Retrofitting Houston and elsewhere: Emerging Urbanism within Sprawl

[Samwill89]

How That Old-Time Way-Out Houston Strip Center Spirit Might Yet Tame a Mild Row of East Downtown Townhomes



If you were wondering how a street-facing block of neat-in-a-row East Downtown townhomes might appear after being taken over by the opportunistic spirit exemplified by a bunch of north Houston strip-center businesses, rest your aching brain: Artist Carrie Marie Schneider has already done some of that hard a-visualizing work for you. Her mashup above combines signs from independent businesses along Veterans Memorial Dr. (the stretch between I-45 and Richey Rd.) with a row of recent townhomes on the 2600 block of Capitol St., between Live Oak and Nagle.

The image, a projection of which constitutes a small part of her recently opened exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum, is one way to imagine a “real free-enterprise” conquest of more corporate-seeming block-by-block townhome developments. Blocks like the one pictured under all that signage “once seemed uncanny in Houston for their enforced coherence,” she writes in OffCite. “Now they’re difficult not to encounter.”

source

This article piqued my interest in how cities around North America are employing strategies to convert some of their sprawl into something more traditionally urban. I am not just talking about simple infill or at-grade light rail. I am speaking of shifting people from cars to the sidewalks (or streets); moving retail from strip-centers into mixed structures; removing curb cuts, etc.

Are there any cities where this shift is occurring at a larger scale than detected? D.C. and Seattle initially come to mind. Looking forward to real and imagined examples.

[Double L]

I'm not understanding this thread.

The article is about an art piece that takes strip center advertisements in Houston and puts them on Houston town homes.

How does that have anything to do with making suburban areas urban?

[kool maudit]

i actually like the look of that street. houston bangkok. it would be a crowded and busy place if it existed.

[mhays]

There's low-hanging fruit. It might be unlikely to redevelop a subdivision with an association and separate ownership. But suburbia is full of stuff that's easy to redevelop if urban uses are allowed.

Zoning sets the limits, but land value/availability is the #1b driving force getting developers to densify. Of course #1a is demand.

People don't choose their car dealerships based on urbanity. But if land is $100-200/sf, the dealership might build a four-story garage. School districts like to have lots of sports fields, but they might cut from five to three for the next high school if land is expensive and hard to get. Supermarkets might prefer their own sites, but they go into mixed-use to share the land costs (and development cost) and get into locations not otherwise available. Land prices cause housing developers to divide the same acreage into more units.

Once you have critical mass, you can start reducing parking ratios and doing storefront retail and so on. But it's a tough transition. Even a dense suburban node's shoppers and workers might bristle at paying for parking. And the early transition might need to keep building large amounts of parking that might be too much down the line.

[TexasPlaya]

Love the billboard on the far right, "Washateria" and "Game Room". Vice is surprisingly out on the open in Houston in the right areas. There's a known gambling ring at a "Game Room" that is advertised less than half a mile from my childhood home and a quite a few gas stations use to have illegal slot machines.

To the topic, Houston is a city that loves to sprout the free market and it's "no zoning" but there's still a good ole boy town element when it comes to politics and development. Houston's ordinances are fiercely pro automobile and getting rid of that unpleasantness one can really see how a "freer market" performs.

[fflint]

There was a Washateria in Houston when I visited in '99--laundered my clothes there!

[memph]

This is what North York Centre looked like in 1947.
http://jpeg2000.eloquent-systems.com...47_it0008c.jp2

Not completely farmland but essentially the whole area was under development at that time and aside from the street grid, rather suburban. It was a lot different from how it is now.

It's also interesting watching Northdale in K-W. This used to be an early (1945-1965 mostly) suburban neighbourhood with Levittown and ranch style homes and strip malls next to two universities.

In the last 5 years, some 10,000 bedrooms worth of housing geared towards university students (but not dorms) has been built there, in an area of about 0.5 square miles. There's another 5,000 bedrooms under construction and thousands more planned. The quality is increasing from bland stucco boxes to higher quality modern designs. You're also seeing more condo (rather than rental) buildings, more 1-2 bedroom units (rather than 5) and some buildings with ground floor retail.

I don't know how many other examples there are where a suburban SFH neighbourhood has been upzoned in its entirety, including allowing retail/mixed use, with such low parking requirements (0.2 spots/bedroom). Although the development is still geared towards students, it has great transit with about a dozen bus routes converging on the neighbourhood, including 3 express routes, and a future LRT line at the edge of the neighbourhood. It has great (transit) access to the downtowns, tech sector jobs, university jobs, hospitals, malls... Honestly I can't even think of a place someone might want to go to that isn't well connected (no transfers, often express service) to Northdale by transit, including many suburban destinations, so I think it could eventually appeal to a broader demographic interested in the convenient location of the neighbourhood and good transit.

[Eightball]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

i actually like the look of that street. houston bangkok. it would be a crowded and busy place if it existed.

Agreed. Looks cool

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by fflint

There was a Washateria in Houston when I visited in '99--laundered my clothes there!

Does this have some weird meaning in Houston? These are all over the place in Chicago or any Hispanic neighborhood.

[memph]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

i actually like the look of that street. houston bangkok. it would be a crowded and busy place if it existed.

Kind of... Bangkok does have a similar built form, and it has all sorts of interesting stuff going on, even in the suburbs. Many of the working class areas of Houston are known for junkyards and such... but they don't even come close to this car parts district in suburban Bangkok.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@13.63024...B7aO20sZew!2e0

[rellott]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Does this have some weird meaning in Houston? These are all over the place in Chicago or any Hispanic neighborhood.

IDK...I'm a bit confuzzled by the statement as well since there are a bunch of these anyways all over the city. Confuzzled about the whole topic really lol