CASE STUDY: the spatial effects of motion at an urban scale

“Zoning prevents discordant or harmful uses while protecting property values, but it does so at the cost of monotony and uniformity”

Well, there’s a town in Texas that is certainly not monotonous and conclusively far from uniform. With a population nearing six million in 2006, Houston, Texas is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations. In fact, voters have rejected efforts to have separate residential and commercial land-use districts in 1948, 1962, and 1993. As a result Houston is known for its low density, urban sprawl, and general pedestrian unfriendliness as multiple districts have emerged even within the inner city.

(Size Comparison with 3 other major cities, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago. The red line marks the focus of the study)

Houston’s highway system is a hub-and-spoke freeway structure served by multiple loops. Surrounding the central business district, downtown, medical center, and several core neighborhoods with a ten mile diameter is Interstate 610, known to locals simply as “the loop”. Another five miles out is Beltway 8, and even further are the fragments of Highway 99 (the Grand Parkway) that is currently under construction.

Because Houston does not adhere to the strict land use codes enforced in many cities, it is the perfect city to study, diagram, and understand the way that high speed automotive transportation of the highway affects the program and activities that happens along it. Because the land inside the Loop has not fallen victim to sprawl and is in fact quite dense, this diagram will simply show that activity.

Borders are drawn when a zone (commercial, residential, industrial, education, etc.) hits the edge of another or in the case of residential zones, when it changes grain, which is frequently the signature of another neighborhood often of another character.

Possibly each specific land use area can be translated simply into a speed, but only when used in context and in comparison with its neighbors. For example, commercial land is considerably quicker than residential as it is meant to service many people per day as opposed to a few. A commercial area is a destination zone, one to obtain things and return to ones activities. Possibly it is a zone of leisure where one can dawdle and move from place to place yet it still serves as an intermediary location. Residences can vary in speed as well, depending heavily on density yet they remain as a destination of significantly more permanence. The pace slows when on returns home and movement dwindles. Possibly the grain of higher speed activities and program adheres to rules significantly more fluid than those of the nearly sedentary-paced residential zones.

The zone that seems to be the most effected by the highway is the commercial. See diagram......More to come……

POINTS OF FURTHER STUDY:

· Where does this highway touch the ground and where does it rise above? How does this space created (either as a thoroughfare or as a wall) affect the program that happens next to it?

· Diagram of these programs as a measure of speed.