Houston Genetic City. Gulf Coast Urbanism Post-Industry, Post-Oil, Post-Sprawl

-Thom Mayne

Houston is a city of rapid-fire urban mutations.

The largest metropolis in the US by square mileage – and the most diverse – Houston constantly processes vacant space into new developments, driven only by the logic of transaction and opportunity. The city’s lack of zoning means anything goes: a sprawl of random events and programs constantly generating new junkspace and drosscape. lt’s a place where urban developments are always negotiable, where storms and chemical leaks constantly reconfigures any future planning.

Unlike the scripted corporate urbanism of the generic city, Houston’s glitchy urban DNA leads to instant evolution and mutation: a Genetic City.

Houston Genetic City is really three books in one.

The result of a year-long University of Houston study, it examines the metropolis from three interlinked viewpoints: developer city, energy city, unzoned city.

The book asks how Houston might evolve over the next fifty years beyond its problems, into an open and resilient city of the future.

HOUSTON GENETIC CITY

Houston is unusual: one of the most dispersed and unplanned cities in the United States. This project Looks at Houston as a prototype for similar places elsewhere in the world – in social, cultural, infrastructural, economie, ecological terms.

X HOUSTON ⁄ GENETIC O CITY

PETER JAY ZWEIG MATTHEW JOHNSON JASON LOGAN

X /

O

HOUSTON GENETIC CITY AUTHORS Matthew Johnson Jason Logan Peter Zweig FAIA EDITING Matthew Johnson GRAPHIC DESIGN Matthew Johnson with Ramon Prat Peter Zweig Jason Logan Munjer Hashem Mustafa Tayyeb

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AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY Alex Maclean CONTRIBUTIONS BY Aziz Alshayeb Candela Bestegui Barbara Blanco Bladimir Carrilo Diana Cerri Samatha Cuesta Tung Dinh Leighann Dunn Hicham Ghoulem Elizabeth Giusti Andrew Gressett Munjer Hashem Alicia Islam Angelica Lastra Jeff Lemley Grant Lewis Jose Mario Lopez Patricia Marcine Marie Martinez Ana Millan Christine Nguyen Matthew Nguyen Vivian Nguyen Andrew Parker Jorge Rebellon Clark Reed Asra Rehman Taylor Rigsby Catalina Valencia Eric Ventura Katrina Winsko David Yao Michael Zepeda

Based on research and projects completed in the University of Houston College of Architecture and Design Vertical Studio, 2015-2016.

STUDIO DIRECTORS Peter Zweig, Matthew Johnson, Jason Logan CONSULTANTS Thom Mayne/Morphosis Eui-Sung Yi/Director, Morphosis & NOW Institute DEAN, UH COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN Patricia Belton Oliver, FAIA PUBLISHED BY Actar Publishers, New York, Barcelona www.actar.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © edition: Actar Publishers © texts: Matthew Johnson, Jason Logan, Peter Zweig © design, drawings, illustrations, and photographs: Matthew Johnson, Jason Logan, Peter Zweig This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, on all or part of the material, specifically translation rights, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or other media, and storage in databases. For use of any kind, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Distribution Actar D, Inc. New York, Barcelona.

New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor New York, NY 10016, USA T 0+1 212 966 2207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com Barcelona Roca i Batlle 2-4 08023 Barcelona, Spain T 0+34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com Indexing English ISBN: 978-1-948765-24-4 PCN: Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934919 Printed and Bound in the European Union

X HOUSTON / GENETIC O CITY

PETER JAY ZWEIG MATTHEW JOHNSON JASON LOGAN

Essays

HOUSTON GENETIC CITY

59

X

THREE MILLION SHAPES Interview with Thom Mayne

10

THE GENETIC CITY Matthew Johnson

14

VACANCY: Photos

49

A DEVELOPED LIFE: Gerald D. Hines In Conversation with Peter Jay Zweig

70

X / O

DEVELOPER CITY Peter Jay Zweig

/

187

ENERGY CITY Matthew Johnson

O

165

HOUSTONISM: A Soft Theory Matthew Johnson

172

ENERGY: Photos

178

EIGHTH WONDER: An Imaginary Astrodome Matthew Johnson

318

ZONE: Photos

327

VISIONARY HOUSTON Jason Logan

408

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

427

339

UNZONED CITY Jason Logan EXHIBITIONS AND SYMPOSIA

FLOOD: Photos

417

Concepts

Projects

7 CONTENTS

WHAT IS

24

WHAT IF

60 I Flooding II Vacancy III Destinations

IV Connectivity V Reboot WHAT IF

A Wicked-Problem -Rich City

76 84 90 100 108 114 122 132 144 152

The Wetline I + II Poro-City Tranitower Future Farm Waste_Scape Hyperport Bayou Thinkscape Silicon Bayou Energy Island

210 236 252 260 270 278 290 304 308

Centripedus Linked City [Superschool] Air Island Astropark

354 364 372 378 396

190

I Protect II Remediate

III Activate

IV Energize WHAT IF

26 30 32 38 44

Origins Concentric City Sprawl City Satellite City Genetic City

Resilient Points The Arc Ad Hoc Reuse Edible City [Class] Rooms Foreign Bodies Pleasure Terminal/Peakscape Points of Departure/Foreign Links Cartel/Caroom Revival of a Fallen Origin

340 I Thick Infrastructure II Loose Networks III High Waters, Shadow Buildings

FOREWORD Envisioning Houston’s Future Beyond Industry, Beyond Oil, Beyond Sprawl

No city in Texas is quite as diverse as sprawling Houston. By square mileage, it is the largest city in the US at 655 square miles, with one of the fastest-growing populations. If the current trend continues, it will surpass Chicago to become the third most populous city in the US by 2030 (after New York City and Los Angeles.)

As a result of this rapid growth, Houston is now confronted with complex environmental and social challenges. Its early development decisions exacerbated the effects of the city’s hot-humid climate and flat swamp landscape (affectionately referred to as gumbo mud.) As massive storms strike the city yearly, from Ike to Allison to Hurricane Harvey, Houston’s blacktop roadways and parking lots and buildings prevent water from absorbing into pervious soil. Instead, as the rainfall hits, it flows in vast sheets off asphalt roofs and streets, flooding the bayous.

Early on, Houston became the center of petrochemical production and shipping.

Most of its industry sprawls along the fragile bayou landscape to the east of downtown. This twenty-six mile riparian network is referred to as the Ship Channel, an ecology existing in a constant tug of war with industry. Years of industrial pollution have only recently been remediated out of the soil and water. Still, chemical fires sometimes burn for days along the bayou, spewing black clouds of xylene and benzene over residential neighborhoods.

Beyond its climate and industry, Houston has benefitted from an ad hoc approach to development. Without a comprehensive land use plan, settlements grow almost at random on scattered patches of earth throughout the region. As these developments grow (and often fail), they constantly generate new drosscape and junkspace. In Houston, this happens faster than in other cities and with less oversight. The result is a landscape of opportunity where negotiations are constantly made between capital, development, and sprawl. Yet despite its seemingly perpetual state of crisis, the city continues to thrive. Land is cheap and abundant. Culture is accessible. People are friendly. Food is great. New parks and social infrastructure are revealing the city’s long-hidden natural beauty. Houston’s potential abounds.

In this book, we describe Houston as a genetic city, one that operates not on top-down, formal planning models but by trial-and-error. Its evolution is heuristic, ad hoc, multidimensional. Houston Genetic City approaches its subject from diverse viewpoints: three books (and three approaches) in one. All three attempt to grapple with the aftermath of a century of opportunistic and often exploitative planning. How will Houston evolve in the next fifty years beyond its early

9

X /

O

The book was a collaborative project by faculty and students of the University of Houston’s Gerald D Hines College of Architecture and Design. Three faculty and twenty-five students worked together to realize a vision for a future Houston – beyond its current petro-economy, beyond its laissez-faire land speculation, beyond its notorious sprawl. Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi of Morphosis acted as collaborators and critics throughout the project.

This book focuses on three primary areas of investigation: DEVELOPER CITY The Developer City scenario rethinks approaches to Houston’s Central Business District. proposing five distinct phases of growth and transformation over the next forty years. As Houston transitions from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, what will happen to its downtown? Will the processes of atomization and satellite development continue, or will new models for density and smart growth arise? Developer City examines the future possibilities of the concept of downtown from an economical, social, cultural, and ecological point of view – envisioning increased access, transportation alternatives, and infrastructural balance. As vacancies in the CBD are filled, these projects propose new visions for density, urban living, and alternatives to sprawl.

ENERGY CITY Houston is the center of the global energy industry, home to more than 5,000 petrochemical-related companies. The presence of this industry has configured the landscape in specific ways, with refineries and chemical processing plants pockmarking the twenty-six mile bayou corridor to the east of downtown. It’s from this Ship Channel that Houston exports fossil-fuel based products to the world.

As a result, industry has had an outsized impact on the city’s patterns of development, generating much of its sprawl and pollution. Yet as energy systems evolve toward more renewable models, Houston has an ability to rethink its urban landscape – to move away from a dead-end materials economy, where products move from extraction cradle to landfill grave – toward a circular economy where every resource is used renewably. Energy City reimagines the Ship Channel’s industrial sprawl as a new landscape of ecological opportunity and resilience.

UNZONED CITY In this scenario, we imagined Houston’s lack of zoning as an asset and an opportunity, taking advantage of its open system of development to generate new forms. Houston is the largest city in the US without formal zoning. By mapping the loose network of city municipal codes and deed restrictions onto the existing landscape, the studio created a theoretical residual territory across Houston, an unregulated zone hidden within the urban map. Presented as a series of maps and diagrams that illustrate strategies for operating within this territory, students explore new potentialities for architecture’s relationship to infrastructure, land use, and the hot-humid, flood-prone environment that characterizes Houston. Ultimately, the work demonstrates what the Unzoned City promises: that a lack of zoning can free the city to become interesting, generating exceptional forms of urbanism and architecture.

GENETIC CITY

development decisions? How will it correct decisions made without foresight or consideration for the future?

Three Million Shapes An Interview with Thom Mayne

On December 2nd 2017 Thom Mayne sat down for a question and answer session with faculty of the University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design.

X / O

Q: What do you think of the direction of architecture and architecture culture now?

Architecture operates over a long period of time. For instance, the work I’m doing is the result of a set of questions that I started asking decades ago. It’s the culmination of literally decades of work. But things are moving so quickly that it’s essential to stay alert and to be flexible. You have to be open to looking at what the role of architects is within this diverse field – many, many avenues are available to you.

There’s no clear notion of what architecture is at this point in time and as students you’re going to decide at some point what it is for you. You’ll be moving through your own maze, trying to define architecture for yourself, and I’ll show you my maze as we both keep asking questions to decide where we are personally.

And then of course I also work like this UH studio is working, beginning in the broader urban planning world first. Urban investigations can be very different from architecture in the pure sense – which is in some ways much more limited in scope – versus the kind of questions this studio is asking, which are social, cultural, political, economic.

I also think it’s a question of how we as architects shape behavior, whether on a personal or social level. But that’s a very difficult question to answer. You can start the inquiry as a student – beginning with a clear problem-definition and the process of asking questions. But at that point you don’t have solutions. You have to admit that. You have to locate the problem, and in some cases multiple problems. You also have to approach these problems in a way that the public can understand. It can’t be esoteric. The consequences of these problems have to be well-articulated.

Q: Having now spent some time in Houston, what’s your impression of the city?

I knew essentially nothing about it when I arrived here. I’d spent quite a bit of time in Dallas and Austin, but I didn’t know Houston, which is very different than

11

Like Los Angeles, Houston seems to be driven by the primacy of the horizontal plane. This forces a condition in which growth is more or less unfettered by any notion of conventional planning or any reference to what the historical city, a lack of interest in European models or growth outward in rings from a city center.

Like Houston, Los Angeles really has three clear centers. Here it seems like it’s the Downtown, the Medical Center, and the Galleria, right? But like Los Angeles, the Downtown isn’t a downtown in any real sense. It’s just a cluster of dense buildings. It actually has no real meaning in terms of a Downtown being the true center of culture or politics for the city.

Houston also called to mind Bangkok for me in terms of its flooding issues. I was surprised to find out about the extreme flooding here. Happens several times a year, right? And shuts down the city? We did a lot of work in Bangkok where you could build a tower and then the monsoon starts and you realize you can’t go anywhere. It lasts for four hours, you roll up your pants and walk through the flooded streets to your next appointment. It’s really crazy. A brand new office complex by Kohn Pedersen Fox or Gensler, and there’s two feet of water around it. I was in the lobby and there was this man dressed in suit and tie and expensive shoes – he could have been on Wall Street – and he just takes the shoes off, rolls his pants up and heads out into the flooded street. Everyday business.

Houston reminds me too of Mexico City, where there’s this incredible collision between nature and the 21st century world.

You find vestiges that are maybe not quite as radical as that, but an intersection of these simple, almost primitive, conditions with an idea about the modern world.

It won’t be too long before something big happens here in Houston. You’ve had hurricanes every couple of years, right? It’s like Hurricane Sandy in New York: before that, people weren’t talking about sea level rise, and then Sandy happened and suddenly everyone woke up. Evens like that cause people to wake up and not be complacent.

It takes Sandy and people go “Oh, we get it. Suddenly our house is full of water.” Maybe that landscape shouldn’t have been inhabited earlier in the 20th century – or in the specific way it was inhabited – and now you’re there and it’s too expensive to fix a big problem. And by the way the insurance company no longer insures your house. So now people are forced to prop their houses up, figure out how to live in this absurd situation.

GENETIC CITY

other Texas cities. I wasn’t deeply familiar with its inherent problems. But I was able to look through the lens of your students’ inquiry at usage in urban terms and infrastructure terms. Houston has an obvious relation to Los Angeles, my city, even with all of the climatological differences between the two. They’re still both infrastructurally dependent, economically and demographically similar in a sense. Houston is dominated by environmental concerns, as well as a single industry – petroleum – that seems to push specific environmental issues.

(What Is) Houston 1898-2018

(what is) houston 1836- 2016

X / O

industrial economy

/

1836

1870

1960

1

2

3

origins

concentric city

sprawl city

post industrial transition economy

disruptive economy

2000

2060

4

5

satellite city

genetic city

25 GENETIC CITY

Houston has gone through four distinct phases in its evolution: frontier town, concentric city, sprawl city, satellite city. But a fifth transition is happening that will remake all of the earlier phases by 2060: what we call the Genetic City.

AN ORIGIN STORY

ORIGINS

Houston has its origins in a real estate scam. In 1836 a pair of brothers, John and Augustus Allen, came down to the swampy Gulf Coast to purchase six thousand acres of cheap land at the intersection to two bayous.

Then, in an act of marketing genius, they placed ads in New England newspapers promoting this new confluence as a paradise: a landscape of pastoral prairies and oak mottes, beaches and savannahlike hills.

Hundreds bought into their scheme, purchasing land at inflated prices. But in reality the site (later named Allen’s Landing) was flat, muddy, and prone to floods.

Nonetheless, over the next hundred years, Houston’s downtown spread concentrically from that nexus. It was divided into six pie-shaped “wards”. Starting in 1865, ex-slaves were given parcels which became Freedman’s Town and Frenchtown.

CONCENTRIC CITY

SPRAWL CITY

As neighborhoods became more congested in the 1960s and 1970s, developers built further out, leapfrogging existing communities to create Houston’s first suburbs. Developers made culturally homogenous towns away from the perceived problems of the American inner city—so-called White Flight. These new communities quickly grabbed unspoiled land, and Houston became the largest metropolitan area in the US at 655 square miles. The city’s lack of zoning codes was an enticement to real estate speculators, offering absolute freedom over what (and how) to build. As with the Allen Brothers’ scheme, these communities were advertised as pastoral retreats from urban life—gated

X / O

Later arrivals to the city realized what it offered: cheap land connected by bayous, farm-to-market roads and,

later, freeways. The discovery of huge oil fields north of Houston, coupled with a growing car culture, meant that the Houston of the 1930s through 50s could take advantage of its vast area and wealth to expand. It embodied the mid-century American dream, in which every family had a car, yard, and suburban house.

1836

1870

1960

1960

concentric city

2000

sprawl city

land area population highways completed

GENETIC CITY

communities, with access heavily controlled—what Lars Lerup has called a “white collar prison.”

SATELLITE CITY By the early 2000s, Houston’s sprawl had created a constellation of towns like Sugarland and Pearland.

The Woodlands—designed by Scottish landscape architect Ian McHarg—became a model for sustainable development. Its residential neighborhoods integrated the piney woods landscape and used bio-swales and other means to maintain habitats and control stormwater.

2000

What we propose here are models for a future Houston.

They take into account the city’s inherent opportunities and openness. But our explorations are rooted in a fundamentally ecological perspective, one that offers resilience and interconnection rather than resource exploitation and geographical division. We propose a future Houston that is ecological, integrative, and sustainable—a healthy model for future cities, an evolutionary genetic city.

2030

2030

satellite city

driverless cars introduced

2060+

genetic city

drone transport methods

hyperloop integration throughout texas

27 GENETIC CITY

Meanwhile, Houston grew into the oil and gas capital of the world. Its ship channel was ideally suited to industry, offering easy access for global shipping.

Petrochemical plants were built by the hundreds on top of estuarine bayous and coastal prairies, renamed the Ship Channel, and dredged continuously for larger and larger ships. Eventually, the Port of Houston became one of the largest shipping ports in the US.

What does all of this mean for the future of Houston?

Historically, developers have had free reign, without the pressures of zoning, historic districting, or heavy environmental regulations. But Houston now has an opportunity to maintain its entrepreneurial, futureoriented spirit while also evolving as an ecological and context-driven city. The city has begun to acknowledge the sensitivity of its coastal prairie landscape, the impacts that development have on flooding (and vice versa), the opportunities offered by sustainable technologies, and the limits of its ability to grow.

1

2

4

5

1960

SPRAWL CITY

Don’t Judge

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A Book by its Cover

Historically, most cities have developed over time from a central location (perhaps at the juncture of waterways, natural resources, or two roads crossing) and consistently moved outward in an endless pattern driven by the landscape, business needs, or roads. Houston, as well as many other southern US cities however, became a city whose populations dramatically increased and evolved during the 1950’s and beyond. The continental highway system began in the US with the Eisenhower administration and crisscrossed America from the North to the South and East to West coasts. The car along with the invention of air conditioning provided this developer driven city with the opportunity to leap frog further and further outside the city and to go where the land was cheaper and therefore, created more opportunity and profit for the developers. The laissez faire, business friendly, no-zoning city created the right environment for those willing to put all their “chips on the table” and challenge the risk-reward of wildcatter real estate investment. The ensuing developments laid the ground work for the genetic city as a new paradigm for a city of multi-centers divorced from the original central core. The intercontinental highway system originating in the 1950’s only became complete in the mid 1980’s. Locally, the circular loops around Houston, which began as military dirt roads to protect Houston from attack during WWII, were now converted into concrete, high speed roads that would become the local main rings of transportation around the growing city. These interconnecting gridded transportation routes created opportunity, but also sealed southern new cities into a pattern of sprawl unprecedented in American history.

This new development of pockets of growth spinning further from the central business district along the intercontinental highway system and the new circular roads around Houston by definition left a vast landscape of vacant land between the new developer projects. These stretches of highways and cheaper land later filled in with anonymous gas stations, strip shopping centers and subdivisions promising a pastoral community separated from urban conges-

After 2000, Houston’s businesses centered on retail and shopping began to go under. Boom/bust cycles left large areas of vacant land in the core of downtown Houston.

33 GENETIC CITY

tion and from work. Houston thus became a tale of two cities: the higher density of speculative, developer projects that were driven by the market place and the in-between spaces beckoning to build the social communities enabled by the necessities of moving at high speeds along the highway which resulted in a patchwork quilt of a new city typology.

10 Carroll, Susan.

“Downtown’s thriving hub grew from tiny town center.”

Houston Chronicle, May 22, 2016

As a result of sprawl, the pressure on the Central Business district increased by the loss of residential living (in 1950 there were 25,000 residents downtown, while in 2016 those numbers were reduced to merely 4,500, including: 1,000 prisoners in the local jail.) Downtown, the businesses centered on retail and shopping began to go under during the boom-bust cycles, which left large areas of vacant land in the 1.5 square miles of downtown Houston.10 The number of surface parking lots were merely there as placeholders for future development: the vacant land, waiting for projects to be economically viable as dictated by the marketplace before any development would occur.

The historic movement of cities away from their central cores became Houston’s focus during this time period. The growth outward increased Houston’s land area in what would become the largest land area city in the US, while destroying the necessary ecological wetlands that prevented flooding in the city. The desire to create a concentric city with the establishment of the New Urbanist’s movement lay in stark contrast to the new paradigm of Houston’s multi-centers. Due to the political will of delaying and in some cases ending the desire for a metro system that would have connected all the new multi-centered developments of Houston.

Sprawl created both a dream and a nightmare for Houston’s future: This era was clearly a transition for unbridled growth, economic prosperity and with it a continuation of the inevitable struggles of the boom / bust cycles of a city bent on can-do and independence from restrictions. The wildcatter mentality with reliance on philanthropy would now make way for a new thinking of community building and protecting the delicate nuances of the bayou system and the environment.

1920

1910

1900

1890

1880

1870

1860

1850

1840

1836

HOUSTON POP. 250,000 240,000 230,000 220,000 210,000 200,000 190,000 180,000 170,000 160,000

ula tion

140,000

sto n

pop

130,000

hou

120,000 110,000 100,000 90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000

40,000 30,000

17,557

16,513

50,000

origin

9,382

10,000

4,845

20,000

2,396

X / O

150,000

concentric city

pulation

po downtown

N. fwy eastex

katy la porte

610

hardy

288

spur 5

tomball

sw fwy

2018

2000

2000

1990

1980

1970

1960

1950

8

99

westpark fort bend

freeways

35 GENETIC CITY

25,000

THE WOODLANDS

downtown population

HEIGHTS WESTCHASE U OF H

MONTROSE RICE UNIVERSITY TEXAS MEDICAL GREENSPOINT PORT OF HOUSTON

18,000

sprawl city

satellite city

1,000

1,700

8,100

2,100

ENERGY CORRIDOR GREENWAY PLAZA

4,000

1930

1940 gulf fwy

MIDTOWN

genetic city

1

4

2

5

PHASE 3

DESTINATIONS

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POINTS OF DEPARTURE Vivian Nguyen Research: Vivian Nguyen, Munjer Hashem

Creating Points of Departure and Destination for Houston Located under the highway and at the bayou’s edge, the Place of Departure incorporates drones as a disruptive technology and radical new delivery system. The entire roofscape of this project is intended as a landing pad and site of interaction with both drones and with the surrounding city. From here, drones deliver goods, services, and mail to nearby sites. It’s been predicted that drones will dominate the delivery industry in the future, which will generate new efficiencies for shipping and logistics but may have unknown effects on the labor economy. At the same time, drone delivery could reduce both road traffic and accidents.

As a new drone-park, Points of Departure will evolve into a place where business, leisure, and economics intersect to become a new kind of mixed use development. Housing will be integrated into the site, along with public amenities in order to give new life to the unique qualities of the bayou.

2020

2030

2050 2040

2060

133

DEVELOPER CITY CONNECTI VITY

X / O FESTIVAL

CARNIVAL

DRONE

LIGHTHOUSE

135 DEVELOPER CITY CONNECTI VITY

LOOKOUT

DRONE

PACKAGING

DRONE RESEARCH

100 YEAR FLOOD PLAIN 100 YEAR FLOOD PLAIN

500 YEAR FLOOD PLAIN

500 YEAR FLOOD PLAIN 500 year flood plain

100 year flood plain

500 YEAR FLOOD PLAIN

X / O

100 YEAR FLOOD PLAIN

/

/

/

DRONE DELIVERY PACKAGING DRONE DELIVERY

DRONE DELIVERY

PACKAGING

DRONE RESEARCH + REPAIR LAB PACKAGING DRONE RESEARCH + REPAIR LAB

DRONE RESEARCH + REPAIR LAB

PARK

PARK

PARK

137 DEVELOPER CITY CONNECTI VITY

500 100

500 100

[chapter] INTRO AMPHITHEATER

[chapter] INTRO AMPHITHEATER

1

1

2

2

3

3

4 5 01 02 OBSERVATION

4 5 01 02 OBSERVATION

03

03

04

04

05

05

ACTIVITY PIER

ACTIVITY PIER

LOOKOUT POINT

LOOKOUT POINT

WETLANDS

/

WETLANDS

/

-Thom Mayne

Houston is a city of rapid-fire urban mutations.

The largest metropolis in the US by square mileage – and the most diverse – Houston constantly processes vacant space into new developments, driven only by the logic of transaction and opportunity. The city’s lack of zoning means anything goes: a sprawl of random events and programs constantly generating new junkspace and drosscape. lt’s a place where urban developments are always negotiable, where storms and chemical leaks constantly reconfigures any future planning.

Unlike the scripted corporate urbanism of the generic city, Houston’s glitchy urban DNA leads to instant evolution and mutation: a Genetic City.

Houston Genetic City is really three books in one.

The result of a year-long University of Houston study, it examines the metropolis from three interlinked viewpoints: developer city, energy city, unzoned city.

The book asks how Houston might evolve over the next fifty years beyond its problems, into an open and resilient city of the future.

HOUSTON GENETIC CITY

Houston is unusual: one of the most dispersed and unplanned cities in the United States. This project Looks at Houston as a prototype for similar places elsewhere in the world – in social, cultural, infrastructural, economie, ecological terms.

X HOUSTON ⁄ GENETIC O CITY

PETER JAY ZWEIG MATTHEW JOHNSON JASON LOGAN