Rice Village: Parking, Management and the Built Environment

The Kinder Institute’s Vital Communities initiative — part of the Urban Development, Transportation and Placemaking Program — is designed to help bring meaningful place-making, governance and infrastructural improvements to metropolitan neighborhoods. A pilot effort focused on Rice Village inaugurates the initiative.

The following report offers an analysis of three major issues facing Rice Village — parking, management and infrastructure. These issues are interconnected. Access to parking is a persistent problem in the Rice Village area. The creation of a managing special district could help facilitate conversations between the city of Houston and private stakeholders to resolve parking and other issues. A district also could collect a pool of funds to spend on pressing infrastructural improvements.

Our report offers recommendations on each of these three topics, but these are meant as suggestions, not conclusions. In each section our recommendation is placed alongside several other possible approaches. The Kinder Institute looks forward to continuing to work with area stakeholders on selecting the ways to best improve Rice Village.