This studio will explore how, over the coming decade, buildings can be sensibly removed from the 100-year floodplain and replaced with new development that stabilizes and ultimately enhances the neighborhood in a manner that accounts for its environmental future. For the purposes of demonstration, we will focus our efforts on the Meyerland neighborhood of Houston because it has flooded in all three recent floods and contains the zip code with the greatest number of Repetitive Loss Payments from the National Flood Insurance Program.
Spread out over discrete phases, the studio project will visualize how a fair, well-designed retreat can be achieved, not only in Meyerland, but in neighborhoods and bayous all over the city. It is no longer enough to simply provide research and analysis. Following this latest of floods, what is required are explicit strategies with which to instrumentalize data and analysis. The goal is to show how it is possible to spare Meyerland, and neighborhoods like it, from additional material and emotional losses. Pulling us out of a continuous state of emergency, the proposals will serve as a template for bayou neighborhoods across the city, effectively demonstrating the path to a resilient and prosperous Houston.