(First published in Midtown Paper, Spring 2003. References to other writers is to that publication)

I read a lot of research and look at a lot of studies, and the number 30 percent keeps appearing in those. The demographic group that Carnegie Mellon’s Richard Florida is making famous – the “creative class” – seems to be about 30 percent of the US population. The number of people “likely to prefer dense walkable neighborhoods” is 30 percent.

The number of people who “would like townhomes in their neighborhood” is 30 percent, and the number who want “sidewalks, narrow streets, and shared recreational facilities” is 33 percent. A Disney development executive, asked by a reporter why Disney was developing new urbanist communities for only 30 percent of the market, said “We’ll be happy to own 30 percent of the housing market and let a thousand other developers fight over the other 70 percent.”

These studies and anecdotes suggest there is a group of people who make up around 30 percent of the population who really like the urban environment. Demographics tell us two large groups form most of this niche: young professionals and empty nesters. It’s as though when we’re young lots of us want the action and convenience of the city and then when we’re older without children at home we tend to want to go back to that and quit mowing lawns.

We in Houston are getting older, and that will continue until the end of the Baby Boom in about twenty years. The piece of the senior market that wants culture and convenience will grow during those years, and truly urban places answer a lot of their needs and desires. Indeed, the study quoted above projects that the number of people who are “likely to prefer dense walkable neighborhoods” will rise to 55 percent during that time.

While providing for our senior citizens will be critical soon, it is critical right now that we end the drain of young professionals leaving the region or refusing to come here at all. An unscientific but revealing survey by Houston Solution, a nonprofit effort to engage young people in the transformation of the city, finds that 63 percent of young professionals intend to leave the city within two years.

This is clearly not a good thing. It’s also revealing that 81 percent of those would stay if three things were greatly improved:

• Transportation (and they aren’t talking about roads)
• Parks and green space
• Air quality

The obvious place in Houston to focus on fixing those things and providing response to what is clearly a very large, almost entirely unserved market, is Midtown. I spend a huge amount of my time advocating this idea, not because I own an inch of property there, but because it’s so clearly the place to pin our hopes.

As a place to live, Midtown is absolutely unbeatable for convenience once the light rail line begins operation. A person who lives in Midtown and works in the Medical Center or Downtown will find that in January 2004 he or she can live a significant portion of their daily lives without using a car. Easy rail options to walkable places will include jobs, all kinds of shops and services, hundreds of restaurants, a variety of sports venues, theaters, clubs, museums, the Zoo, several parks, Rice University, an aquarium, health care, spiritual centers, the homes of many friends, and dozens of places to just walk around.

If Metro could be convinced to join the proposed southeast corridor rail line west to Greenway, Uptown, and Westchase, we would have nearly all the major activity centers in the City linked by rail transit and 75 percent of the City’s residents would live within three miles of a transit stop. At that point, serving the 30 percent with all the urban amenities they desire can happen in a wide range of places giving possibly millions of people the ability to move around in a rich range of choices for almost all their needs by transit and on foot.

All that will start in Midtown. Because Midtown will be the model for urbanity in Houston, we have to get it right, and it has to somehow still be Houston. So the views of the Houston writers who created this issue of Midtown Paper are a beginning to describe in sometimes whimsical and romantic terms the fine-grained nuances that conjure up the image of “urban.” You have here what is really a collection of experiences from other cities around the world. Perhaps someone with the means will create one or more of the dreams seen here, and perhaps some public official will understand and begin to turn public policy away from suburban influence in the urban centers.

The Houston region is expected to have 8 million residents by about 2036, when the city will be 200 years old. Thirty percent of 8 million is 2.4 million. That’s a lot of market, unserved and waiting. Let’s begin to serve it, and serve it right, here in Midtown.

David Crossley is president of the Gulf Coast Institute, a nonprofit devoted to a more livable Houston, and to saxophones and fire eaters in public places.