Texas Transit Association

Houston’s urban center, transformed by light rail, new housing and an array of sports and cultural attractions, is beckoning record numbers of suburbanites, the 2004 Houston Area Survey shows.

This increased interest in urban living is being driven in large part by Anglos, Republicans and families with children at home — groups traditionally regarded as firmly entrenched in suburban lifestyles, the survey shows. In all, 38 percent of the Harris County suburban residents interviewed said they were interested in moving into the city, up from 27 percent last year.

Survey says city now has glow for those in ‘burbs
By MIKE SNYDER
Houston Chronicle May 9, 2004

“This is a dramatic reversal from all the past years,” said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who has directed the survey of local attitudes and demographic characteristics since 1982. “In one year, the psyche of the people living in the suburbs has changed.”

For mortgage broker Sue Schmidt, who raised her children in Spring and later lived briefly in Conroe, Houston’s near northwest Garden Oaks neighborhood had much to offer: tall trees, spacious lots and a seven-minute drive to Minute Maid Park to see her beloved Astros play.

“My husband was the hesitant one, and now he loves it,” said Schmidt, who moved into Garden Oaks in December. “There is so much more to do in terms of the museums and the restaurants.”

Dr. Winnie Bedi, a neonatologist, had a different motivation for a planned move from Clear Lake to River Oaks: He wanted to be closer to the private schools his son and daughter attend on Houston’s west and southwest sides. Bedi and his wife spent a year looking for their new home, which is undergoing renovations before the family moves in.

Bedi said his children attended public schools in Clear Lake in early grades, but the daily commute became unmanageable when his son was admitted to Strake Jesuit College Preparatory and his daughter to Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart.

Houston Realtor John Daugherty said frustration with difficult commutes is one of the most common reasons cited by his clients for moving closer to the city center. Ongoing construction on most of the city’s major freeways aggravates the problem, Daugherty said.

“We see it (the trend) increasing,” he said. “People that are becoming more affluent want to live within the Loop or just west of the Loop.”

Klineberg said the timing of the survey may have influenced the results this year. The telephone survey of 650 randomly selected Harris County adults, with an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, was conducted Feb. 16 through March 1, in the aftermath of the Jan. 1 opening of the Main Street rail line and the Feb. 1 Super Bowl.

Klineberg and others said these events may have given many suburban residents their first taste of the nightlife, dining and other diversions along the Main Street corridor from downtown to Reliant Park.

In earlier surveys that included the urban-suburban questions, the proportion of city residents interested in moving to the suburbs has been almost twice as great as the reverse. This year, the numbers are much closer, with 42 percent of city residents saying they are very or somewhat interested in moving to the suburbs.

Over the years, suburban migration has made Houston “the most spread-out major city in America,” Klineberg said. “But now, for the first time ever, there is as great an interest in moving into the city as there is in moving out to the suburbs.”

In analyzing the suburban residents’ results, Klineberg found that increased interest in urban living was more pronounced among Anglos than among blacks or Hispanics. Among the Anglos, the change was greatest among those ages 30 to 44, married and with children living at home. Interest grew more among those who identified themselves as Republicans.

These findings suggest a shift in the tradition of the suburbs as a haven for conservative young families who want to raise their children in a big house with a yard and enroll them in well-funded suburban public schools.

Realtor Eileen Hartman of Greenwood-King Properties said many of her and her colleagues’ clients are approaching the school question differently than parents have in the past.

“Families for a time were moving out for the suburban schools, but now time — and family time — is more important,” Hartman said via e-mail. “They don’t want that one to one-and-a-half-hour commute each way. If theyaren’t pleased with their local school or if their children don’t make the cut into a magnet or Vanguard school, they are opting for private schools instead of moving out.”

Downtown business leaders and supporters of urban redevelopment welcomed KIineberg’s findings, saying they reflect increased interest nationally in alternatives to the strip malls, big-box stores and acres of pavement prevalent in suburban America.

They cautioned, however, that the prospect of increased migration into Houston’s center poses serious challenges in providing affordable housing, designing neighborhoods and business districts with an urban feel, and improving public education.

“I think it’s terrific, but we could screw it up. It could just become unmanageable,” said David Crossley, the president of the Gulf Coast Institute, a nonprofit group seeking to improve Houston’s quality of life.

Crossley said Houston’s leaders must find ways to direct high-density development into appropriate locations, preferably close to transit, to prevent high-rise residential towers from creating traffic and parking tangles.

Bob Eury, president of the downtown business organization Central Houston Inc., said government and business leaders must find a way to provide housing for people with a broad range of incomes as redevelopment of the city center continues. They also must find more effective strategies to protect older neighborhoods such as the Third Ward from the sometimes negative side effects of gentrification, he said.

Eury and Crossley said urban design will pose yet another challenge, particularly in a city with few tools to regulate land use.

“We need to be sure that we create a really good urban environment, that we don’t just re-create the suburbs in the city,” Eury said. “People really do expect a different kind of environment when they move into the inner city. It needs to be more dense and more walkable.”

While movement into the central city has been under way for several years, the suburbs have an abiding appeal for many area families. The Houston-Galveston Area Council projects that over the next 20 years, most of the area’s population and job growth will continue to be in areas far from downtown Houston.

The council’s regional growth forecast predicts that the population of the eight-county Houston metropolitan area will grow by 3 million people, to 7.6 million, by 2025. The most rapid population and employment growth are expected in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, although Harris County will experience the most growth in raw numbers.

The report projects “substantial” population and job growth for the central, urbanized areas of Houston, but says 67 percent of the growth in households and 59 percent of job growth will occur outside Beltway 8.

Sue and Chris Schmidt, however, are content to watch others fuel the continuing suburban growth. They recently put a contract on another Garden Oaks home, one they had been eyeing for years but that only recently came on the market. If they close the deal, they’ll only have to move a few blocks.

“We like it so much here,” Sue Schmidt said, “that we’re buying another house.”