Walking in Midtown

Tuesday's Chron had a story about the difficulties of developing pedestrian-friendly properties in Midtown, thanks to city laws that require new and renovated commercial structures to have a certain amount of parking available. I'm not going to go into the details here, as Houstonist and Christof have already covered them, but one thought that stood out to me about this is that it really ought to be a cause for Mayor White to champion. It's consistent with his positions on improving traffic, since the idea here is to allow more Midtowners to live a lifestyle that allows them to leave their cars at home, and with his general philosophy on neighborhood development. Does anyone think that if the Mayor brought an agenda item to a Council meeting that allowed for some flexibility in these parking requirements, especially in a limited, specialized area like Midtown, that he'd have any trouble getting it passed? I don't. I say it's yours to make happen, Mayor White.

UPDATE: More from Sedosi, Blue Bayou, and blogHouston. One point Kevin makes that I want to address:

Actually, only a few pockets of the vast wasteland known as midtown have seen much of a transformation at all. In my part of midtown, there are lots of new townhouses but not much of a sense of community, and not many amenities within walking distance (my gym counts as an amenity within an easy walk, but other than that, there's a wholesale auto parts store); it's easily the worst of the last three neighborhoods I've lived in in terms of walkability and amenities despite being in the geographical "heart" of the city. But closer to downtown, along Bagby/Brazos, there has been some nice mixed-use development, which seems to draw from the neighborhood that has grown over from Montrose/Freedmen's area. That's the exception in Midtown, though, not really the rule.

It's true that the farther away you get from downtown, and for that matter the farther east you get, the less there is. It's still a hell of a lot more than there was even five years ago, and as more housing gets put in, the amenities are sure to follow as they have in the area Kevin describes. It's just a matter of time before the new construction emanating from the Museum District area (near Almeda and Binz) meets up with the Southeastern portion of Midtown (near Elgin and 288). Come back in another five years and you won't recognize the place.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 14, 2006 to Elsewhere in Houston | TrackBack