Day 2: Welcome; sustainable polycentric regions and ecocities
David Crossley, president of Houston Tomorrow, welcomed participants to the second day of the conference and discussed polycentric cities such as Houston, which has multiple high-density centers, adding that the idea of a polycentric region would work well in the Texas Triangle.
Video will be posted soon.
David Crossley on Polycentric Regions (.key, 63.8 MB)
David Crossley said that activity intensity – the combination of jobs and population density – is strongly correlated to car dependency. Below 14 people per square mile, car use rises rapidly. Instead of building low-density, sprawling cities, he said, we should build polycentric cities with multiple high-density areas that are pedestrian-friendly and easily accessible by transit.
The same holds true at a regional level, he said. The European Union, for instance, plans a future in which polycentric regions organize into economic clusters. The Texas Triangle could develop similarly, he said, with a number of nodes such as College Station and Killeen-Temple in between the four major metropolitan areas.
“I think this idea of high-speed rail is a way of defining some of those places and taking some of the pressure off the amalgam of the giant spread,” he said. High-speed rail could connect all of those nodes, and he promoted a modified Texas Triangle alignment that could connect all of the nodes without forcing Houston travelers to make a connection in Killeen-Temple.
Crossley said that walkable urbanism, which would be a key part of a polycentric city or region, is making a comeback in the Houston region. The Houston-Galveston Area Council is performing Livable Centers studies as far away as Tomball.
“I draw a big distinction between suburban and sprawl,” he said. “I always put a hyphen in suburban. It’s sub-urban.” The sub-urban parts of a city could complement the high-density nodes. Crossley estimated that Houston could easily absorb half of its projected growth adjacent to the new light rail stations while retaining urban and sub-urban qualities. High-rises are not necessary to generate population density, he said. Ebenezer Howard’s “garden city” plan, for instance, could house all of Houston’s population on just 17 percent of the land, leaving the remaining 83 percent for greenspace.
In conclusion, he said, we must replace sprawl with polycentric, well-connected cities and regions that leave plenty of room for parks and greenspace.