By David Crossley

Now that we’re in shock about the totally unexpected elevated freeway that’s going in along Westpark, do you know that some people want to put another one right through the middle of the midtown area? And others want to expand the Pierce Elevated? How about the one that’s coming down from Hardy Toll Road to complete the annihilation of the Western Fifth Ward? How about the Harris County Toll Road Authority’s map showing almost every freeway in the region getting new toll roads, the map that looks exactly like a Master Plan to Suck the Life out of The City of Houston?

The perception around the region is that the City of Houston is just a doormat for far suburban interests. So we citizens of Houston get more and more freeways we don’t want – while other cities are tearing them down - and politicians and bureaucrats make ever larger plans to move more and more money outside the city limits.

I’m not going to argue for some kind of war with the suburbs. Instead, I’m going to argue that the citizens of Houston need to spend some quality time focused on their own city. Right now, Houston is viewed as the crazed 800-pound gorilla in the midst of a vast region that is trying to be rational in its approach to the 21st century. But Houston is still the heart, and it’s high time it got a brain.

Unlike almost every city in America, Houston has no comprehensive plan. The result of that has been grossly inefficient growth and an inability to maintain our existing infrastructure, let alone deal with the natural environment and the welfare of the community.

Many will argue that planning in the area must be “regional,” that a plan just for the City would miss the point. But in Texas, only municipalities - unlike counties - have the power to prepare comprehensive plans to guide policy for care of existing assets and creation of new ones.

In any event, for the region to be successful, Houston itself must be a great place to live and work, with diverse opportunities for all kinds of people, particularly bright, creative, and capable people.

Right now, we are losing bright people every day, chief among them the young creatives who were laid off by Enron. They will tell you they were in Houston because of the energy of Enron, and now that that’s over, they want to live in a city. So they’re moving to New York, Chicago, San Francisco – all the real cities.

When I asked 40 students in a class at Rice how many of them were planning to stay in Houston when they graduate, only four raised their hands.

The understanding is growing that Houston needs an urban area that’s as vital and rich as, say, San Diego’s or Denver’s, and many people are thinking about a longer term vision in which Houston challenges San Francisco and Chicago – and maybe someday New York.

But there is also the continually growing suburban world, and we have to be aware that much of that suburb is actually inside the city limits. For Houston to lose site of that in its burgeoning urbanity would obviously be a huge mistake.

We tend to think of Houston in rings - inside the Loop, outside the Loop, inside the Beltway, outside the Beltway.

Indeed, the City actually has two official zones now, the Urban Zone inside the Loop, and the Suburban Zone outside the Loop. The rules for development are different in the two zones, which turns out to be a problem. Because inside the Loop there are a lot of older suburbs, some of them fighting hard to maintain their early suburban character. And outside the Loop are places like Uptown/Galleria, Westchase, and Greenspoint, almost cities in their own right. In both zones, there are still areas that are nearly rural, and in both zones there are natural places that need to be preserved.

We need to focus on the City, and to devise a broad plan that ensures we’ll have diverse neighborhoods from rural “towns” to urban centers with a rational plan for mobility and access, and that preserves our natural resources.