David Robinson leads a discussion of a plan for Dunlavy Street at the site for the Montrose HEB. Photo by Chris Curry.
David Robinson is an architect who has served in a number of different public positions—chair of the urban design committee for the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, president of the Neartown Super Neighborhood, and president of the Super Neighborhood Alliance among others. He sat down with Raj Mankad, editor of Cite, at Empire Cafe for an interview on September 20.
Raj Mankad: Why not stick to designing buildings? What motivated you to enter politics and, now, run for City Council?
David Robinson: Since studying architecture in college and really even before that, I have always had an interest in the public realm.
RM: But why politics?
DR: It has been in my blood since before leaving my parents home. My father is a professor of political science in government. In my academic training and professional career I have pursued that as part of the fundamental obligation of architects operating in the public realm. And it was at Rice University, especially in the studio of the now deceased Jack Mitchell, where we really learned about exploring the public realm. The assignment was: Do something in the public realm, come back and talk about it, and document it with photography or with illustration or drawing or other means of recording what we have experienced.
RM: Was there an aha moment or a moment of frustration when you worked on a project and you thought, “Okay, this building isn’t enough? I have to go into community activism or politics to make a real difference?”
DR: I am not motivated by frustration, I will tell you. I am really motivated and inspired by opportunity. I truly believe that Houston is a great city. I love being here. This is the year that I will have been in Houston 22 years, which is half my lifetime. I moved here to go to Rice for architecture in 1989. As a 44-year-old man with my own 11-year-old daughter, it’s a wonderful place and she goes to school in the building I am looking at now, across from Empire Café here. She goes to Lanier Middle School half a block away from my home where I practice architecture and have this lovely café. Our neighborhood two years ago was declared one of America’s great places.
I think I have been at the right place in the right time in many regards. I love my neighbors, I love the community. There is so much to work on and we are growing. We are robust. What’s not to like?
RM: I'll play devil’s advocate. Westheimer, where we are now in Empire Café, is an exception. It’s one of the only streets in Houston where you can walk and feel joy on a stroll. The density—the proximity of restaurants, groceries, homes and businesses—is almost ideal here. But most of Houston is not like this. Houston is defined by huge highways and the buildings have moats of parking around them. City ordinances for minimum setbacks and parking all but require suburban-style buildings. There are vast stretches of concrete everywhere.
DR: I hear you. We have left ourselves plenty of room for improvement. That’s where I believe I have been working on improving the city. I do think that I live in the greatest neighborhood in the city of Houston, but we are working with other neighborhoods. Montrose is by no means the only neighborhood in Houston that is rich in cultur or in wonder and in delight.
RM: For some people, it will be a surprise that Houston even has a planning commission since we don’t have traditional zoning and we also don’t have a general plan.
DR: A typical agenda [of a planning commission meeting] let’s say in 2007 might have had 150 agenda items. A typical one in the last year had 60. So with clear relevance to our economic malaise, you know you sort of go with the flow of what’s going on. The primary role, I would say, of the planning commission is to review applications for plat and reassembly of land with development proposals that may involve a variance where really the rulebook would be Chapter 42. You can feather in there a little bit the landscape ordinances and the parking ordinance that I believe are in Chapter 23 or 26 or 33. We are sworn to adhere to city policy.
Kay Crooker used to talk about things that were so odious, you had to hold your nose and vote. She was huge champion of trees, in the legacy of Eleanor Tinsley. She made sure that when the commission would have discretionary authority over an approval that, by golly, we would be sure to plant some additional trees and require that the developer do some good in the public realm to offset what I think she might argue would be the downside of their impact on the urban environment.
RM: In other cities the people in your position would have a lot more leverage to require things like trees or wider sidewalks or you know they’d be able to leverage stronger restrictions to force developers to invest more in the public realm. But in Houston the restrictions are so light that you are rarely able to do that right, as with the Walmart off Washington Avenue.
DR: Well, don’t make a mistake here. The Walmart didn’t go before the planning commission for the planning commission to talk about how many trees should be there.
RM: Because there were no restrictions on the land that they needed…
DR: The developer did everything they needed to do and the 380 agreement, which is not something that the commission oversees, was a deal that was struck with the mayor and her administration. And that is not to criticize the mayor necessarily but to say that that’s distinct from the planning commission’s business.
RM: That’s my point. In Houston the best that the city could do was to negotiate a deal based on incentives whereas in other cities the planning commission could have negotiated concessions from the developer because of stronger restrictions.
DR: The deal was struck without a planning commission or without real transparency when it comes to what the developer was talking about with the planning department. And don’t think that there is not power in the discretionary authority of the director or the mayor or the chief development officer Andy Icken. Those folks wield a lot of power and negotiate the deals. Like it or not, I would say as a neighborhood guy what I would like to see is more transparency, more involvement with the neighborhoods.
In stark contrast relative to the Walmart debacle --- really the Ainbinder debacle, the deal was struck not with the tenant which is Walmart but with the developer which is Ainbinder --- is in our neighborhood with HEB. The owner of the land at Dunlavy and West Alabama is a group of individuals that retain the property. HEB showed their colors by engaging the community, conducting a series of public meetings ultimately taking a vote with the community. And like it or not, they offered choices in a relatively democratic process while they worked extremely hard to preserve essential trees that are on the site, respect the neighborhood for their impact both with noise pollution, light pollution, access to existing pedestrian routes, sidewalks, improvements to the road ways. They have paid attention to what the president Scott McClelland refers to as the unique nature of Montrose.
RM: The Walmart and HEB examples show that sometimes we have too few restrictions and sometimes too many. In Midtown or in Montrose, a developer has to get a variance to build a building that is urban and makes sense.
DR: That’s a good point. In [the case of HEB], a variance is not a bad thing. With HEB, Chapter 42 required that they basically connect Sul Ross and Branard streets with a short turnaround driveway that would have cut dramatically into the property nonsensically. A much better solution required a variance…Having been involved in the negotiations between the neighborhood and the developer or in this case, the tenant, it was something that we did as a community and there were times when we were out on the site with bull horn and crowded parade, being sure that the developer knew that we were going to demand the trees remain as much as possible and that they study the context carefully, and provide a solution that is in the interest of the community.
RM: Why aren’t the laws already set up to allow for good of urban buildings in neighborhoods like Midtown and Montrose. By the time the Urban Corridors ordinance got to city council, it…
DR: It was diluted. Right, the carrot and sticks that you were asking about a minute ago, I think were pretty carefully conceived --- I was a member of the task force and worked on it a lot. The potential that that had fell far short of where it arrived. Although it remains almost entirely unutilized as and again that has a lot to do with the state of development or our city there is just not that much going on yet. And perhaps if we can get ourselves out of this recession we can embrace some of the goodness that the urban corridors ordinance suggests that we do in terms of providing for broader pedestrian realm, better allocated resources within the sidewalk dimensions, smarter approach to where grass and public space is provided, upgrade pedestrian covered walkways, things like that that exist in the very impenetrable Chapter 42.
RM: If you won the city council seat, what are the number one and number two things you think should happen in the revision of the Chapter 42 and other land-use ordinances?
DR: Well the first thing I want to say is to show me the proposed changes right now. I would cal for transparency and an open process having been involved with considering what should happen to Chapter 42. I must say that it’s a little disturbing how little the public or even ex-public officials have access to the deliberations that are going on in chambers and beyond.
Let’s just go ahead and admit it’s a very complicated business to govern development in what is soon to be the third largest city in the country where business, free enterprise, and a conservative approach to physical affairs and property ownership really is the dominant tone. Layer on the fact that we don’t have zoning and people are entrenched and fiercely against it, you really have to do what you can, which I would argue is where neighborhoods come in. With whatever ordinances we have, we need to protect them whether that’s deed restrictions and property rights at a very basic house by house level or…
RM: Block by block….
DR: …or civic association by civic association. It’s a concept that needs attention and I think the mayor working to consolidate things with this newly created Department of Neighborhoods. She is doing this in a way that is part physical austerity and part practical bureaucratic administration and where I would like to hope and remain optimistic is that it also can fundamentally help neighborhoods help themselves.
RM: It is one thing not to have zoning and it’s another thing not to have a comprehensive plan.
DR: Well there is a five page general plan that was written by a very small group of folks that some, I have heard, argue constitutes a comprehensive plan. But those of us who know what that really is would say we certainly aren’t there yet. There is language in the code that requires the city to adopt a comprehensive plan and it’s not at some future time, it is now.
RM: Would you push for a general plan as a city council person?
DR: I think so. I wouldn’t rush headlong to my chains you know. I think that a comprehensive plan sounds potentially as scary as it sounds beneficial. For me Houston is a beautiful city that I love and there is much about it that I wouldn’t change one bit.
RM: We could have a general plan without zoning. The plan could be an idea that was debated.
DR: That’s right. Zoning does not have to be a component of a comprehensive plan. I’m glad you said that because in some ways a comprehensive plan has become a taboo in the same way as the Z word.
RM: The plan could be rather freewheeling and complex.
DR: I really like the model of neighborhoods. You may say that’s because I am the president of the Super Neighborhood Alliance. That last hat that I wear currently is one that I was nominated for last Fall and was supported by the mayor in that nomination. So like in Montrose [Neartown], where we have 21 civic clubs and two institution members --- I’m now the president of all the [super] neighborhoods across the city. Each one of the neighborhoods is different, unique in challenges, context, character, ethnic breakup, and on and on. So that’s where I think that the current problem with Chapter 42 as a one size fits all document needs to have some application that is specific to context, which is really what I’m hearing discussed downtown. It's not that one size should fit all, it is that we need to encourage the development of the character that is specific to the context.
RM: My concern about what you are saying is that the whole category of “neighborhood” is so unstable and not clear politically. We have civic clubs, some of them are active some of them aren’t, then we have block level mini zoning where you can set minimum lot sizes. Then there is this super neighborhood structure that is encouraged to develop plans, but then those plans don’t have any political clout…
DR: I disagree.
RM: They are just like an emerging…
DR: No no, I think you are wrong. Our plan that we have for Neartown is one that reflects the neighbors’ interests. Its not officially recognized or adopted by the city of Houston but it is something that we continue to work on in public meetings. And for instance, when development is considered, we try to make sure that they know what neighbors want. That’s truly grassroots, working up toward the city and the city in some ways enabling it to inform how they would like development to occur. We see this at the planning commission where they do actively care. We do care, I will say as a past public official. We listen when neighbors come to the podium and they speak about what should or should not be. We’ve got authority to consider variances and we take those concerns of the neighborhoods extremely seriously…Running a city is a complex notion. I hope to have a seat at the table for city council---this would be someone who as a volunteer has engaged in these activities in addition to my profession to learn about how things work and what opportunities there are to make the city better.
RM: Okay.
DR: I don’t believe that Houston is broke and we need to fix it. I think we need to tweak it like, you know, get hybrid engine instead of a gas-guzzler.
RM: Switching gears to a different but related topic, would you oppose the expansion of the Grand Parkway and Segment E in particular? Sue Lovell, who is leaving the seat you are running for because of term limits, voted in favor of it. Segment E, as you know, would connect I-10 and 290. It would run through what are now hunting grounds, farms, and open prairie.
DR: Sue Lovell is a friend and I respect her very much in a number of ways…The fact that you point to I don’t know what her reasons for voting for that segment of the Grand Parkway…
RM: She said when she was asked by the Houston Chronicle and Houston Tomorrow that the development is going to happen there anyways and that we needed to get out in front of it. The infrastructure should be there in advance. In my mind, there is so much vacant land inside the city already served by roads, adding another ring road would be a travesty.
DR: You probably don’t know any concrete company do you?
RM: If you are elected to city council, would you use oppose the Grand Parkway and Segment E?
DR: I would use the opportunity of being a city council member to weigh in strongly on issues that I think impact our built environment. I know that segment is particularly heated issues for a lot of reasons. Let me not get into those details because I think while what I have read suggests to me that it probably shouldn’t happen, I want to say that I haven’t studied the details in it. I think that that’s something I’m very proud of my track record on planning commission, is that I didn’t come to that seat with a presumption that I knew better than anybody else how to be a commissioner or how to lead this city. I think there is a real obligation in that job as a public official that you listen first, understand the facts as best as you can, understand the limitations of your perspective and your seat at the table and then really trust your judgment.
RM: Would you in principle vote for precious tax dollars to go first to places where people already live, to improve transit where the people already are?
DR: I think the census has really presented us with some hard evidence that our region continuous to grow … I believe we can say unequivocally it’s going to happen. And so we want to be smart about how we prepare for that and that’s where I believe the urban corridors [ordinance] has virtue. Its anticipating growth where it should be around the infrastructure that we have laid out with our major thoroughfare plan and freeway plan. They are existing network for getting around the city. Yes they could be done better.
We need to think about complete streets, we need to think about a bigger tool of parts downtown in the what’s called the design manual for public works and engineering so that some new tools are introduced. Some things that we are trying, we see being attempted in other places around the country, other places around the world, just plain good ideas. We don’t want to import those because we are stupid or because we didn’t know any better. We need to do it because they are good ideas and we just need to adopt those things not to be more like anybody else but to make Houston better.
RM: Right.
DR: I think that’s the real opportunity as we have got a lot of smart people right now in good places in the city government and I think to allow wisdom to prevail. I think the opportunity is incredible and I would like to be there at the table.
RM: Thank you for talking with me.
DR: My pleasure.
