The North Houston / Greenspoint Livable Centers Study analyzes the neighborhood's existing conditions and provides holistic solutions to improve it's resiliency.
The study seeks to guide improvements that address the neighborhood's ecological conditions and overall quality of life for its residents.
Opportunities include a "buyout /buy-in program" that aims to protect residents from future flooding and mitigate flooding in the surrounding areas.
The North Houston / Greenspoint Livable Centers Study proposes to move residents out of the Greens Bayou floodway and preserve neighborhood cohesion through a “buyout / buy-in” program that provides similar housing choices elsewhere in the neighborhood. The North Houston / Greenspoint Livable Centers Study focuses on a portion of Houston’s Greenspoint neighborhood that has a thriving stock of offices, hotels, and housing. The neighborhood also faces challenges including repetitive flood losses from Greens Bayou flooding, a largely vacant mall site, a street grid that hampers walkability, and aging housing that still is important for its natural affordability. Our role in the project focused on analysis and recommendations for the area’s parks, its housing stock, and its local ecology. An intertwined set of recommendations seeks to implement a “buyout / buy-in” program that moves residents out of the floodway while developing and offering similar residential options in the neighborhood. The buyout area along Greens Bayou would then be reused for a Central Park that provides recreational, ecological, and social amenities and serves as a detention facility that could manage flooding during major rain events, preventing flooding in the surrounding area.
