A Town Square For Houston

[Texasota]

Some of the blocks of Capitol and Rusk are already done, and it doesn't look like any lanes of traffic have been removed, nor is there any separation between the tracks and the other lanes. It looks like a shared lane, similar to the setup in part of the medical center.

 

The reason I keep returning to Market Square is that I believe that it's probably the easiest and most realistic prospect for a square downtown that meets your definition. 

Again, zero demolition would be required; all work could be done within the right of way.

 

It's true that Public Works would balk at narrowing roads; the traffic engineers over there love nothing in the world more than widening roads. They dream about it at night. Nevertheless, there are precedents for it, and it's completely realistic to envision the Downtown Management District paying for it. 

 

You keep talking about an intimate, closed-in feel; well, Market Square is one of the few places in the city where most of the existing building stock was actually built at an intimate, pedestrian-oriented scale. That's extremely difficult to do with new construction. 

 

Narrower roads than Congress and (particularly) Preston don't really exist downtown, so unless you narrow an existing street you have to build off of Main, but I'm not convinced that Main really works as the primary connection point to a square. Squares work best when they are *between* things, not just next to one thing, so if the other three roads are too wide and busy then the square will not be used. People generally tend to walk the shortest distance possible unless they're somehow forced to, so if they have to make an unnecessary detour to get to a square they'll usually just ignore it and go on their way.

 

Anyway, if you're hell bent on a square being connected on the rail, i think the block between Main, Prairie, Preston and Fannin makes way more sense than the block you mentioned. First of all it doesn't have an enormous office tower about to go up on it, but even beyond that, the surrounding blocks are overall at a much more appropriate scale.

 

Of the four full block faces that border this block:

• Two are entirely older, more intimately-scaled buildings
• One is about half older intimately-scaled buildings and half vacant
• One has a brutalist building that is...ok. It vaguely mimics a store-front rhythm, though of course the glass is smoky and opaque

As for the four corner block? All four of them have beautiful, historic pedestrian-oriented buildings.

 

There are two buildings on the block itself, but they are also historic, pedestrian-oriented buildings. And having their back brick walls to work with can also help give an intimate feel and provide space for public art.

 

Preston and Prairie are both narrow (two traffic lanes, one traffic/parallel parking lanes, some protected parallel/head-in parking) streets for downtown and Main is of course Main. Fannin is wider, which is to say that its the standard five lanes of north-south streets downtown/midtown.