Interview with Rod Rice, Part II: The Polycentric City

David Crossley, Mar 06, 07.

Following up on last week's interview, a second segment, focusing on the idea of a polycentric city, aired on KUHF this morning with host Rod Rice. This segment was about the idea that we should not think of Houston as a central downtown surrounded by suburbs, but instead as a region with several major downtowns and many smaller town centers. Several of our secondary downtowns, such as Greenway Plaza, the Medical Center, and Uptown, have more jobs than downtown San Diego or Miami. The implication is that more of our transportation planning, and dollars, should focus on access to and within these highly productive activity centers, as opposed to the suburbs-surrounding-a-single-core model, which is almost entirely about building more roads further and further from the "core."

Direct link to the Streaming MP3.