The Case for a Dense Core
Steve Belmont, AIA:

Transit, Location Efficiency, and Transit-Oriented Development
Hank Dittmar:

Financing Mixed Use Progressive Development
Chris Leinberger:

Houston, we have an opportunity
Dr. Arthur C. Nelson, ASCE, FAICP

Developers' Panel

Public Policy Panel

Entire report - pdf - 2 meg

Presentations
Steve Belmont- 14 meg
Hank Dittmar- 19 meg
Chris Leinberger- 18 meg
Arthur Nelson - 8 meg
Jeff Taebel- 3 meg
John Jacob- 3.5 meg
David Crossley- 9 meg

Left to right, David Langworthy, Bob Eury, Bob Litke, John Guess, Barry Goodman

Officials and civic leaders debated the policies that prevent or encourage urban development in Houston. David Langworthy, Outlook Editor for the Houston Chronicle, served as moderator for the panel that included: Bob Eury, Central Houston, Inc.; Barry Goodman, The Goodman Corporation; John Guess, Scott Street Coalition; and Bob Litke, City of Houston Planning and Development.

Urbanism and Area Plans
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” said Bob Litke who is the planning director for the City of Houston. He said that when he moved here, Houston was way behind the planning curve but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing: Houston hadn’t made a lot of the mistakes other cities have made.

Litke said that strict measures such as zoning that all other major cities have used are not needed to achieve urban development. Instead, he said the city could pass a set of guidelines or standards that would encourage urban design. When questioned whether or not those would be sufficient to prevent a type of suburban-style development next to an urban-style development, he said yes, that the standards could be specific enough to prevent development such as suburban car washes in urban neighborhoods.

Further, he emphasized that “there is lots of room for you folks out there to push us further than you do now.”

Litke said the much-talked-about area plan ordinance that was floated last year was essentially squashed without sufficient public support: “The Area Plan Ordinance is dead,” he said. Now he is working on another version of the Area Plan Ordinance that will be focused only on transit corridors. “I hope this time around I get more support.”

Bob Eury, president of the Downtown Houston Management District, said that the public’s perception of urbanism seems to have changed in the past few months since the opening of light rail, downtown’s super bowl festivities, and the revitalization of parts of Main Street. He also noted Rice Professor Stephen Klineberg’s statistics about the suburbanites’ rediscovery of downtown’s appeal.

In regard to Area Plans, Eury said that the Urban Land Institute and the Main Street Coalition created the study that led to those plans. He said the city needed to adopt public works standards that are urban rather than suburban and that the city must tie the granting of incentives with certain developmental guidelines.

Who’s in charge?
In response to David Langworthy’s question about who was really in charge of shaping future growth and if a regional government would be appropriate, Eury said that the City of Houston has become a less dominant player regionally, particularly as annexation has pretty much stopped. In this sense, he said, the strong mayor form of government is holding less sway on regional issues and that a regional government could be helpful.

Bob Litke said that the city has mutual agreements to deal with planned growth through major corridor plans and that they have collaborated with Harris County in recent times more than ever before. Litke noted that at one point in his career, he worked for the strongest public planning organization ever, the New York State Urban Development Corporation, and while they have the power to get much done there are risks in putting so much power in one place.

Transportation plans, Metro
Barry Goodman, who was the first Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (Metro), honed in on the region’s transportation agencies and plans, saying that Metro has significant capability to promote more urbanity in Houston. Metro was established with some of the strongest land use controls in the nation, he said. They have the ability to condemn land within 1500 feet of transit stops, but Goodman noted they’ve never done so.
He also mentioned that the long-term, regional transportation plan that guides transit and road transportation in the region, the Regional Transportation Plan 2025 (RTP 2025), “seems to be a highway plan” that is not focused on increasing transit.

Inner Loop opportunities and consequences
Langworthy asked the policy panel about the Inner Loop’s potential to grow from 500,000 to two million. Goodman emphasized the importance of the infrastructure policymakers agree to build to accommodate projected growth and how that influences quality of life. Quality of life effects including noise and air pollution will depend on those decisions, he said. “We’re turning a battleship,” he said. “We won’t turn it a lot but even if we turn it a little we’ll reap huge benefits.”

John Guess, president of the Scott Street Coalition, was hesitant about moving two million people inside Loop 610, saying that it couldn’t be done without harming the quality of life enjoyed by its current residents. Seniors, children, and fixed-income residents should all have a consideration in this future, he said, super neighborhoods need to be involved and the area plans need to happen. He then expressed a desire for a strong elected public body that is willing to put the needs of the city ahead of special interests.

Eury said elected officials should definitely care about population projection and mentioned that former City of Houston Mayor Fred Hofheinz (1974-1977) fought previous H-GAC forecasts of declining populations inside Loop 610. Hofheinz said those numbers would increase (and he was right) and that the city should provide adequate infrastructure for such increase.

Litke said that the City of Houston is “swimming in space” right now, with a lot of room for increasing density and growth. He said that even if we double our population inside the Loop, we will still be swimming in space with a density around 10,000 per square mile (the City of Houston has an overall density of about 3,500 people per square mile and in comparison, San Francisco has a density of 16,632 people per square mile and New York has a density of 26,404 per square mile. The Inner Loop has a density of about 5,000 per square mile). He said “what we need to do is stop all the cars there.”