Between deed restricted neighborhoods and City of Houston ‘super neighborhoods’, lie vast areas of the amorphous contemporary city. These areas, beyond the wards often benefited in inner city studies, escape labels and therefore an easy historical context.
This proposal seeks to bring light to these large working spaces of the city, often overlooked, latent with potential for neighborhood based improvent and development.
Superneighborhood 51- Northside Village
Conservative growth projections for Harris County include a 324% increase in the Hispanic population in 34 years. It will happen in Northside Village.
Between Master Plan and Construction- No Big Arrows
The intention of this proposal is to, first, bring awareness to the existing open space in the largely Hispanic area of Houston, and second, to propose new adjacencies to allow for growth projected for the city over the next 30 years. The goal is to broaden the perception of the city to include the middle territories lying between the center and the new suburbs, so they are seen in relation to the history and topography of the city as a whole.
In the analysis of Northside Village, there is an implicit acceptance of the structure of existing conditions in the often forgotten middle territory of the city and an active resistance against the conventional perception of a suburb as an escape from urban life.
lesson 1
the developer
Density and lot price are unrelated and join to exacerbate empty and unused space
(-)
lesson 2
parking
Too much parking- Normal suburban parking requirements turn important working streets into long parking lots. There is already too much parking in Near Northside. Of the 15 times parking was counted along the Irvington/Fulton corridor, parking use varied between 8 and 11% of parking surfaces.
+
lesson 3
the everyday city
destination+transition
Survey of the existing use of the city. Many of the urban programs are a combination of destination and transitional programs. Simultaneously a ‘place to go’ and a ‘place on the way’ to another part of the city.
=
lesson 4
the space of no use
small operations
Underused spaces in the city-unused parking lots, undeveloped land outside the areas of deed restrictions become opportunities for small operations. The combination of rising prices with unused space allows for transitional and transient urban projects- quickly assembled (perfogrip™ is structure and enclosure simultaneously), facilitating use where it already exists in a latent and often trace-like form.
