What Houston Can Learn From Smart Growth America's Report

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Recently, Smart Growth America released their Foot Traffic Ahead 2023 report analyzing walkable neighborhoods in different cities. Smart Growth America’s report goes into detail about the higher demand for more walkable cities, especially following the pandemic. Urban areas with more walkability had a ~35% price premium for for-sale homes, and a ~40% price premium for multifamily rentals, relative to similar car-dominated suburban housing. The report goes on to state that “mixed-use, connected communities are not solely instruments for development and real estate interests; they offer many benefits to regions, cities, and the residents who enjoy living in and accessing these places.” Overall, Smart Growth America’s report gives us great insights into what makes a good walkable mixed-use neighborhood and how we can apply those to cities like Houston, which suffer from immense sprawl.

Unfortunately, Houston came in ranked 18th in terms of the Foot Traffic Ahead rankings. The “indexes” used to rank each metropolitan area look specifically at the share of offices, housing, and retail in each walkable neighborhood. Now, Houston ranks 7th in terms of GDP among cities in the United States, which unfortunately shows the discrepancy between how large our economy is and how much we prioritize walkable urban areas, which can actually help generate more economic activity, according to Smart Growth America.

Houston actually ranked even lower in SGA’s social equity index, coming in at 21, behind places like Denver, Baltimore, and Chicago. The social equity index looks at access to transit (which Houston is notoriously bad at), affordability, and proximity to the workplace. This analysis really helps quantify just how much work we have to do in Houston in order to create more desirable, dense, walkable communities in our city. As one of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation, and one of the world's economic powerhouses, we should really be asking for more from our city’s design and planning.

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