Enormous majorities of Americans have relatively simple and wholesome desires that are not being met. We would like to spend less time in cars and more time with friends and family, we’d like bike paths and sidewalks, we’d like trees along the streets, we’d like traffic not to go so fast through our neighborhoods, we’d like our neighborhoods to be safer and less threatened by bulldozers and particle board, and we’d like more diversity in our surroundings and our lives, more choices. We are growing weary of mass-produced lifestyles.

Certainly we can’t be happy that the leading cause of death among young people is car wrecks, and it can’t be welcome news that there’s a correlation between heart disease, diabetes, obesity, asthma, and depression and the way we design and build our human environment.

The solution to all this is easy in concept but difficult and complicated in execution. The need is to fundamentally change the way we develop urban communities and develop neighborhood-based places that serve our needs and desires better than the ones we have now.

Imagine the Upper Kirby district developed in a significantly different way - focused on people rather than on cars. Kirby and Westheimer, as well as Kirby at Richmond and at Alabama, would be town centers, places that many people walk to. Taco Milagro and Stonemill Bakery would be on the corners, surrounded by broad sidewalks with tables and umbrellas, very much like Taco Milagro is today, but without the parking lot pushing it away from the sidewalk and preventing the pedestrian activity that is needed in retail environments.

Borders and Whole Foods would be on the corners too, and no one would ever drive their car from one to the other as nearly everyone does now. The wonderful forest of live oaks that was on the southeast corner of Kirby and Richmond would still be there, a park, with Ninfa’s and Pappa’s on the other corners, with tables on the sidewalk.

The pedestrian environment would be continuous, safe, interesting, and comfortable. Sidewalks along Kirby would be wide, separated from the street and its cars by rows of trees and parked cars, they would be shaded by canopies, roofs, or trees, and the walk would be interesting, with storefronts and activity all along the way, with the option for spontaneous decisions to step into an establishment and buy a pocket knife, or a bottle of wine, or some toothpaste, or maybe to have an ice cream cone or a beer with a neighbor.

Most, of the buildings along Kirby would have two floors, like the one at Avalon Center, maybe even three or four. The second and third floors would contain offices, dentists, doctors, lawyers, accountants, travel agents, architects, writers, and so on. Some spaces would be residential, from small rooms rented by people who work in some of the shops to modest apartments occupied by older people who want to be close to things. Some would be large apartments and condominiums for sophisticated urbanites.
Poor people – janitors, burger flippers, store employees – without cars could afford to rent small places there, saving all that transportation money and time and improving not only their standard of living but also their quality of life.

Generally speaking, the next street over – say, Lake Street – would be two or three stories, too, apartments, townhouses, condominiums, live/work lofts with some commercial business on corners. The next street back would be lined with single-family dwellings on their own lots, as it is today on Virginia. The single-dwelling section would be continuous but gradually give way again to another set of multi-family buildings and then to another mixed-use corridor such as Buffalo Speedway with centers on the corners. Pedestrian and bike systems would be continuous with major walking facilities in denser centers and corridors, and neighborhood size sidewalks in single-family dwelling areas.

This is the way we used to build towns and centers. The Imagine Houston process called these “urban villages.” Of course, they’re all different, responding to local cultures and tastes throughout the urban fabric. Some are a lot bigger than others, Galleria-sized, and some are like small towns, as we used to see in the Third Ward, and some are small, with just a few stores, as in West University Place. In some the buildings are brick and in some they are painted lavender and aqua. Some are richer and finer than others.

Why is this so hard when it is so clearly desired by so many people? In some other cities the brutal and graceless lifestyle of the last two or three decades is slowly giving way to the idea of neighborhoods. What is taking Houston so long to start to produce quality places?

(To be continued next month)