Counting on Quality of Life in Houston

Posted by on April 04, 2008 |

Quality of Life is the subject of Houston's indicators project. There are eight categories of indicators:

1. Air Quality
2. Billboards (I love this one)
3. Green Buildings
4. Litter and Graffiti
5. Parks and Open Space
6. Tax Delinquent or Abandoned Lots
7. Trees
8. Water Quality

As Mayor Bill White's term winds down, he is putting new emphasis on Houston's livability. Ann Lents, who has headed Center for Houston's Future, is leaving her post to act as the volunteer head of the effort. All around Houston, there is a new sense that the old laissez faire approach to development and business is not enough to insure Houston's future.

In response to those who believe indicators projects have no influence, the people who compiled this one agreed that is, indeed, the case with many such projects. But as the most recent indicators report confesses, "There are no generally accepted standards for some of the indicators in this report. Rather than a mechanistic view of influence, a biological view of the Houston metro region as an organism that adapts to external forces as well as internal dynamics seems a more appropriate context for viewing the potential impact of the report. No one…

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