November 17, 2009 – 4:14 pm
Dana Jennings reports from Eastwood, 2 blocks west of Lockwood, “where the light rail project is in high jackhammer mode.”: “Bob Street would be a good place to live. It’s short, like the name. Starts at Harrisburg and dead-ends into Garrow Street near the meandering, tree-lined Harrisburg hike and bike trail. Bob St. is just two short blocks lined with single story bungalows and front porches. Most need love and repair. . . . Talked to a young man, drinking coffee on his front steps, enjoying the morning mist. He was making sure I wasn’t up to no good. . . . Quiet little street with its own version of neighborhood watch, and with artists in the night, spraypainting dragons at the corner. Curiously, all homes face the street at a slight 15? degree angle. Lining up the porches to salute the rising sun? Wonder what the trendmaker builder of the time was thinking, back in 1910?” [The Next San Miguel de Allende]
Read more about: 77011, Bungalows, East End Line, Eastwood, Light-Rail, Streets
November 17, 2009 – 2:46 pm
Organizer (and Free Press Houston editor) Omar Afra calls it:
This will be the last Westheimer Block Party. However, the next one will be the return of the Westheimer Street Festival. It may take 2 months or it may take 2 years but this festival has outgrown our singular capacity. There can only be a return of the Westheimer Street Festival. The streets must be shut down, the city must get behind the event, and I can no longer personally foot the bill. Our staff can no longer handle the capacity of the growing festival and squeezing all of these people into the same block is becoming hazardous. The streets must be shut down. We have an on camera commitment from Annise Parker, that if elected, she will support street closure if we can find financing for necessary portopotties, police, and clean up. She even shook my hand on it. But we need the community involved. So whoever is elected, we are asking for a big community turnout at the first city council open session the new mayor presides over. We need 500+ people to swamp city hall and show city officials that there is indeed a large constituency that supports arts and music. We will let you know when this transpires but we NEED your support. We love this community so much and want to see WestFest grow but it cannot in it’s current form. We will be forming a non-profit to meet this challenge which will be made up of only Jedi’s who have an unyielding love for arts and music. It is time to take BIG steps and we will do whatever it takes to shut down the streets. . . .
Photo of Behind Buildings performing at last weekend’s Westheimer Block Party: Ramon Medina [license]
Read more about: 77006, Attractions, Lower Westheimer, Streetlife, Streets
August 21, 2009 – 9:08 pm
How’s the street surfing in your neighborhood?
Photo: Flickr user jarrod-drew, via The High on the Hog Blog
Read more about: 77036, Flooding, Sharpstown, Sports, Streets, Transportation
The same organization that campaigned successfully several years ago to place that statue of Mahatma Gandhi next to the herb garden in Hermann Park is now proposing another Houston honor for the slain spiritual leader. Abc13’s Sonia Azad reports that Houston’s India Cultural Center wants to rename the section of Hillcroft Ave. between Highway 59 and Westpark to Mahatma Gandhi Street.
Or should that be Mahatma Gandhi Avenue?
[City Council Member MJ] Khan says he will support changing Hillcroft’s name to Mahatma Gandhi Avenue, if that’s what the community wants.
“Our city is a very international city so I think it will help if we start branding that area,” Khan explained.
Store clerk Inder Buhtti believes Gandhi Avenue could curb crime and violence in the area.
He said, “Everything he wants he wanted in a peaceful way, not with guns or with bombs.” . . .
Spanish, Guatemalan, Chinese and Persian businesses in the area attract an array of customers. Azar Delpassand from Iran says the street’s name should reflect that diversity.
She said, “In here, this street, you have Arabic stores, you have Indian stores, you have Persian stores. So excluding others because of Indians, I don’t think (so). It’s not fair.”
Photo of Gandhi statue in Hermann Park: Keri Bas
Read more about: 77036, Hillcroft, Streets
Working from a remote and undisclosed location, the now-expatriate Houston engineer known as Keep Houston Houston puts together a rough diagram identifying the city’s “traditional” walkable neighborhoods, and comments:
Houston has no shortage of gridded, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. Thing is, they’re all kind of squished together. And with a couple of exceptions, they were all platted out before 1935. What’s there is there. We’re not adding to it.
Why?
Developer conservatism plays a role, but is ethereal, subject to evaporate as soon as *someone* steps up and proves that suburban [Traditional Neighborhood Development] is sufficiently profitable. But several city standards and rules are standing in the way.
Are Houston’s development rules really the obstacle?
Keep Houston Houston scans through the city’s development ordinance, then throws together a quick design for a residential neighborhood following the basic requirements. What does that end up looking like?
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: Development Regulations, Master-Planned Communities, Streetscapes, Walkability
Hundreds of Galveston residents have been calling the city’s tree-appeal hotline, arguing that particular street trees targeted in the massive post-Ike chainsaw sweep should not be cut down. After seeing new leaves on the 3-story Live Oak in front of his Avenue L home, one resident offered the city $1,000 not to chop it down. His tree got a re-evaluation, but didn’t exhibit enough new growth to get a reprieve. “If the city could give the trees more time to recover, and if it rained soon, a few more might stand a chance of survival, [Texas Forest Service urban forester Pete] Smith said. But the city will get reimbursed only for the expensive removal process through Sept. 12. Between now and then, crews are scheduled to remove an estimated 11,000 trees in the public right of way and about 30,000 trees on private property. Live oak tress must have at least 30 percent of their leaves to be spared. Other varieties must have at least 50 percent of their leaves.” [Galveston County Daily News]
Read more about: 77550, Disaster Aftermath, Galveston, Hurricane Ike, Streetscapes, Trees
Worried the Dynamo soccer stadium planned for the superblock between Texas, Dowling, Hutchens, and Walker is gonna block traffic between Downtown and the East End? Citizen rail designer Christof Spieler solves the tangle:
There are two parts to this idea. The first is to make Texas alongside the stadium a two-way street. Instead of two eastbound traffic lanes and two light rail tracks, Texas gets two eastbound traffic lanes, two westbound traffic lanes, and two light rail tracks. That all fits in the existing right of way. The second part is to use the “squiggle” in the light rail tracks for traffic lanes as well. This does two things: it gives the westbound traffic on Texas a way to go, and it cleans up those messy intersections.
So now, to get from the East End to Downtown, you simply follow Harrisburg, which flows right into Texas, and then you make a left turn onto Capitol. And you will not hit an awkward intersection or have to cross the rail line to do it.
Map: Christof Spieler
Read more about: 77003, Dynamo Stadium, East Downtown, Metro Rail, Streets, Traffic, Transportation
April 10, 2009 – 11:56 am
“As we all know, traffic is incomparably worse in Uptown than it is in Downtown. Downtown has more of everything: more streets, more freeways, more transit, more pedestrian use. The most important part, though, is that Downtown has the grid, and Uptown does not. Uptown is a lot less dense than Downtown, and yet it’s reaching a breaking point. There are critically few ways in and out, and even though those are mega-roads, they concentrate traffic BY DESIGN rather than diffusing traffic as the grid does. If Uptown had a fine-grained local street grid the traffic there would be a fraction of what it is today, but it’s too late to put in a grid now. The best we can hope for is for benevolent developers to include new connecting streets to break up some of the super-blocks when they come up for redevelopment.” [NeoHouston]
Read more about: 77002, 77056, Downtown, Galleria, Streets, Traffic, Transportation, Uptown
February 9, 2009 – 12:07 pm
“So why does an aerial photo of Rice Military look just like Tokyo? A few things set Houston apart from most other American cities here. For one, American cities have long had a prejudice towards public streets. Development regulations stipulating that ‘every lot must have X amount of frontage on a public street’ date to the 1800s in most American cities, well before the age of zoning. Interior lots reached through shared access easements are a common feature of rural and exurban development, but Houston is relatively uncommon in allowing such arrangements in a high-density setting. This results in narrow alleyways more characteristic of cities in Japan and, on a larger scale, Great Britain.” [Keep Houston Houston]
Read more about: 77007, Development Regulations, Land Development, Rice Military, Streets, Washington Corridor
February 6, 2009 – 10:43 am
He may have officially retired last summer, but the former CEO of Houston’s HCC Insurance Holdings doesn’t seem to have slowed down! A settlement with the SEC, which accused Stephen L. Way of backdating stock options on at least 38 occasions, means the former executive is barred from serving as an officer or director of any public reporting company for five years. But Way has apparently found a way to keep himself busy, making improvements around his Bayou Woods home.
There’s just one problem with the lovely boxwood-hedged and pine-shaded parking lot pictured above, along with a concrete driveway and speed bumps Way also had built down the street:
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77024, Bayou Woods, Neighborhood Disputes, Parking-Lots, Streets
“The Uptown TIRZ and District are actively working to build a grid in Uptown. Much of it will be funded by existing and new developments by the TIRZ funds and not from the general taxpayer base. . . . [
Comment of the Day: Where the Skyscrapers Will Be Built
“. . . in a century or two, Houston will be very densely populated. . . . I think Houston is relatively lucky to have street grids across most parts of the city, as opposed to the suburban lollipops in, say, Pearland’s newer subdivisions. When the skyscrapers come — and they will — then Houston’s grids will handle the load better than the lollipops would; and if worse comes to worse, old blocks can be razed for new streets, or our existing streets can be turned into one-way, so that for example you might have Bellaire and Westheimer only go westbound, and Richmond and San Felipe only eastbound (or vice versa).” [J.V., commenting on City to Ashby Highrise: Yes You Can!]