Peter Brown for Houston * News

Committee Formed to Promote Council Member Peter Brown as Houston's Next Mayor

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

HOUSTON – A diverse group of Houston’s business and civic leaders announce today the formation of the “Peter Brown for Mayor 2009” Exploratory Committee.

Houston attorney James L. Robertson and distinguished pastor Bishop James Dixon II co-chair the committee, which includes over 100 Houstonians active in the civic, business, cultural and religious life of the city.

This week Robertson, Dixon, developer Frank Liu, Hispanic leader Sonny Flores and arts patron Marilyn Oshman sent a letter of support asking Houstonians to join “The 1000 Friends of Peter Brown for Mayor 2009” by emailing electbrown@aol.com.

“Peter Brown, the quality of life leader on Houston’s City Council, has the vision and experience to lead our city starting in 2010,” Robertson said.

Flores concurs, “Not only is my friend Peter an accomplished professional architect and urban planner, he understands how this city works, is loved in the community, is a consensus-builder, and can get the results we need.” Flores adds, “He also is a family man of impeccable character and discipline who exemplifies our highest community values."

Dixon explains that a groundswell of unsolicited support from every part of the city has encouraged Council Member Brown to consider the Mayor’s race. “We are proud that this is not just a list of ‘heavy hitters’ but a growing coalition of good government people who can deliver the civic message, the financial support and the votes,” Dixon says.

For more information on the committee and its activities, contact Lisa Dimond Vasquez at 713-426-4111, 713-828-5825 (cell) or lisa@doubledimondpr.com.

Building a Great City

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

By Peter Brown

Great cities don’t just happen – they are made, by the firm hand of enlightened leadership, a results-driven agenda, and a dose of good fortune. Today, “globalization” has raised the bar even higher in the competition among cities. A compelling vision and effective planning invariably play a critical role in the transformation of the world’s great cities. In spite of our familiar challenges, from gridlock and crime, to air pollution and flooding, Houston’s enormous potential is without question - like a sleeping giant, we are poised on the threshold of an extraordinary urban transformation. We are experiencing the “re-urbanization” of the American city.

Citizens understand this, and they expect more, not more of the same. Their specific aspirations have been eloquently documented by Dr. Stephen Klineberg in his seminal “Houston Area Surveys.” It is now for our leadership to listen to the people, and to lead. Klineberg sees a decided disconnect between what the community wants and what the political process is delivering. Consequently, we face a crowded agenda, intensified by the complex, competitive world we live in.

Crime prevention, vastly improved public education and health care, and safe streets are high priorities. The people want better regulations to protect our neighborhoods and property values, more planning (including a community-driven, “bottom-up” Houston General Plan), and a quantum leap forward on flood control, more green space, clean air, mobility, and expanded rail transit.

The most significant impact of globalization has been a new emphasis on “quality of place” - walkable, visually exciting, diverse, urban places, with parks and civic plazas, where human experiences are energized by the inspired character of the built environment. This is what will attract information-age businesses and talent from around the world to choose Houston, and make us a great city.

Epilogue

What about the future? Dr. Klineberg’s exciting narrative, describing the collective attitudes and expectations of our diverse community, confirms that “business-as-usual” will not suffice – that we need a new action agenda to realize Houston’s enormous potential. There is no “invisible hand” at work to assure our future success.

What then are the next steps? First, we must build on our best traditions of civic leadership, “can-do” entrepreneurship, public-private partnerships, and visionary public works projects like the Ship Channel and our new Light Rail Transit system. Next, let’s enact and enforce higher standards to protect our neighborhoods, encourage quality development in the right places, reduce flooding, clean the air, and control blight. Higher standards will further energize Houston’s economy. Perhaps the greatest challenge is to vastly improve public education and community health, as we address pervasive poverty. This will require a new level of thinking, and an unprecedented combined initiative of government, our major institutions, and the business community.

Finally, a modern city cannot grow and change successfully without benefit of a citizen-based plan, to coordinate the many parts of this “civic agenda for Houston’s future.” Two years on City Council have convinced me that without such a plan, and associated goals, policies, priorities, and programs, the city will be increasingly difficult to manage.

These are exciting times of change. Our vision has emerged. The economy is strong. Let’s cross the threshold - involve the entire community –determined to plan and build a great city of the “global” 21st century.

Peter Brown, Houston City Council Member, At-Large Position One; Architect and Urban Planner November 22, 2007 (revised)

Neighborhood Memories

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Everybody knows that growing up in a neighborhood is an essential part of the American experience. The best memories of family, friends, schoolmates, church, sports, July Fourth picnics, and chilly Christmas mornings, are imprinted on the streets where we grew up. Just being a kid, falling in love for the first time, and the unexpected experiences that change the course of our lives, happen mostly in neighborhoods. They are very special places.

As an architect and urban planner, now serving as an At-Large member of the Houston City Council, I believe that “neighborhood” is the most important word in American urbanism. It is the fundamental human habitat, which crosses cultures and history. In this fast-paced era of eroding traditional values, we need to get back to the basics of real neighborhood life.

Authentic neighborhoods are a complex quilt of carefully aligned parts – within a pattern of tree-lined streets and blocks. The best streets, designed for strolling, riding a bike, parking, and slow moving traffic as well, are framed by homes of an attractive vernacular architecture. Front porches often “liberate” residents from the isolation of the back yard, and bring neighbors together on the sidewalk. Many “eyes on the street” make the neighborhood safer.

There are other important aspects - relatively short blocks, with intersections (500 to 800 feet apart), and within an easy walk, a small park with a tot lot for moms to gather, convenience shops, an elementary school. Better still, the branch post office, library or the local dentist and insurance man are nearby.

Yet I am sad to say that there are vast residential developments, mostly in newer suburban areas, which don’t qualify as a “neighborhood.” These sterile, cookie-cutter, homogenous subdivisions, which dominate the sprawled margins of our central cities, lack the basic elements and character essential to healthy communal life. In the city, sadly, we are losing our traditional neighborhoods and historic buildings to out-of-scale “redevelopment” and clumsy “infilling.”

Design is critical, because the proper configuration of the built environment – houses, lots blocks, streets, intersections, public places – has a powerful impact on human behavior, how we feel about ourselves - how private and public life take place. A good neighborhood should be part of our “civic ethos.”

Neighborhood Memories – Riverside Terrace

My best memories, during the early years of World War II, are from “Riverside Terrace” just north of Brays Bayou, in the “North McGregor” part of Houston. We lived close to Southmore, a classic boulevard faced by stately homes, its esplanade lined with live oaks. The wealthiest families lived further away, in “mansions” on North McGregor Drive, facing Brays Bayou.

Next to where the railroad tracks crossed Southmore Boulevard, there was a small shopping center with a “Piggly Wiggly” grocery store (today it’s either a convenience store or a supermarket!), a few shops, and two churches. In the other direction, the oval-shaped Calumet Park, with its sloped, gully-like embankments, was a great place to ride a bike. This diversity contributed to its “magic.”

Our house at 5409 Palmer Street, designed and built by my father in the late thirties, backed up to the railroad tracks, where I was forbidden to play. Sometimes after school I would sneak through a break in our rear fence and join my “colored” friends from across the tracks to trade marbles. We would hunker down to tell unfamiliar stories, an uncanny cultural encounter in those days, and watch from the embankment a mighty speeding freight train flatten our carefully placed Indian-head nickels. Occasionally, we would join hands and walk the trestle over Brays Bayou, a scary feat which was definitely forbidden. The clickity-clack of the freight trains as steel rolled over steel, and the sound of their mournful horns, are as real today as back then.

“My” neighborhood was a self-contained microcosm of community life – where I made friends, played in the streets, got to know my friends’ parents, explored unknown parts of Brays Bayou, and listened to radio serials after school - the “Lone Ranger” and “The Shadow.” There was no TV then, so we had to be more inventive. In great detail, the neighborhood map was in my head – I could have found my way to school mostly blindfolded.

There are some differences between then and now. The “Piggly Wiggly” is gone, the railroad abandoned, the school renamed, but the churches remain. On the other side of Calumet Park, where deed restrictions have lapsed, run-down “cheapo” apartments now stand, across from a dilapidated convenience store, where kids can buy drugs day and night. It isn’t safe to walk after dark anymore, and people keep their back doors permanently locked. It’s changed from mostly Anglo to mostly African-American, with more older people than kids. But that doesn’t matter, since it still looks, and functions, much the same – a nurturing place for daily life, which still stirs a child’s imagination.

Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND)

There is a powerful new planning movement gaining momentum world-wide called “The New Urbanism,” founded by Miami-based architect, Andres Duany, well-know for his “Seaside” and “Kentlands” communities. Reacting against placeless sprawl, automobile dependence, and anti-neighborhoods of cookie-cutter tract housing developments, the New Urbanists have promoted “Traditional Neighborhood Developments” or TNDs. TNDs, diverse in housing types and uses, with a family’s daily needs generally within a five minute walk, are patterned after the wonderful, much-loved neighborhoods of the 19th and early 20th centuries - places like “Highland Park’ in Dallas, “Alamo Heights” in San Antonio, and “River Oaks” in Houston. Austin, Galveston, Plano, are among the Texas cities now actively promoting TNDs.

Authentic Neighborhood Life

The most vivid neighborhood memories, often in photographic detail, stem from the indelible fusion of place and experience. One could not exist without the other. It is my hope that cities and their city-builders will learn to preserve, plan and construct anew authentic neighborhoods, which rival the wonderful places where we grew up. Through New Urbanist inspired planning and design, we can reclaim that critical connection between the character of a coherent physical environment and interactive community life. We are shaped by what we build. The making of good and humane places, which uplift the spirit, and bring people together, is a noble enterprise. Good neighborhoods and good places, make us infinitely more human.

Our surroundings speak to us in many ways – they tell us who we are, where we have been and where we might go. So every so often I drive back to 5409 Palmer Street, park my car, get out, walk a few familiar blocks, and reconnect with the magic of my childhood. As memories reappear, time seems to evaporate. It’s still MY neighborhood.