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Houston’s CityCentre project, profiled in the new report Shifting Suburbs, created a dense new urban place at the confluence of major highways.
Shifting Suburbs: Reinventing for Infrastructure for Compact Development, showcases CityCentre, a walkable, mixed-use hub built on an obsolete mall outside of Houston, Texas.
The project was presented by Jonathan Brinsden, COO and executive vice president of Midway Companies, at a ULI forum in Minneapolis in 2011.
At the forum, Brinsden emphasized the value and synergies created by mixed-use development and how the CityCentre capitalized on shifting demographics and the consumer experience. By providing access to public space and facilitating daily relationships between users and the mixed-use development at CityCentre, Midway created a new and successful town center that functions around the clock and throughout the year.
CityCentre targets two significant demographic bubbles: empty nesters and young professionals. The development accommodates these two groups through careful streetscape design, diverse public programming, and amenities like a fitness center and cinema restaurant. As the report describes:
CityCentre’s compact form and pedestrian emphasis set it apart from other developments in Houston. But ironically, the development was easy to entitle— Houston’s lack of a zoning code means that planning and developing a site like CityCentre are much simpler than they might be in other municipalities.
ULI Houston presented CityCentre with a 2012 Award of Distinction, noting how the project opened as a unified development with special care given to streetscape design and public space.