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Downtown Houston Land Use Analysis
Quantifying how much of downtown’s land is given to vehicles versus people.
I analyzed Downtown Houston’s built environment by quantifying the land area dedicated to vehicle infrastructure versus pedestrian infrastructure. Combining official data from the City of Houston, H-GAC, and OpenStreetMap in ArcGIS Pro, I built a 3D scene to visualize the vertical scale of parking and ran a land-use analysis estimating the area of four components: roads, parking, sidewalks, and parks. An estimated 71.95% of downtown’s land serves car infrastructure versus 9.26% for pedestrians, meaning roughly eight times more land goes to moving and storing vehicles than to the pedestrian realm and public green space.
Highlights
- Combined City of Houston, H-GAC, and OpenStreetMap data in ArcGIS Pro.
- Built a 3D scene of parking plus a four-part land-use analysis (roads, parking, sidewalks, parks).
- Found 71.95% of downtown serves vehicles vs. 9.26% for pedestrians, roughly an 8x imbalance.