Sunday, February 17, 2013
Fifth Street Project Overview
5th Street
Neighborhood Plan & Market Study
Project Overview
The
UT – Fort Bend County Partnership
The
University of Texas, through its Center for Sustainable Development, in
partnership with Fort Bend County, Texas will help a grassroots planning
committee develop a Fifth Street Neighborhood Plan and Market Study. Services
the University will provide include project management, planning,
assessment, community engagement, and research services.
Project
Goals
The
project goals are to
·
build a local planning committee,
·
develop a vision for 5th street,
·
conduct an analysis of community strengths, conditions, and priorities,
and
·
help the community market itself to desirable developers
Throughout
the project, University of Texas graduate students and faculty will provide
project management services and technical assistance to the Fort Bend County
Community Development Department and Precinct 2, County Commissioner Grady
Prestage’s Office to reach these goals. However, the local, 5th Street Planning Committee
will ensure this is a community-based,
grassroots process.
Project
Timeline
Over
the last decade, Fort Bend County has invested in infrastructure and community
resources to improve Fifth Street residents’ quality of life. However, a more
cohesive strategy is required to attract private investment, improve access to
affordable housing, preserve the community’s unique character and heritage, and
revive a once sustainable community. The purpose of the planning process is to
execute that strategy. The Fifth Street Plan and Market study consists of the
three phases described below.
Phase 1 September – February 2013
Create An 18-Month Action
Plan
Collect Data For Housing And
Business Analysis
Form A Local Planning
Committee
Introduce Planning Process
Prepare Community Survey To
Establish Community Priorities
·
Engage Local Community Members
and Conduct Surveys in the Community
Phase 2 March 2013-August 2013
·
Engage Local Community Members and Conduct Surveys in the Community
·
Develop Preliminary Market Study Analysis along with Survey Results
·
Complete Cultural Assets Research.
·
Continue ongoing Engagement with Fifth Street Community
Phase 3 September
2013 – February 2014
·
Plan and Host Community Charette and Visioning Event
·
Prepare Charette Results for Presentation to Developers’ Symposium
·
Plan And Facilitate Developer’s Symposium to Market Community.
5th Street Local Planning Committee
The
Fifth Street Neighborhood Plan & Market Study is a grassroots effort to
develop a community vision and attract positive development to the area. Local
leaders are essential to making the residents’ vision become a reality. The
Fifth Street Planning Team will be responsible for helping to assess community
strengths, needs, and vision. The results will be used to market the community
to attract desirable private investment.
The
process requires a commitment of time, energy and participation. You won’t have
to do all the planning. The UT Project Team will be here to help you get the
residents involved in improving their own community.
About
Fifth Street
What
is Fifth Street?
Fifth
Street CDP (Census Designated Place) is an area named after the major street
running through the small community connecting it to Farm Road 1092 at one end
and Farm Road 2234 on the other. Some parts of the community overlap with the
City of Stafford and Missouri City. Still semi-rural and unincorporated, Fifth
Street is surrounded by growing master planned communities southwest of
Houston, Texas. Once home to self-reliant former slaves, Imperial Sugar
Refinery workers, business owners, musicians, activists, and sharecroppers, the
area planning and market study will build upon the community’s rich and diverse
and heritage.
5th
Street History
Shortly
after Reconstruction, the Fifth Street community became an African American
settlement. The last remnants of the settlement on Fifth Street are the
Farmers’ Improvement Society (FIS) cemetery. The FIS was a mutual aid society
for African American farmers to escape the cycle of dependency on sharecropping
and was founded by a protégé of Booker T. Washington. The local FIS chapter
purchased the land for this historic cemetery.
The
community has been predominately Latino for the past two decades. Led by the
local Catholic Church, residents organized, performed participatory action
research, and used the results of the research to pressure local government to
improve the area’s quality of life. These aspects of the community’s heritage,
entrepreneurship and community activism, unknown to most of the County, are
tremendous assets upon which the Fifth Street neighborhood can build.
Online
Resources
For
more on Fifth Street: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Street,_Texas
Farmers
Improvement Society: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/aaf03
Fort
Bend County, Texas: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcf07
County
Commissioner Precinct 2:
http://www.co.fort-bend.tx.us/getSitePage.asp?sitePage=27464
Community
Activism: http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1987_446875/new-asphalt-blankets-mire-on-mud-road-relieved-res.html
Project
Contact
Andrea Roberts, MPA
Project Manager – Fifth Street Planning and
Market Study Project
University
of Texas-Austin, School of Architecture
Center for Sustainable Development
Sustainable
Cities Doctoral Initiative Fellow
Unincorporated Communities, Race, and Social Justice
Underbounding - Systematic, spatial exclusion of minorities in unincorporated areas.
This trend is common in predominately Latino and African American communities. Most were former colonias and/or historic African American communities. Most research and activism around this issue has taken place in California's migrant worker communities and some in the Carolinas. This problem however is prevalent on the outskirts of major cities and suburbs throughout America.
The work in Fifth Street is a community in recovery from such abuse attempting to develop its own capacity and build upon an invisible significant sense of place.
A few links to a video and notable articles about the phenomena follow.
Presentation from NLADA Conference on Municipal Underbounding from Minnow Media on Vimeo.
 |
Gomillion v. Lightfoot might be the best-known municipal-boundaries case ... in 1960 the Supreme Court threw out Alabama state law that re-drew the boundaries of Tuskegee from the square, on the map below, to the lighter-colored 28-sided figure which excluded all but 4 or 5 Blacks, while retaining all White residents." |
Municipal Underbounding: Annexation and Racial Exclusion in Small Southern Towns
Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction' wrests political control over land use from excluded minority populations
How Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation Works in Post-Racial America
Underbounding and Infrastructure
References on underbounding.
Mapped Out of Local Democracy
Originally posted by Andrea Roberts at http://www.sensingplace.com/
Fifth Street History
Fifth Street is a census Designated Place and unincorporated area in Fort Bend County, Texas. It is in the eastern portion of the county and on the border of Southwest Houston. Portions of the area are in Stafford and Missouri City. These pages are from the Stafford Historical Society's book about the city, included the formerly predominately black and latino Fifth Street area.
I invite residents to upload their own pictures and stories about Fifth Street.
What is this web site?
This web site will be a way for those interested in volunteering, researching, or supporting work related to heritage, culture, and community development. The primary focus is in spaces that are either unincorporated, former colonias, or former African American settlements. Such areas are predominately in suburban or semi-rural areas where people of color ave been displaces or there are little remaining traces of their existence.
This site is for posting
This site is closed to the general public at this time and is our working site. A meet-up date will be set soon. But for now, this will be a central place for project news.
This site is for posting
- meeting dates related to UT or the local Fifth Street resident-led, grassroots planning team
- articles about praxis/practice/research
- information about Fifth Street and Fort Bend County history
- logistical and planning information for project events
This site is closed to the general public at this time and is our working site. A meet-up date will be set soon. But for now, this will be a central place for project news.
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