Developer seeks ‘sustainable’ Katy Prairie community

But is it really ‘green’?

Steve Hawley, Jan 20, 10.

UPDATE (1/21/10, 5:23 pm): In the Chronicle story, Mary Anne Piacentini, executive director of the nonprofit Katy Prairie Conservancy, was cited as saying the site of the Mischer project isn’t in a part of the prairie that the organization has specifically targeted for conservation. In a clarification, she told Houston Tomorrow: “To date, the Katy Prairie Conservancy has protected nearly 18,000 acres of the ecologically sensitive Katy Prairie. While its current protected lands are to the west of the proposed competition design site, KPC recognizes that the ecological benefits provided by the Katy Prairie in its entirety are vital to the Greater Houston community and should be conserved to the greatest extent possible. At present the Katy Prairie is a distinctive landscape consisting of agricultural and ranching activities along with natural open space, including depressional wetlands and tallgrass prairie. We are working to keep it that way.”

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Mischer Investments, a local developer, is participating in a “sustainable design” competition for a new master-planned community in the environmentally sensitive Katy Prairie, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The development, named Ventana Lakes, would join Bridgeland as the second master-planned community in the Katy Prairie. At 640 acres, Ventana Lakes would be much smaller than the 11,400-acre Bridgeland project. Both Ventana Lakes and Bridgeland would contain roughly two houses per acre.

The Chronicle reports:

The goal of the competition is to encourage designs that don’t worsen problems such as flooding, carbon emissions or loss of wildlife habitat. It is unclear, though, to what extent the winning designs will contribute to the development of the Katy Prairie project…
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The Houston developers are not obliged to use the winning design, but their participation indicates a strong interest in the concept, said Robert Adair, steering committee chair for the Houston Land/Water Sustainability Forum, the main sponsor of the contest.
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Although Ventana Lakes already is designed, Mark Kilkenny of Mischer Investments said the competition could lead the company to take the design in a different direction.

However, it is unclear how “sustainable” Ventana Lakes would be. The Katy Prairie contains many ecologically valuable wetlands, and many Houston-area residents have expressed concern that development in the Prairie could worsen downstream flooding and destroy prime bird habitats.

“Probably there should not be much more development out there at all,” said John Jacob, a coastal community development specialist at Texas A&M University. However, Jacob told the Chronicle that if development is inevitable, it should consist of compact, mixed-use communities potentially linked by transit. The article also notes that groups such as the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition are pushing for redevelopment of existing areas that already have infrastructure in place, rather than new projects in undeveloped areas.

“This is desperate planning and architecture, some by good people with very good intentions trying their best to resolve another sad and unnecessary invasion of an important ecosystem,” said David Crossley, president of Houston Tomorrow. “But no matter how good the design is, it still moves people further away from the cultural and business centers and sets them up for more driving. This comes at the same time people are driving less and the number of cars in America is diminishing - down by 4 million last year and expected to decrease by 25 million over the next decade.”

Research has shown that low-density development in outlying areas creates significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than high-density urban areas, primarily because outlying residents have to drive so much more. Below is a map created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology showing per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the Houston region, modified to show the locations of Ventana Lakes and Bridgeland. Red indicates the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions, while yellow indicates the lowest.

Like Bridgeland, Ventana Lakes would be built along the controversial Grand Parkway Segment E. Harris County planned to build Segment E using $181 million in stimulus money last year, but those plans were withdrawn when the county could not obtain a necessary federal wetlands permit in time.

Numerous groups, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, expressed opposition to the permit, stating that it did not adequately compensate for the wetlands that would be destroyed by the road and its ensuing development. The Sierra Club also filed suit against the project, alleging that the Federal Highway Administration did not adequately assess the environmental impacts.

The final “sustainable” Ventana Lakes designs will be judged on Wednesday, January 27, at 5 pm at the Crystal Ballroom in the Rice Lofts at Main and Texas. More information about the Low Impact Development Design Competition is available at the Houston Land/Water Sustainability Forum website.

Comments

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

Two tract houses per acre is nothing but sprawl even if they have solar panels for water heating and electric generation, lots of trees, and an organic garden behind each house. There is no mass transit out there in the Katy Praire, and the crooks that widened I-10 removed the MKT RR to prevent its use for possible commuter rail. There should be an immediate and permanent ban on all form of suburban sprawl in all of its forms. The Katy Prairie should remain farmland, ranchland, or converted to a wilderness park.

Posted on Jan 24, 10 at 1:43 am

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

First, a clarification. The Ventana Lakes project is one of three real projects on which the Low Impact Development Design Competition is based. Designs will be judged in one of three design challenge categories which include Green Roadway and Urban Redevlopment, as well as the Suburban Residential design challenge. Low Impact Development practices are a ‘here and now’ answer to improving the way we develop by mimicking natural processes and incrementally, cummulatively, they can dramatically improve our environment and our quality of life.

For those of us who maintain contact with the real world, comments like the one above, “there should be an immediate and permanent ban on all form of suburban sprawl in all of its forms” don’t add much to the conversation of how we drive the adoption, adaptation and implementation of sustainable development practices in Houston, Texas.

I have to confess to being a bit confused about the expectations and goals of those who wish for sustainability yet have no interest in supporting what can be accomplished immediately. Big change doesn’t come without incremental change. Densification (or the ‘pack ‘em in’ model as John likes to put it) won’t happen overnight…or over the course of my lifetime, or anyone reading this comment’s lifetime. When and where it does come, it will not be supportable or sustainable without many of the practices in the Low Impact Development toolbox.

Should we really just wish for that grand day when our dreams (regardless of what they are) come true, or should we roll up our sleeves and start making a difference today?

Posted on Jan 26, 10 at 10:12 am

Jay Blazek Crossley said:

Bob,

I appreciate your comments and want to just say that we debated how to address this story for a while internally as well as discussed it with some friends. Like you explain, this is not cut and dry and there’s not really a right or wrong in this issue, although there’s a lot of grey.

The intent was to show the different points of view, granting on the one hand that there is a very important argument that if we assume development will happen on the Katy Prairie, then what you are doing is extremely important. Or even if we don’t assume that it has to happen on the prairie, its important that every development project should strive to be low impact.

On the other hand, development on the Katy Prairie is problematic. It depends on a lot of things outside of the free market to occur, especially huge investments of public transportation funds. The actions of Harris County and other regional governments will at least determine the rates at which people decide to live on the Katy Prairie. I agree that some amount of people living there is generally inevitable, but the expected boom is an artifact of forecast models that assume cheap gas, the Grand Parkway, and no carbon-tax (continued government perversion of the free market by failing to properly allocate the costs of known externalities).

So, in that case, can we call a development that will require its residents to maintain very high rates of vehicle miles traveled and carbon emissions sustainable? (even if they all drive solar powered electric cars)

I’m not saying that my opinion should supersede any property owner’s right to make a bet on the housing market, but that any related public policy is up for debate as is the use of the term sustainable. If an area is designed with predominantly low density housing and an unconnected street grid, then realistically in our society it will mean that people have to drive a lot to get to work, school, shopping, and everything else that they do, and in many cases without effective possibilities to retrofit that neighborhood as people change their lifestyles.

Also, on the densification comment, I suppose some idea that all Houstonians should immediately live in high-rises of course is not going to happen in our lifetimes, but that’s not the point. Many parts of Houston have been quite dense for your entire lifetime and the recent trend is that the dense parts of Houston are getting denser, despite the last 60 years of government preference for low density housing.

So, I personally applaud your efforts to encourage low impact development methods to be used for actual projects happening in the region right now. But, I look forward to a continued discussion of the full scope of sustainable development in the Houston region, including taking responsibility for where you put a project and how easy it is to get to things when you live there.

- Jay

Posted on Jan 26, 10 at 8:21 pm

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