For The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO)

Transit Environment Programming Catalog

2021 AIA Houston Urban Design Award Recipient

The Transit Environment Programming Catalog is led by The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) to unify internal disciplines towards more robust and resilient placemaking. Our team was engaged as early-stage collaborators, workshopping ideas and translating concepts into vibrant content through layout and narrative that specifically address Houston’s environment, neighborhoods, scale, and invaluable blend of cultures. 

Juror Comment: ‘A very comprehensive way of looking at the complexity of urban design that can be applied to different cities’ looking at ‘multimodal levels of interactions between different models of transportation and mobility’.

The purpose of the Catalog is to unify ambitions of sustainability, accessibility, and connectivity - visually and vibrantly across an array of disciplines within METRO. The Programming Catalog emphasizes shared topics and opportunities throughout the document toward sites that blend ecology, safety, and equality with place making. Disentangling and properly orienting intentions across METRO’s many disciplines creates higher interdisciplinary responsiveness.

“The Programming Catalog emphasizes shared topics and opportunities throughout the document toward sites that blend ecology, safety, and equality with placemaking.”

Ridership often crosses urban, suburban, and rural service sheds of METRO. Within those sheds are a number of hybrid street, neighborhood, and land use types. To maximize these distinctions in performance and character, this document deploys ‘program islands’, graphic prototypes to better engage these distinctions. In a ‘plug and play’ motif, we can show how types can better perform together as an active pedestrian terrain that optimizes natural habitats.

Transportation infrastructure clearly represents cultural ideals. In Houston, a public transit system that has developed in stops and starts while freeways are built one on top of another tells a story about our widespread reliance on fossil fuels, infatuation with the autonomy provided by single occupancy vehicles, and sprawling zoneless real estate development. Further, a city where 8% of households don’t own a car but only half of that percentage commutes on public transit, brings up serious questions about the equity of our transportation infrastructure systems and built environment overall.

The Catalog focuses on transportation infrastructure-based placemaking for Houston’s unique and real communities, which is a world changing idea in and of itself. It embraces challenges that have too often been only begrudgingly acknowledged. Through this practice, strategies emerge for addressing issues faced within transportation infrastructure by cities and communities globally.