Results are in from this year’s Kinder Houston Area Survey, a 30-year old survey of Houston area residents conducted by Rice University. Fifty-one percent of respondents said they would choose a smaller home within walking distance of workplaces and shops, rather than a single-family home with a big yard that would require driving almost everywhere. That figure was up from 39 percent in the 2010 survey, the last year the question was asked. Meanwhile, a majority of respondents said they would prefer that transit taxes, which are currently being diverted to street, drainage, and landscaping projects, be spent on transit projects instead.

 

Some might assume that the rising expression of desire for transit-oriented communities is coming only from liberal bastions and hipster havens like San Francisco,Boston andPortland, but here we see those desires being expressed by majorities in a metropolitan region as politically and economically diverse as metroHouston. Perhaps,Houston is turning into a land of peace-flag-waving, soy-latte sippers? We doubt it.

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