Groups Unite for Quality of Life
By Lily Auliff

On Wednesday, June 6, leaders in the civic, business, and environmental communities gathered to release the Quality of Life Coalition agenda, which supports a list of city beautification initiatives. The coalition – which includes such diverse interests as the Greater Houston Partnership, various civic groups, and more than 15 CEC member organizations – focuses on four areas: trees and landscaping, parks and bayous, billboards and signage, and litter and graffiti.

Long-time conservationist Terry Hershey lauds the effort as a unique collaboration. “It’s a coming together of many groups that ultimately have the same goals, but have not worked together in the past,” she explains.

Anne Lents, board member of The Park People and co-founder of the coalition, agrees. “We’re not just business, we’re not just civic improvement, and we’re not just environmental,” she explains. “What’s amazing is that we all agree on what needs to be done.”

Mayor Lee P. Brown advocates for Quality of Life

But, Lents notes, “That’s not to say that we all are for this plan for the same reasons.” Business groups see the improvements as essential to attracting and maintaining qualified workers, she says, while others may be interested in reducing urban blight or using trees to alleviate the urban heat island effect and air pollution.

The coalition is mainly rallying around and trying to glean funding for existing initiatives, including implementation of the Texas Department of Transportation’s Green Ribbon Project to tree and landscape freeways and major interchanges, implementation of the City’s Parks & Recreation Master Plan to renovate and create new parks, enforcement of existing ordinances that prohibit construction of new billboards, and expansion of the Clean Neighborhoods Program.

“We’ve focused on things that can actually get done now. There are perhaps more aggressive visions that may include other environmental issues,” Lents explains. “But you have to do today what you can do today.”

“A lot of interests are coming together over Houston’s future,” says David Crossley, president of the Gulf Coast Institute, which has facilitated the quality of life campaign of the Livable Houston Initiative since 1999. “The patterns for improvement are becoming quite clear and this new coalition should kickstart the serious and creative process that will address the underlying issues that have damaged our image and even been harmful to our lives, in the view of many people.”

So far, more than 30 organizations have signed on to the Quality of Life Coalition. “Any group that wants to endorse this and be part of the process, part of the discussion, we want them,” says Lents.