I just addressed this. And you’re pivoting.
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Sugarland has been doing multiphase projects for years to enhance their parks and recreational facilities along the Brazos River. I think phase 2 or 3 was completed last year.
This article is 7 years old but clearly shows suburbs investing in these spaces.
Drive through Sienna.
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It will mitigate but yes it won’t stop it. Think football, you don’t punt on 2nd down because you only got 3 yards.
Does Major Applewhite know this?
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Yes we don’t have great commuter transportation in the Houston area for suburbs. However there have been constant projects to address that, hopefully one of them will be a hit eventually.
But you also see some large companies putting their headquarters in the suburbs making it sensible for their employees to live there as well. Not to mention the top notch hospitals in the suburbs that have all been built in the last 20 or less years, these suburbs are becoming more self contained with less need to commute to the city at the same time.
But really, you completely pivoted from your original thesis.
It’s a temporary fix, but my thesis is focusing on the long term.
No, I don’t think these small scale green spaces will fix the issues. If suburban population in Houston continues growing, then emissions will still increase.
There are already green spaces in many suburbs in Houston. It’s called natural forests.
Your thesis statement was “this is never going to happen because people don’t want to pay for it”.
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Yes, in the context of what is being said in the article you posted.
If those suburbs could become their own dense cities, that would be great.
Let Houston be Houston. Let Conroe be Conroe. Let Woodlands be Woodlands.
But once those dense cities (suburbs) start turning blue, you’re going to get a repeating cycle of people leaving the density for the rural again. Also, housing costs will increase even more because more people will start moving to those areas, making a place such as Spring (HP’s headquarters), unaffordable like Houston’s inner loop.
And part of the reason companies are moving their headquarters to suburban areas is because land is cheap!
I read the article again. The context was that climate change is making things hotter, these asphalt and other playground spaces are then getting hotter in a dangerous way, so as part of public and private efforts, people are rethinking and remodeling these spaces to address that issue. Also that these projects are being included in government bond proposals.
You said that will never happen because people don’t want to pay for it. Except it is happening, people are paying for it, it is not because it helps climate change they are doing it because better green and recreation spaces are things universally desired by residents of urban and suburban cities.
Everything else (fossil fuel subsidies, carbon tax, white flight, red vs blue) was just noise you brought to this issue of we would never remodel playgrounds in this way.
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The Katy suburbs all have lots of playgrounds. None are being torn up that I can tell.
No but to say they will never be remodeled in the way of the article is ridiculous.
Per the article, If you believe that people will be supportive of a city-wide (including suburbs) initiative that will include increased tax costs to turn school parking lots into green spaces, then thats very optimistic of you.
I don’t believe that happens. I think parks and general recreation is great, but turning already-developed infrastructure such as parking lots into green spaces is going to have pushback. I hope I’m wrong.
That being said and I reiterate, the entire purpose of doing that would be to mitigate climate change effects, not stop it as you said
Suburban sprawl, is directly causing climate change. It would be great if suburbs could densify, but density is the very thing that suburbanites are escaping. They want the big 2 story house on a huge yard. They don’t want density.
If you densify suburbs, then it will repeat the cycle of people leaving, further, causing climate change (unless they move back closer to the city via gentrification)
My opinions are coming directly from your article.
You corrected me earlier when I mentioned California, which wasn’t a typo.
I referred to this link which was mentioned in the very article you posted:
People move to red suburbs for low taxes, cheap land, and big houses. If you increase taxes not just to “build parks for recreation”, but if you make the initiative primarily to combat climate change, you will get pushback because conservatives aren’t on the climate change train as liberals are.
I think an initiative will work in blue areas because wealthier inner city democrats will be willing to eat the costs. I don’t think the contrary happens.
The article doesn’t talk about parking lots. I was the one who suggested something similar would be a good idea for parking lots, I don’t know what that would be or how it would look. I was thinking like the large parking lots at a strip mall, not some school’s parking lot that holds 40 cars.
Really, my thinking wasn’t that we would go tear out every parking lot, and replace them with green space. My thinking was as that we could find a similar approach to future remodeling of parking lots and redeveloped commercial spaces when appropriate. Not that we would rush out and start a Make Parking Lots Green Again campaign with city funds. I didn’t say that but I was just posting the article more as a hey look at this idea. I was thinking more about the design considerations, and that we could rethink parking lots for the future.
Now if your original issue was that we would never have a big city wide parking lot remodel, well I agree. It would only happen as part of a project that already needed to be done so on an as needed basis. You didn’t make it clear that you were focusing on the parking lot idea so my responses were about play grounds and recreational spaces.
Schools and parks undergo renovations, that’s a fact. There’s no reason a round of capital improvements bonds couldn’t include these type of remodeling and still pass.
Yes I admit was wrong that California was mentioned in the article previously and you didn’t pull that out of thin air.
Playgrounds are a red vs blue issue, we’ll never agree on them
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Look, regardless, the main issue here is climate change.
Creating more green spaces is great, but it won’t mitigate climate change to the level it needs to, and if suburbs continue to grow (which requires deforestation), then these green spaces aren’t really doing anything but perhaps providing shade for recreation at best. Heat will get worse. Heat waves will be more frequent.
Suburbs were built largely because fossil fuels (and subsidies) made it very cheap along with deforestation. Without subsidies or dense energy, sprawl is going to get more expensive to even occur anymore down the line. Republicans policy is bad for climate because it’s slowing the energy transition.
As suburbs mature, maintenance is going to be required. This maintenance (roads, public spaces, etc), aided by fossil fuels, is indirectly subsidized by the inner density core because said suburbs are largely occupied by people who left older suburbs closer to the city or the inner city but still work in the city.
If you start to densify the suburbs such as Woodlands or Cypress to the same level as Metro Houston, then the cycle will repeat further exacerbating climate change (people leaving outwards)
Lastly, once we start to actually transition to sustainable energy, energy costs in the suburbs will increase because bigger houses require more energy to keep cool as well as public spaces such as schools and buildings.
The inner core of Houston already has the most efficient infrastructure, and in my opinion, the future will likely result in inner loop/inner ring suburbs being gentrified by people who are currently living in the outer suburbs.
Where displaced people will live is up for question.
Spring Branch on the West side for one. I went to elementary there in the 70s. It was 99% white…I have a team picture from back in the day and I’m a minority because I had brown (not blond) hair. Yea, they’ve had lots of white flight since. Per their web page Spring Branch ISD is now…
57.4%
Hispanic/Latino
27.4%
White
6.7%
Asian or Asian Pacific Islander
5.5%
Black or African American
2.7%
Two or more races
0.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native
0.0%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander