Crossley on Houston 3.0

Walkable urbanism on the way

Steve Hawley, Oct 06, 09.

Houston is going through some radical changes right now, says Houston Tomorrow’s David Crossley in an article in the September issue of Houston House & Home. By far the biggest change, he says, is a focused return to to the City’s roots, to an old concept called Walkable Urbanism - and the emergence of a third major phase in the city’s history, which Crossley calls Houston 3.0.

Excerpts from the article:

In about 4 years, we’re going to have light rail transit service in 65 of our neighborhoods. Nearly 200,000 riders will be moving in and out of those neighborhoods by train every day. That’s going to be different.

Sixty-five is a lot of origins and destinations for a young transit system. Very quickly, the Houston light rail ridership per day could be greater than any other light rail system in the US1. Essentially, we will have gone from the bottom to the top in 10 years.

An urban network of dispersed centers of various sizes and cultures will evolve. There will be constant civic pressure to expand the transit network to other centers, always going to centers, where the people are. In fact, that pressure is palpable everywhere in the region today. No other US city is so committed to an urban light rail strategy. And, perhaps ironically, no other US region is so well constructed for such a strategy.

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