It's a long way to Copenhagen... from Houston.

I recently took a fresh look at Houston since my last visit ten years ago. Or at least, “fresh” is how I felt during the moments between air conditioned buildings and cars. While many of my coastal, post-carbon-apocalyptic prejudices about the city still hold, I also saw something new in its haphazard planning.

Houston is famous for exercising little or no municipal control over zoning and land use, which leads to a cheek-by-jowl scattering of homes, businesses, and freeways. (The Zone d’Erotica shop unabashedly occupies what is clearly a former pancake house next door to an unamused Dillards department store.) The region’s muggy climate and low gas prices make Greater Houston heavily car-oriented. Pedestrians are a low-status exception to the Ford F-250 rule. A honking Escalade at a parking-lot entrance reminded me that you still have to look both ways if you’re on the sidewalk.

From a climate-controlled vehicle, I got a glimpse of Houston life. Locals describe neighborhoods that are seven miles apart (roughly the span of San Francisco) as being “close” to one another. I gawked openly at the Chase Bank's 8-lane drive-through ATM. The California Pizza Kitchen has “curbside” service so you don’t have to get out of the car to collect your takeout order. A waiter simply walks up to your window and swipes your credit card. The multiplex has valet parking.

Central Houston’s traffic jams resemble its summer thunderstorms: clouds converge out of nowhere, and a brief but torrential downpour ensues. Drivers can be ruthless or (if you admit to being a lost and befuddled visitor) downright friendly-- a fellow motorist got out of his car to give directions after traffic inched ahead and he could no longer give them from his window.

Urbanists and demographers alike see urban centers of the future looking more like Lagos or Mexico City than the orderly grid of the 20th century prairie metropolis. I couldn’t help but think that messy, crowded Houston may actually be more representative than most US cities of the urbanism of the future. Like Mexico City and Lagos, Houston is divided between those whose air-conditioned cars bypass traffic on toll roads and those who dab their foreheads and wait for the bus. From the freeway, Houston’s commercial strips are a flipbook of tangled overhead wires, gas stations, and drive-thru Tex-Mex.

Houston is a city of intense wealth and intense poverty. Energy interests saturate Houston’s cityscape and institutions- (Ken Lay’s name is etched eerily on the Fine Arts Museum donor wall). Yet Houston’s informality gives it an intensely flexible urban landscape and a dynamic economy. It has a tremendous capacity to absorb new people- both immigrants seeking work and thousands of Katrina survivors.

Houston’s urban design possesses seemingly little coordination or regard for history and no mediation between commercial interests and land uses. The motto seems to be “if it’s not in style anymore, tear it down and rebuild.” Or perhaps, “if it’s not profitable, tear it down and rebuild.” Houston sprawls and reconstitutes itself with the vigor of a Gulf storm surge. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Houston took advantage of its flexibility to be ahead of the curve in adopting low-carbon lifestyles in the 21st century?

E. Mattiuzzi

Garden Cities, US-style

Belgium doesn't have a monopoly on cute and walkable.

Amazing Slate.com slideshow on Forest Hills, in Queens, NYC. It suggests that an attractive mix of housing types on a curvy but walkable grid can work in a US suburb. And that it did. A hundred years ago.

E. Mattiuzzi