largeTEXAS

I agree with Nick_G that downtown has an issue attracting a large segment of Houston's population and visitors in part because of the percieved dominance of the homeless in certain areas.

I don't agree that the City or any other governmental or planning agency has the right, should, or even could do anything directly to remove these people from downtown.

In my opinion, the real issue that many attribute blanketly to homelessness, is actually the continued blight of certain key properties/places and the lack of activity by non-homeless people in these and other certain areas. Renovate or replace derelict properties with well-designed, pedestrian-oriented buildings/spaces and, all-the-sudden, you have nice, active places where homeless don't want to congregate.

The market downtown is moving in that direction, albeit slowly. Abandoned buildings, parking lots, underutilized properties, etc. have and will continue to be replaced by (mostly) better buildings/places.

What the City, planners, and powers that be should and continue to do is add vitality to the public areas like sidewalks, parks, and its properties, to slowly surround and drown out the problem areas with nicer surroundings.

A few other thoughts:

1. Revamp the sign ordinance to allow traditional and electronic billboards and signs in downtown proper. Also allow neon once again.

2. Allow property owners adjacent to proposed rail stops the opportunity to work with the City in designing and paying for rail stops. Certain stops could be built inside or connected to structures like the Houston Shops. You want TOD, then partner with landlords to build it.

3. Give tax incentives to developers/landlords that create public spaces, add public art, add vertical gardens to blank walls and parking garages, and/or do extensive landscaping. Embrace how (sub) tropical Houston is with plants everywhere!

I love everything about the plans except that Allen Parkway nor Memorial are really addressed. 2-3 times a week I run that stretch from Shepherd to Sabine and am always annoyed by the car noise. Often it feels as though the whole bayou park is just a giant median between 2 highways.

In the visionary spirit of TheNiche, my ambitious proposal would be to tunnel Memorial from Shepherd to Sabine. That would allow the park to open up that much more to the baseball field just north and west of Memorial and Waugh, the park in front of the old YWCA, and Glenwood Cemetery, not to mention the neighborhoods to the north of Memorial.

Allen Parkway is, in many ways, our signature roadway. I would add stop lights and nice wide crosswalks at Dunlavy and Elenor Tinsley Park. That would help slow the traffic a little and, maybe, make it feel less like a highway. Other than that, I would leave it as is.

And, while I'm dreaming, the reconstruction of I-45 is nearing and I would LOVE to somehow force TXDoT to seriously consider tunneling the highway from the interchange with 59 to the I-10. Then, from West Dallas to Washington Ave, I would keep the old I-45 spaghetti bowl of overpasses and repurpose them as part of the Buffalo Bayou Park somehow, a la THE HIGH LINE (had to). I think it would be awesome to go biking on that stretch of the freeway, haha.

Except that we're not imitating either city. Central Park was wholly artificial- in this case the city is taking a naturally occuring body of water and using its right-of-way to create a central, urban outdoor space.

Well, not true. Olmsted "imitated" the landscape in Manhattan that existed before development started in the early 1600s (image attached and National Geographic story here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/09/manhattan/miller-text).

Computer-generated image of how Manhattan likely looked before development.

Similarly, Houston is attempting to "imitate" the more natural environment that existed in and around Buffalo Bayou before development cleared so many of its native trees, added scored of exotic plants, and caused so much silt to build up on its banks. Personally, I'm excited Guy Hagstette and SWA seek to imitate to natural surroundings of the bayou and add more amenities. If we're lucky, this section of the bayou will become iconic to Houston as Central Park has become to NY.

Cool. What about a view from the street?

The Astrodome needs to house a new, gigantic Art Car Museum. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of art cars that have been retired and are sitting rusting in fields and garages. Art cars are Houston's folk expression known worldwide. The Astrodome is a bit of a folk icon at this point. Combine the two and you have an outstanding destination.

I went to the event yesterday and was blown away by the plans. I hope they upload the renderings soon, but, essentially, they are treating this as Houston's "Central Park." The amenities the newly-redone park will have combined with the expanded and dedicated wilderness areas will create a truly beautiful, usable park.

In short, there will be:

- at least 2 opportunities for restaurants/cafes

- a formal dog park with a small pond for the dogs

- another pond for kids and people who casually want to interact with the water

- new wetlands

- thousands of new native trees

- the removal of exotic-species plants

- a sizable budget for ongoing maintenance of the bayou and its surroundings

- 2 concert venues, dozens of art spaces

- dozens of canoe launch sites and rentals

- new trails including different types of trails through different parts of the park

- better connection to the surrounding communities

- 3 new pedestrian bridges, etc.

Since this city will not get itself together with a comprehensive plan, let alone zoning, projects like this will become the rule, not the exception. Residents have voted down zoning numerous times, but when projects like this sprout up, they cry. I have no sympathy for a place that refuses to think and plan long term. That regressive thinking will continue to pit neighbor against developer and prevent this city from developing into a well-planned "utopia" where both single family and multi-family residences co-habitate peacefully.

And, since there is no plan, I see developments like this as god-sends. At least terms such as "walk-ability" and "density" are being discussed while Houston crawls towards being a place that resembles a smarter, more sustainable, transit-inclusive, viable, post-1950's-era city. Yes, developments like this would be better placed where other, similar buildings were being built and amenities such as wide sidewalks, stores, and markets were within walking distance. But, that would suppose a lot more changes that this city has not made and will not make anytime soon. So, in the mean time, we get developments such as these in "random" places. Welcome to Houston.

It's a mistake to not include a more significant residential component to this. The current renderings are a far cry from what the market could support. I would be upset, to say the least, if I were an investor. I hope they at least build this with the ability to add density later.

There is a law that you can't build within 15 feet of the property line along a major road. That's the reason the Perennial Post Oak development two lots down from BLVD Place filed a variance request: so they could build 1 foot from the property line and not 15 feet.

Exactly, that's all - a variance request. Had Wulfe wanted to built to the curb, he could have, almost without resistance. No one in the city would have protested. A development of this quality and scale should not be allowed to add a row of parking in the front. Houston needs to get its act together.

It is pedestrian friendly. It's just a small strip of parking. I believe it's because of the restrictions against building too close to the properly line along major roads.

Not true. If the developer had wanted to develop to the sidewalk, aka zero lot line, it could have. The developer caved under pressure from some of the retailers, especially Whole Foods. It's a shame. Such a great-looking and permanent-looking project except the dang parking strip in front. Too bad.

So much for "high rise." Only five stories Sad for such a good location.

I think a midrise is much better for this location. In fact, 5 stories is the perfect height IMO. Plus, what highrises have street-level retail?

Used to live in the Montrose and at one point our community association (Hyde Park) talked to the owner about their current plans for the specs strip center, since it seemed mostly vacant and tenents were moving out. This was back before the recession... I want to say 2006 and at that time their plan was to not renew leases as they expired, which is why the blockbuster went away years ago before the more recent blockbuster mass closings. Once all tenents were gone, they were going to tear the whole center down and build a high/mid rise with street retail and a look that fit in the area.

Yes, that center and portions of land around it are owned by a large REIT with plans to build high density mixed use when the time is right.

For all of your statements (without any facts to back them up), you seem to have not read the rankings at all. Houston ranked 2nd in "life satisfaction", another term for "quality of life" that you so denigrate Houston for lacking. And you don't even seem to understand your own gripes about Houston. Sure, interconnected bayou parks would be great. But, you do not seem to know that there are efforts being made to do just that. You also do not seem to realize that Houston has one of the largest park systems in the US. You complain about sidewalks without seeming to realize that Houston has undertaken to upgrade those very same sidewalks. I suppose just because they haven't repaved the sidewalk that you want done, that apparently they aren't doing any at all.

Rail? Bike lanes? All of the projects that you think they should be pursuing, they are pursuing. Not fast enough, you say? Well, turn on the stinkin' television and see what kind of public financing environment we live in! Don't gripe at Houstonians. Gripe at John Boehner.

Every few months, someone goes on some long-winded screed about how "Houston" isn't doing this or that. In almost every case, "Houston" IS doing this or that, or moving in that direction. What the poster SHOULD be saying...but never does...is that they do not understand how government or government funding works, how little they know about what is going on behind the scenes, or even in front of their nose, or that the poster just simply has no patience, so it must be "Houston's" fault. My favorite line in the above post? The last one. Really. Anyone who visits Houston for an hour knows it well? Dumbest statement ever. I say, prove it.

Oh, no! Not you too, Redscare. I thought you were one of the more level-headed ones. I understand what you're saying that efforts are being made. I too have argued and continue to argue exactly the same points to people who criticize Houston. Right now, I am mostly playing devil's advocate. Since this is a discussion about why we have fared so poorly in two categories for so long, I feel it’s necessary to peel back the layers, take off the rosy-colored glasses that almost all us proud Houstonians wear, and look at our city from a critical standpoint. I'm not trying to take any unnecessary jabs at my hometown; merely, asking the questions I often wonder about.

I respectfully disagree that real action is actually taking place in this city. I've worked and volunteered with the Buffalo Bayou Partnership for about a decade. I've spearheaded efforts to lease and restore the Historic District downtown to a place where people want spend time. I helped plan the new Market Square Park. I helped plan and launch the first Urban Marketplace focused on redevelopment of "urban" Houston. I've worked in the non-profit and real estate worlds trying to help many urban and pedestrian-oriented projects get off the ground. A couple have successfully been built, which was exciting.

I admit I may be jaded having been so close for so long to many of the organizations and projects you mentioned and probably uninformed of many of the new projects happening. Most of the ones you and others have mentioned, though, are so underfunded and lack adequate power to make significant changes at this stage. All this while other gigantic infrastructure projects get funded (yes, I understand the current condition of the capital markets...it's my lifeblood to watch and react to them on a daily basis). It's simply been the culture of Houston in the last two decades, as it has been in most major post-WW2 cities, to subsidize sprawl while neglecting the urban core. Luckily, Houston is changing. I just don’t think it’s even close to enough.

I back up my statement that anyone who visits here sees just how uncommitted this city is to the type of quality of life that many urbanists (for lack of a better term) and tourists value. Name one walk-able district here in Houston. Truly walkable. Not somewhere where one has to park and is able to walk only one or two blocks max before having to step out into the street or trek through someone's front yard. The Rice Village, parts of the Medical Center, and downtown are probably the only places that have even passable sidewalks. Of those, which are places one would like to linger? Downtown has a couple of attractions and the Rice Village is passable at best. Of the cities someone mentioned that are frequently-touristed and also car-centric such as Los Angeles and Dubai, there are many distinct districts and attractions in each. Los Angeles has dozens of walkable areas throughout the region, each of them vastly superior to any in Houston.

I agree, Houston is making efforts to become more walkable and more transit-oriented, but so is ever other major city in the country (and, especially abroad). Houston is beginning to be on the right track, but lacks the necessary leadership and big ideas to make significant enough impact. Metro is a joke; BBP has made good headway, but is underfunded and way too slow to make progress. Is there an agency or governing body that is overseeing the entire bayou park master plan? Where are the big ideas? What happened to the city that built the Ship Channel and the Astrodome??

Nothing. Great cities grow organically, not by contrivance.

Agreed. I'm not advocating Houston build some tourist-driven, wanna-be theme park attraction. Quite the contrary. I think Houston needs visionary leadership that is focused on quality of life issues and making Houston better at what it is (or should be).

Instead of incentivizing development on the fringes by building ludicrous infrastructure such as the Grand Parkway or the widening of I-10 (and countless other suburban and exurban-promoting projects), further subsidizing development that undermines the city's natural evolution towards density; use a fraction of those billions on building the best interlinked bayou park system possible; negotiating the rights to run commuter trains on the already-built heavy rail to Galveston; issue RFPs for and actually build on strategically located Metro-, City-, and County-owned land; build ACTUAL, dedicated bike lanes throughout the city (or, at least, the Inner Loop); build ACTUAL sidewalks in burgeoning urban areas that need it (ie Lower Westheimer, Galleria area, the Museum District, Montrose, etc.); etc. Not to mention pushing the proposal to link Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas by heavy rail that's accessible from downtown to downtown. These would make Houston so much more appealing to Houstonians and, yes, also tourists.

One of Houston's biggest problems is that it uses "business" as an excuse to plan a more sprawling, more suburban city. Houston works hard to make it difficult or impossible to develop anything urban or pedestrian focused. The insane parking requirements for retail and mixed use development consistently kill forward-thinking projects that address the pedestrian over the car. The city's lack of any sort of planning might, at first, look as though it's pro "business." In reality, the lack of planning or any type of real zoning (not the type of zoning that the city employs now which in many cases is stronger and more regressive than any 1916-era zoning laws) makes it more difficult for foreign, domestic, and local real estate investment (see Gerald Hines' keynote speech to ULI Fall Conference 2010).

In short, Houston has and continues to work against itself in evolving as a city that values quality of life. Anyone who visits for an hour knows it well. No wonder tourists and foreign investment steer clear.

So, we all know this, but the ranking kind of confirms it:

"Houston's Best : #2 in cost of owning business space, entrepreneurial environment and life satisfaction, #3 in commute time and cost of living

Worst : Last in foreign job-creating investment and international tourists

Details: Houstonians love Houston. So do US business owners. The rest of the world ... not so much. With lax zoning laws and plentiful space, Houston's low cost of living and doing business is a dream for American businesses and middle class workers, but the rest of the world pretends as though the city doesn't exist. The city has fewer international tourists than any other comparable global city."

Question is, what should be done about it? Is it a lost cause? I'm convinced Mayor Parker and the city's top business leaders and organizations like Houston Partnership need to address this head on. It's not impossible to create buzz and attract domestic and foreign investment to a city (or part of a city) with no previous cache or positive spotlight. Look at Bilbao with the Guggenheim, Chicago with Millennium Park, the High Line in NY's far west Chelsea, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, South Beach in Miami, Dubai, Barcelona (formerly a smug backwater), etc.

It seems all projects posted on HAIF for Austin are residential or hotel. I don't know much about their development history, except for one shiny office tower that Facbook is in that was built in the 2000s. The fact that they don't have many office buildings going up (to my knowledge) compared to resi/hospitality, what does that say about their market?

Means people want to live/be in Austin. Houston needs more of that

Wow, it looks really boring!

In fact, it is not only not a flaw in the rendering, it is considered quite a dignified artistic choice for a modern architect to make. If a boring box has confusing windows, it is NOT to be confused with a shoebox. On one hand, shoebox towers are so discredited in the '00s that architects are falling all over themselves to be the authors of blobs and twisted prisms, yet when the building linked below opened in 2003 and was met with horror in citizen opinion, some architects went on to call the people conservative and phobic for disliking it:

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=79175784&size=o

Architecture is disciplinarily obsessed with forward progress. Perhaps this is the form that the urge to be a great author most readily takes when applied to built environments; maybe it is primarily the thing which they consider integrity, based on the idea that past solutions are not suited to our world today; or maybe playing with exciting new structural and technological possibilities is the most inexhaustible trick up architects' sleeve in a generation where architects are getting unprecedented public attention and acclaimed commissions which lend them freer rein or discretion than was common in the long years of post-Urban Renewal backlash, but don't actually have very much to offer up as a justification for why their particular ideas are helping the world in a compelling or conscientious way. Regarding the last, I have been expecting the discipline to seize on environmental 'sustainability' as that [enabling] rationale when technological glory whiz-bang gets unconvincing amid a rising tide of problems; regarding the first, there are always more than enough people lining up to be authors of objects, and what we need more of is people thinking regionally, and thoughtfully training and acting accordingly. The second, based on the premise that a heady but alienating new age needs an architecture that cannot draw very directly from the human thought-& life-style in past ages, is less immediately important than the other two.

(Yet only *immediately.*) It does bear some good discussion. The Renaissance was very much a child of Medieval work, and the Enlightenment likewise of the Renaissance. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to a revaluation of rationality, and Romanticism, Realism et al. were in turn eschewed by Modernism's abstracted ordering. Modernism had some faith in Enlightenment ideals, and you can see, as you look at the detailed organizational strictures of Modernist structures, that the original postmodern text, "The Dialectic of Enlightenment", was right as it claimed, "enlightenment is totalitarian." It sought to impose its worldview on everything it could touch, right down to gridding inhabitants' worlds in machines for living. Deconstruction was to break down the hierarchy and pretense to authority that totalizing worldviews are built upon. It would reassert "the 'fragmentation' of narratives and the individual's ability to be 'the artist of his own life'", as an article last year on common strands linking postmodernism and modern commerce put it. The individual standing out against the grid. In the hands of Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, and the former Modernist Philip Johnson, among others, Postmodernism hit architecture with a wave of reference and diversity. Architects today largely distance themselves from these aesthetic solutions as being tacky and undignified. If they were considered self-indulgent, well, self-indulgence hasn't stopped. Another wave of Postmodernism had the likes of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi have taken architecture's role after modernism to be that of recognizing and portraying the disorientation of life with all of previous human existence's higher narratives undermined. The Wikipedia page on Tschumi says, "Responding to the absence of ethical structure and the disjunction between use, form, and social values by which he characterizes the postmodern condition, Tschumi's design research encourages a wide range of narratives and ambiences to emerge and to self organize. Although his conclusion is that no essentially meaningful relationship exists between a space and the events which occur within it, Tschumi nonetheless aligns his work with Foucault's notion that social structures should be evaluated not according to an apriori notion of good or evil but for their danger to each other." This disturbance and alienation of certitude and self is present in the Wexner Center at Ohio State - considered by its architect Eisenman to be a very didactic work, and you'll have to see for yourself what he means: http://www.desi.../eisenman/1.jpg

In this building at Rice, deliberately acknowledging but then thumbing its nose at a standard grid as it does... I think it's fair to suggest that, precisely along the lines of mls' comment regarding workplace window disputes, it may be that the staggering slots have been substituted for uninterestingly legible treatment of the facade as a way of asserting the individual against the modernist high-rise heritage of non-unique cubbyholes, within the ideological history described above. [Whatever is up in Spain,] SOM just doesn't succeed in making the inhabitants' cellular role less architecturally anonymous or any more meaningful by doing so here.

...In forward progress, I can't say this design has anything real to offer Houston. Not beyond an imitation of the newest status quo. As we look at those windows on the rendering, the final word on the off-balance attitude expressed in the design aesthetic and in Postmodernist theory (not just of the built environment) goes to Ravi Zacharias, a Christian speaker who, when walking around the Wexner Center, asked with a smile, "I wonder if they used the same techniques when they laid the foundation?"

This design a result of the new status quo? Acknowledged. But, for the most part (except for the western-facing curtain wall), I think the design works and offers the Med Center an exciting and much needed bit of design freshness.

These are pics of one particular bit of (amazing) Spanish architecture that I think SOM clearly references:

Moneo's Murcia Town Hall Extension

http://www.jaunted.com/files/admin/murciaextension.png

http://www.arikah.net/commons/en/b/bc/Murc...dralSquare1.jpg

It's too darn bad the freakin' Calais built that goofy "ground" floor parking garage. That sure was some forward thinking...

Exciting to see all these peeps out! Maybe I'm dull, though, because I prefer places that are more, well, real. To me, Victory and HP are contrived, sterile, "urban" snow globes. In my mind, they're just updated malls. Stick some shops here, a hotel there, an ice skating rink - um - a private park there. These places aren't real. There's no freedom of assembly, no actual public realm. You'd get arrested for speaking your mind if it wasn't popular. These places are all about controlling one's experience and sterilizing it so it's only the pretty and shiny things about urbanism without the fuss or grit. That's not sustainable city-building!

To me, a celebration in the Rice Village, lower Westheimer, or even amongst the strip centers on Hillcroft would be more fun and offer more authenticity than the Disneyland that is Victory or HP.

Still working out the exact design, but the developer is aiming to create a ground-breaking infill development that is cutting-edge while blending well with the neighborhood. The retail should also be a great addition to the neighborhood..

It's about time. Note the only decent place to buy athletic shoes anywhere near downtown is the Village.

In about 3 weeks you'll be able to buy some really friggin' cool athletic shoes across the street from the Pavilions at Main and Polk. The Tipping Point, in my opinion, will be cooler than anything in the Pavilions.

Rather a creative idea, feufoma.

The South is the most populous, most industrialized and fastest growing part of America; the East is where most of the country's concentrated, stratified wealth, power and learnin' were still comfortable when the people who needed economic opportunity began to look elsewhere. Cities of the Southeast have some of the advantages of the Sunbelt and South while providing East Coasters, whether college grad or midlife, not just retiree, with some feelings of safe familiarity and nearness to friends and relations back North. Many who feel like Florida is too far end up being "half-backs" and move up to the Carolinas. North Carolina and urban Northern Georgia presently have an economic turbocharge from the Midatlantic and Southern New England population just as Phoenix, Denver, Portland et al. got and get from overpriced Californian urbanized regions. The South Central states, for all their wonderful characters and the down-to-earth unselfishness they sometimes instill in people brought up in their way of life, don't build in any such advantage for Texas.

Texas is still Texas, not any national confluence of proximity and whatnot. There are heavy flows of people, talent, and money between East and South, so the short answer, for Atlanta, to all this is the same simple reason Hartsfield is such a trafficked airport. The long answer, for Texas, is that it's not even clear yet that urbanism is compatible in a positive way with the Texan ethos; so we shouldn't bawl too many tears over towers foregone, but instead wonder and work - informed by the growing pains and excesses the Twentieth Century put across the bodies of Dallas and Houston and San Antonio - on whether there are new types of built environment, buildings and landscape, that maintain what is good about the impressions Texanness makes on a person without distending it through interminable expanses of horizontal boxes *or* vertical anonymous window cells [for Atlanta, in the long view, it cannot even be said that it is making great strides amid all these projects unless they contribute to creating something much greater than a generic hybrid of L.A. and Eastern city - if that's the "New South" which Atlantans like to forget Houston and claim capitalcy of, then please *do* count us out]. And maybe spend some more time in the site's busy (and typically much more informatively thick than Going Up! threads) 'historic Houston' forums, learning and fixing more explicitly in our heads what it is that we ought to map all this thought onto.

This is my favorite post in a LONG time! Thanks strickn! You put forth a very fresh and informed perspective....one of which we should all take note.

I absolutely love the design of the tower, but I think it might clash with the scale of the neighborhood. It is supposed to go on the block with Dolce Vita and Indika, right next to the corner. Some great houses would have to also be destroyed on Avondale to make way for the parking garage.

If this will indeed become their "Galleria" area, I think this is far better than a mall to work around. But, in my opinion, this development - like many New Urbanist developments - looks cheesy and faux. I really hope these types of developments evolve into "real" cities over time because they look and feel so Disney-fied. Kudos to Austin though for planning! The Houston Galleria area is such a clusterf$#*; we seriously need to employ some of these New Urbanist principals to combat the total lack of planning and serious traffic issues.