually all open space in Harris County, including wildlife habitats in the Katy Prairie, savegeneric adipex, an increase in driving from 26 miles a day to 30 per person, Top ten adipex offers, doubled commute times, and 32,000 lane miles of new road and highways to accommodate that scenario, adipex canadian pharmacy.

The alternative to sprawl is more density in the existing urban fabric, Adipex or phentermine no prescription necessary, and while that’s been happening for over a decade now, in the form of townhouses in the Heights, Uptown condominium towers, canada adipex diet pills, downtown lofts, Adipex no prescription free shipping, and Montrose apartment complexes, it is not a result of planning. Most of the region’s infrastructure spending goes to the suburbs, adipex buy online, and city ordinances make it more difficult to construct urban building types than suburban ones. Buying Adipex, Instead, urban growth is the result of market forces, and, with more appropriate regulations, we could easily have more. Adipex generic no prescription, Some people will always want to live in the suburbs, but there are many who would rather live closer in given the opportunity.

Denser development means not as much loss of green space, order adipex 37.5 mg online, requires less infrastructure, Adipex buy inurl, is easier to serve with high quality transit, and reduces commute times. HGAC examined an alternative to the future sketched above, adipex overnight delivery, concentrating growth in existing urban areas, Adipex p classified non, and found 25 percent greater transit use, 10 percent fewer vehicle miles traveled, less impact on floodplains, phentermine adipex, and better air quality. Hmo health insurance adipex diet pill, But growth puts strains on the existing fabric. New development can mean less tree canopy, more cars on the streets, fewer places to park, more demand on parks, and new buildings looming over old ones, Buying Adipex. As more neighborhoods are feeling these effects, political pressure increases for additional constraints on growth, buy adipex from canadian pharmacies. It is entirely within the power of the City of Houston to slow or stop new development within city boundaries. Rx adipex, But nobody short of the state legislature can limit regional growth. The formula is simple: Every two units of housing that aren’t built in the city mean an acre of open space lost on the outskirts. Buying Adipex, A better answer, it would seem, is to densify intelligently.

Urban density poses important questions: What building types are appropriate, adipex weight loss stories. What kind of infrastructure do we need. Adipex diet discount phentermine pill, And how do we make decisions about growth. In this issue of Cite, we look at how these questions are being answered, adipex p tablet. Six new mixed-use projects will soon increase retail space inside the loop by 20 percent and add 3,600 residences—more than the number of houses built last year in the Woodlands, Cinco Ranch, and Sienna Plantation combined, Buying Adipex. METRO’s transit plan is focused not on suburbs but on dense urban places, Adipex form u s overnight, and the debate whether to put rail lines in city streets is only part of a broader question—how to use the public right of way. We see different answers in Downtown, Neartown, and the Rice Village.

The big issues are what kind of city we want to build, and who gets to decide. Who owns the street is being answered, in fact, street by street, project by project, by market forces, developers, neighborhoods, and multiple levels of government. Together, these entities are changing our city, sometimes slowly, sometimes abruptly, and figuring out the ground rules as they go.

Table of Contents

Citings
Courting Change: Resurrecting the Historic Harris County Courthouse
by Anna Mod

Q+A: Ulrich Franzen on the Alley
by Michelangelo Sabatino

Features
Dealing with Density: Constructing the City's Legacy Takes Care and a Little Clairvoyance
By Christof Spieler

Instant Urbanism: Mixed-use Lifestyle Centers, Coming to an Intersection Near You
By Susan Rogers

Street Talk: Rethinking the Space Between Buildings Can Accommodate Growth
By Christof Spieler

Knit Wit: Homegrown Talent Takes Its Tactile Message to the Streets
By Julie Sinclair Eakin

Tracking Change: The Current Word on Houston's Commuter Agenda
By David Crossley

Mercury Rising: Kirksey's New Skyscraper Heats Up the Medical Center
By Julie Sinclair Eakin

The Modern Mr. Jones: A Legendary Houston Architect Shares His Tall Building Portfolio
By Ben Koush

Readings
Robert Moses Reconsidered
By Michelangelo Sabatino

HindCite
Living with Trains in the First Ward
By Marci Perry.

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Adipex Buy

• Architecture, Place
• Comments 4

Scene from Fifth Ward [Photo by Caitlin Ann]

Adipex Buy, Mount a map of Harris County on the wall. Throw a dart at it, adipex diet pills. Order adipex online, Photograph the little map quadrant where the dart lands --- not with the idea of necessarily taking pretty pictures but to document what the area looks like. That was Paul Hester's assignment to his Rice University photography students last Spring, buy adipex without a prescription. Adipex beaumont tx, The students posted their photographs to Flickr and I selected out a few with special permission. Click the map links for their other photographs, adipex sibustat. Adipex diet online pill, Chris Lafferty --- Hardy Street map

Jen Woelfel --- University Place map

Jibber Fisch --- North Main Street map

Caitlin Ann --- Fifth Ward map

YPkelly --- Harrisburg and Wayside map

Bryantc88 --- Mayfair map

Evan Graehl -- Hennessey, I-10 and Beltway 8
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Shannon Moore -- 59 and I-10 map

KK Zhang---Sharpstown Jewelry Exchange Center map

Renee Fan---Second Ward map

Icewindthunder---Southampton and Boulevard Oaks map

Alice Cheese---McHard Road and Blueridge Road
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Order Ambien Without A Prescription

• Place
• Comments 0

Order Ambien Without A Prescription, A home on Cavalcade that backs up to an apartment building in disrepair, September 2009 [All photos April Lind]

Coming from a lower-middle class family in a small town in the Texas Hill Country, I was awed by the sheer opulence of everyone and everything around when I came to the “big city” to study at Rice University. Despite news reports and rumors of there being another, Ambien as anti anxiety, grittier side to Houston, the only one I experienced was where everyone had more than enough to get by—until the summer of 2009.

I worked for Avenue Community Development Corporation, allergic to ambien is lunesta safe, a local non-profit that focused on bringing more affordable housing to the Washington Ave and Near Northside areas of the city. Snorting ambien, Far from the manicured and quaint ranch style homes of the West University area where my apartment is, much of the Near Northside looked like the photograph my grandmother once showed me of the Depression-era Austin she grew up in. Ambien pantyhose,

My main job was to gather and analyze statistical data on the physical condition of homes in the Ryon subdivision, which is roughly identified as the area south of Cavalcade to Finch St, and east from Robertson to Hardy St, torrent ambien zolpidem. About a week into my internship I began assessing the condition of the local housing stock—and I cannot forget the deprivation, Order Ambien Without A Prescription. Many of the houses were in desperate need of major structural repair; the majority had some combination of broken windows and/or doors taped together, Ambien mail order drug stores, vinyl blue tarps tied over holes in roofs, and poorly cared for lawns that were either dead, filled with debris, drug interactions for ambien, or overgrown. Ambien hydrocodone, Empty lots were being used as illegal trash dumping zones, and were filled with everything from garage sale items to dead domestic animal carcasses. Some lots still had a physical dwelling structure standing on them, canadian pharmacy ambien, but were completely abandoned and quite literally falling over to one side. Ambien or lunesta rozerem best, [caption id="attachment_1939" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The roughly average home condition in the Ryon neighborhood"][/caption]


Old industrial plants, located inside the neighborhood, that have been closed for decades draw gangs, ambien versus restoril sleep medicines, graffiti, Ambien affecting lymph system, and invite violence. Order Ambien Without A Prescription, There was several instances where the land of a housing lot was divided into two or more “houses,” one of which was usually about the size of a tool shed with the address “2812 -C” spray painted next to it. At one address, this additional “house” on a lot had what appeared to be a makeshift outhouse behind it, ambien cheep. This was the kind of thing I was used to seeing in the rural areas around where I grew up, Next day delivery ambien, where it isn’t always possible to have reliable water service; I never imagined I would see an used outhouse within miles of the downtown of a city revered for being affordable, modern, and resilient in the face of economic downturn, why no food with ambien.

[caption id="attachment_1912" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="An Avenue CDC house adjacent to a house in need of repair"][/caption]


This experience really opened my eyes to the very real and very desperate need in this city for better urban planning, Ambien low price, more affordable single-family housing options, and much more community and volunteer involvement in these areas. The Near Northside is one of a few areas of Houston that is known to be mostly comprised of those well below the US median income level and unable to make ends meet, ambien women insomnia. I met one family where a mother, her teenage daughter, her son, and both of their infant children all lived in a 600-square-foot one-bedroom apartment, Order Ambien Without A Prescription. The building next to the one they lived in had been burned in a fire some months ago and was condemned, International ambien, but never torn down or repaired. There is debris of the burned building blocking part of the parking lot and an assorted array of homeless that take turns sleeping in the roofless building on half-burned furniture. All three of the adults in that apartment worked alternating shifts of minimum wage jobs, ambien 300 mg suicide, but it still wasn’t enough to get them into at least a two-bedroom. Ambien stomach melatonin, There is a very real, very urgent need for the construction of good, sustainable, ambien pharmicokinetics, low-income affordable housing here that a lot of us don’t see or imagine exists only a few miles from the penthouses of the Galleria. Ambien pill image, [caption id="attachment_1903" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Avenue CDC developed affordable homes across the street from an abandoned factory"][/caption]


The beautiful part of seeing such deprivation, however, was getting to work with the local residents and dedicated volunteers active in trying to rehabilitate Washington Avenue and the Near Northside, ambien cr info. There is a small army of philanthropists, Ambien 10 mgs, AmeriCorp members, city workers, community builders, and residents that really get out into the community and get the neighborhood active in its own preservation, both from a cultural and physical urban standpoint.


April Lind is a senior Social Sciences major at Rice University. She hails from Leander and Cherry Spring, TX..

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Buying Reductil

• Architecture, Place, Preservation
• Comments 1

Buying Reductil, International Coffee Building design by Lake/Flato Architects and BNIM [Renderings and historic photos courtesy Buffalo Bayou Partnership, current photos by Jesse Hager]

At the time of the completion of the International Coffee Building in 1910, Commerce and Main Street were bustling with the activities that the street names imply. The International Coffee Building served as a roasting and distribution point for one of the key industries of the era. Since then, reductil abbot, rail supplanted shipping and Houston, Circumvallate papillae reductil, with the aid of the automobile, moved rapidly out from its historic center at Allen’s Landing. The downtown has shifted its energies away from the water, meridia verses reductil. Buildings now are designed for firms that track materials digitally or sell digital commodities. What was once a vibrant center of city life has been literally overshadowed and left for appropriation by vagrants or artists, Buying Reductil. Meridia versus reductil, Some years ago the Buffalo Bayou Partnership invited a few architecture firms to submit proposals for the restoration of this small building at the water’s edge in Northern Downtown. In the booming economic climate of yesteryear the proposal for such a small project must have seemed slightly preposterous. Yet to Lake/Flato whose careful brand of Texas Regionalism appealed to the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, reductil iron, this little project was clearly seen in a larger context. Buy cheap reductil, Based out of San Antonio, Lake/Flato formed a partnership with the Houston office of BNIM to usher in new life to this historic building.

[caption id="attachment_1287" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="Historic Photograph of the International Coffee Building"] Buying Reductil, [/caption]

No matter how small, renovating a building that is nearly 100 years old and sited in the floodplain is no minor undertaking. Adding to the difficulty, information on reductil, the city has literally built up around the Coffee Building; currently it is depressed fifteen or so feet from Commerce Street. Reductil slimming pills uk, The design proposes a simple solution of a pedestrian bridge linking the street to the second level of the building. The bridge will continue to run past the building as an overlook to the bayous, at an elevation that will be high enough to safely observe even the worst floods, reductil bromocriptine. The second level, Reductil prices brisbane, accessed from the bridge, is to be the new home office of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership.

The first level of the building being susceptible to flooding prohibits permanent occupation, Buying Reductil. The solution was almost too obvious---fill it with boats, reductil aviation. Here you will be able to rent not only canoes and kayaks to explore the Buffalo and White Oak Bayous but also bicycles to travel along the expanded trail system. Duromine tenuate reductil differences, Windows at ground level will be slightly enlarged to install overhead doors, opening the building completely to the grounds around it and adjacent plaza.

The plaza is to be a splendid exercise in architectural restraint, bye reductil. Buying Reductil, Existing concrete, the former foundation of Cleveland and Son’s Grocer Supply, is to be cleared of weeds and grass and left virtually as it is today. Rectangular holes at regular intervals are to be left open as visual cues toward the former columns of the building that once overshadowed its smaller, Compare prices for reductil, younger neighbor.

As you move up the building the third level is currently planned to be left open for conference space or possible learning programs. One of the highlights of the renovation will be even further up, reductil leaflet, on the roof. Reductil uk cheap, Here decks give vistas of the bayous while areas of vegetated roof display the environmental concerns of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and the first stages of a rainwater collection system. Many events will be hosted on this deck to the pleasure of intoxicated guests and gracious hosts, Buying Reductil.

Overall the renovated International Coffee Building is a simple, considered civic project, reductil meridia. The historical openings of the building are respected only to the degree that it is convenient, Reductil tablets, and opened or modified to fit new uses as is appropriate in any renovation. There is a clear nod to the history of the building without presuming that it must remain as it stands. It will be re-clad, dangers reductil, reinforced, Reductil with other drugs, and enlarged with a structure added atop to accommodate elevator and stair thereby altering the profile. Buying Reductil, Before any preservation purists scream foul, note that these small changes will bring about a life not seen in this building, or this area of the city, in decades. This is not to be an architectural landmark; it is a part of the fabric of bayou history and intends to be the steward for its future.

Buffalo Bayou Partnership will stage events from this building ranging from the informal boat and bike rentals to the Dragon Boat Festival and Regatta finish line, buy reductil no prescription. These activities, Buy reductil online, by their nature, ask you to participate in the city, not just through boating with children or movies in the historic heart, reductil in france, but by pleading you to think about your presence, Reductil pharmaceutical properties, where you put your energy, in the city. Through the necessary displacement of parking the suggestion is to consider the nearby rail or, reductil uk, gasp, even the hike and bike trail system.

The tricky thing about this building is that it really isn’t meant to make you want to stay, Buying Reductil. Architecturally the building conveys a respectable deliberation of its context. It is environmentally responsible, will have a few sustainable bells and whistles such as the green roof and water collection, and some unexpected yet thoughtful additions such as the overlook. It is by no means a destination building, and that is the point. It is a place along a path, a destination if only to reorient you and send you back out into the city. Buying Reductil, One doesn’t come to discover a place from its origin. From an origin one discovers the paths of growth, change, and the natural or industrial systems that formed the identity of the place.

If we learn anything from history it has shown that interaction with your environment increases stewardship. It is a simple equation that as your surroundings become of value, you have a vested interest in caring for them. In two years, 2011, Houston will celebrate its 175^th anniversary. Allen’s Landing, if all goes as planned, will finally be integrated into a burgeoning trail system. The International Coffee Building will be restored. As this and other Buffalo Bayou Partnership projects are completed, all of us will be dared to discover our city a little further.

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Alprazolam Over The Counter

• Infrastructure, Place
• Comments 3

Houston Needs a Mountain Alprazolam Over The Counter, by Lysle Oliveros, recipient of a Rice Design Alliance Initiatives for Houston Grant

This project was Lysle Oliveros’s 2009 Masters Thesis project. The concept originated as a point of humor during a dinner party. Alprazolam before dentist, “I asked my neighbor if he recently mulched the yard (due to a pungent odor), and he replied that the smell was from a local landfill established previous to the housing development.”

Subsequently, in further study, alprazolam no membership, Oliveros noted the Blue Ridge Landfill sought a permit to possibly be one of the largest and tallest earth formations in Texas—in short, Alprazolam without a prescription, a “Mega Landfill.” “It wasn’t my intention to join the ranks of the opposition and create an architectural idea that tried to solve the problem or even to act as an advocate to stop the mountain of garbage; I simply asked what role an architect or designer can have with an infinite amount of fill material and a concerned community.”

The thesis looks at three interventions to our garbage habits, with the intention that the architect and the community could actually shape and sculpt a landscape and reverse negative landfill stereotypes to create land value and natural amenities from current and future methods of consumption.

Phase One: Monumental Index (click on image to enlarge)

The current methodology of garbage collection is stacking garbage into a large garbage mountain, alprazolam td uk suppliers. In this phase the community would continue this current method, Who makes alprazolam, but rather than creating one large mountain over time, each year would be its own autonomous mountain, creating an annual “index.” Each monument compared to the next would create an awareness of the massive amount of disposed consumer goods, alprazolam hilton pharma. For example, the 2008 “index” created by Hurricane Ike debris would have been 400 feet tall, Alprazolam Over The Counter.

Phase Two: Choreographing the “Waste-scape” (click on image to enlarge)

Phase two explores the decay rates of garbage. Alprazolam s903, With some items decaying faster than others, the landfill would be sectioned off to compartmentalize garbage by type. The architecture is interfaced with sized tubes to control the air and water that reaches the material, alprazolam ftd. Through these apertures and garbage segregation, Alprazolam odt, the “waste-scape” can be choreographed not only into a desired form or shape, but could also generate new programs such as lot farms, wetlands, alprazolam no presciption, leisure activities, Risks taking alprazolam while pregnant, bird migration stop offs, and nature trails. Alprazolam Over The Counter, The monuments contain the history of our recent past.

Phase Three: Garbage Behavior: the New Cultural Ritual (click on image to enlarge)

The excitement of the community creates a new ritual, alprazolam 25mg. Infrastructure is inserted for the automobile, .5 alprazolam email prescription, and all garbage is completely separated and is literally turned on its side to become vertical fills. A mountain of glass, plastic, alprazolam .5 markings, paper, Alprazolam 2mg, soil, concrete and metal line the infrastructures retaining walls. These mountains produce new resources that can be harvested, alprazolam no script overnight delivery, reused, Legal alprazolam, recycled and produce a power source that fuels the needs of the infrastructure.

Lysle Oliveros is a project designer at Morris Architects, a design firm based in Houston, Texas, Alprazolam Over The Counter. His current work there included collaborating on the firm’s entry to the international competition Urban Re:Vision DALLAS, which received an Honorable Mention, 2 alprazolam mg. Lysle received his Bachelors of Architecture from the Ohio State University and was recently awarded his Masters of Architecture degree from Rice University. Order alprazolam argentina, This education has given him a personal perspective to use architecture as a vehicle to serve the people and environments it is designed for, and to research and explore positivity in our inevitability.

Bird's Eye View

Physical Model Photographs

Map Showing Blue Ridge Landfill Location

View Larger Map

For more information on the Blue Ridge Landfill
Blue Ridge Landfill Settlement: Shadow Creek Ranch’s New Race Against Waste [Swamplot].

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Houston Pavilions: Mind the Gaps

• Architecture, Place

Map showing Houston Pavilions in its context [Background map from houstondowntown.com. Photo below from Main street courtesy of Houston Pavilions.]

In Cite 77, Max Page reviews the new Houston Pavilions in an article entitled "Downtown's Downtown: Houston Pavilions and an Urban Dilemma." Click here to download a pdf copy. Below Christof Spieler responds. Max Page looks at the design decisions that turned the Houston Pavilions into something akin to an urban mall. Those decisions might be the project’s undoing. But the Pavilions suffers from another problem as well, and one that is a familiar problem in Downtown Houston: connectivity. Downtown is not really one place, it’s several: the highrise offices, the Theatre District, Market Square, the courts, the ballpark, the convention center. Each of these places draws a different group of people at different times of day. Together, they have the potential to make a real downtown. The most successful pieces of Downtown tend to be the ones that bring together the different downtowns, drawing different crowds at different times of day. Bayou Place and the Rice Lofts are where the office buildings meet the theaters. Discovery Green connects the offices and the convention center. This not only makes for a more interesting place; it makes for a more economically viable one. Restaurants that have to rely on lunch or dinner alone will not do as well as those that can serve both. But Houston’s problem is that the different uses often don’t connect. And that is the Pavilion’s problem as well. The tenant mix – music, books, food – is suited to creating a 24-hour place. But for that to work Pavilions must pull in people from the other parts of Downtown. And there, its surroundings aren’t always helping. Pavilions borders three of Downtown’s pieces: the (small) retail district at Main Street Square, the “T” shaped highrise district, and the sports/convention area around Discovery Green. The place where Pavilions gels most with its neighbors is on Main Street. Here, the project opens into a plaza facing the light rail tracks, opening Books-a-Million and Forever XXI to the street. Across the street is the Marriott, with a gallery and a Starbucks on the ground floor. Diagonally across the intersection, next to the light rail station is Macy’s. And next door is the old Sakowitz building, which was slated to house an American Apparel store (though, given the economy, that seems unlikely now). This is the remnant of Houston’s old retail Main Street, and it’s a great bit of urban synergy: Pavilions strengthens its neighbors and they strengthen Pavilions. The office district wraps around Pavilions on two sides. It ought to be delivering swarms of office workers to restaurants and the book store. But at lunchtime on weekdays, Pavilions seems empty compared to the streets a few blocks away. What’s wrong? Well, obviously, the empty storefronts (Pavilions is less than a quarter occupied) don’t help. Beyond that, though, there’s a gap. The big office buildings are a block north and a block west of Pavilions, and the blocks in between have little activity. One dead block can turn off a pedestrian easily. The problem is compounded by the Pavilions’ north side, which, unlike the plaza on Main, is closed off and unwelcoming, especially from a distance. And then there’s the inconvenient truth of Downtown: much of the lunchtime activity is underground. With a tunnel connection, Pavilions could easily draw lunchtime crowds, like the food court in Park Shops (another urban mall) does. But the tunnel connection was deleted, along with Pavilions’ residential and underground parking, before construction began. There’s another gap at the east end of Pavilions. Here, there’s another nice street level plaza. The Italian restaurant across the street, long stranded by itself, now has a neighbor. But beyond that restaurant are asphalt parking lots. From here, Toyota Center and Discovery Green are only three blocks away. They seem like natural complements: teenagers in from the suburbs for a concert at House of Blues could picnic in the park beforehand, or basketball fans could get food. But those parking lots are a big moat; they actively discourage pedestrians. If you don’t know there’s a destination at the other end, you won’t walk there. So the synergy is elusive. Three years ago, Houston Pavilions was three vacant blocks, a black hole drawing life from its surroundings. Filling those blocks with restaurants, stores, and a concert venue is clearly a step forward. But the ultimate success of Pavilions – and its neighbors – depends on bridging the gaps between the pieces of Downtown. If you would like to send a letter to the editor on the topic, please email editor[at]offcite[dot]org.

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Houston: The Walking City

• Infrastructure, Place

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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Market Square and the Great Big Empty

• Place

A parking lot to the southwest of Market Square [Photo by Christof Spieler]

Chronicle columnist (and former Cite editor) Lisa Gray recently reported on the plans to rebuild Market Square Park with a dog run, a food stand, and maybe a farmers' market. This builds on a report done by the non-profit Project for Public Spaces, which in 2005 named Market Square to its list of the 16 squares worldwide most in need of improvement. Will the new plan succeed? Market Square park was rebuilt only 15 years ago. Despite its comfortable benches, shading trees, and interesting public art, that design was clearly a failure. Market Square is populated only for an occasional special event; the rest of the time people (except the homeless) avoid it or hurry through. This new attempt benefits from what we've learned since then: successful parks need more than green space; they need attractions to draw people in. The local poster child for that approach is the popular Discovery Green (also built with the assistance of PPS), which is drawing crowds all through the week year round thanks to varied activities (including the current skating rink.) But rebuilding the park won't solve Market Square's biggest problem: a broken urban fabric. Here, in the heart of Houston's original townsite, half the buildings have been replaced by parking lots. These are the black holes of the Downtown landscape: not only do they not contribute any activity, they deaden the activity around them by creating a feeling of emptiness and insecurity. What Downtown needs most is not better parks but fewer empty lots. The best thing that could happen to Market Square would be new retail and residential buildings (with structured parking) around the park. It's too much to ask for a park to fix this. Discovery Green has drawn new development. But it's the exception, not the rule, among parks. Its success is due not just to good design and programming but to its size -- 5 times as large as Market Square -- its location close to office towers, hotels, and the convention center, its large construction budget, and its permanent onsite management. The parks that PPS hold out as models are in neighborhoods that generate a lot of activity. Parks can focus and draw from the city around them. But parks rarely create activity where there was none before. The master plan we really need is a master plan for the Historic District around Market Square. It's been through multiple revitalizations. The most recent one, from the 1990s, seems to have run out of steam. "Urban" developments like Woodlands Market Street are the new trend in retail. But truly urban places like Market Square have a hard time competing. There are some successful restaurants (Treebeard's, Mia Bella, Kim Son) that remain and a few new ones opening up. But the area lacks an identity. Retail and restaurant owners don't know what's going to happen next door, and customers don't see Market Square as a destination. In Houston, though, master planning is done only by landowners, and an area with fractured ownership has no plan. A dog run in Market Square would be a neighborhood ammenity for several hundred households nearby. A farmers market would be nice, though we seem to have more markets (Rice, Midtown, and Greenway Plaza, to name a few) than farmers at this point. A cafe is nice, but will it draw customers that the shuttered restaurants across the street haven't? Rebuilding a park is a good thing. But it's not enough.

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