Houston, Texas, America’s fourth largest city, is in the middle of a rebirth, argues Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and a number of design journalists.
A city known as “car-centric and zoning-adverse” is now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get people out of cars and into parks.
Within this sprawled-out city, under spaghetti loops of concrete highways, there are now networks of accessible parks, trails for running and biking, and bayous for kayaking and canoeing.
Many of these public amenities also double as green infrastructure, constructed systems that provide habitat for a range of species, manage stormwater, and protect against flooding.
As Houston undertakes this green makeover, what lessons do they offer to other car-centric cities that also want to improve quality of life?
To delve more deeply into how Houston is changing its identity through landscape architecture, TCLF has put together Leading with Landscape II, a day-long conference on March 11.
The conference will be followed by What’s Out There Weekend Houston on March 12-13, which will feature two days of free, expert-led tours.
Photo of Buffalo Bayou Promenade by William Tatham.
See Jared Green’s article with links to both events.