Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/912991
t m c » p u l s e | d e c 2 0 1 7 /ja n 2 0 1 8 10 Everybody in Harris County under the age of 20 will be the future of Houston. Seventy percent are African- American and Latino and only 22 percent are Anglos. African- Americans and Latinos are the two groups most likely to be living in pov- erty. If we don't find a way to ensure that African-American and Latino kids are prepared to succeed and compete suc- cessfully in a global, knowledge-based, high-tech economy, it is hard to envi- sion a prosperous future for Houston. We are isolating African-Americans and Latinos in inner-city, inferior schools with far fewer resources than rich kids. And it starts at birth. One of the moments of truth in education is third grade reading. If you are not read- ing at a third grade level in third grade, you are four times more likely to drop out of high school. And the single most powerful predictor of a third grade read- ing level is if you started kindergarten ready to learn to read. Rich kids start kindergarten one to two years ahead of poor kids, and that gap continues to grow. I think that is the great question mark for the future of Houston. Will we invest in universal preschool— cradle to career? Q | Do you plan to conduct the survey indefinitely? Is there a cuto point? A | No cutoff point. I could imagine as I begin to retire, we could bring someone in and we could work together and then they'd pass it over to him or her. I can also imagine having the survey once every two years because changes occur, but they don't occur that rapidly. I think as long as there is a Kinder Institute, there will always be something like this because it is such a valuable snapshot of where we are. The head of the Greater Houston Partnership told me once that these surveys have put the business community 10 years ahead of where they otherwise would have been because you can clearly see the realities that would take much longer to appear if you didn't have the data to just yell at you. Q | Based on your data, what sort of impact has the Texas Medical Center had on Houston? A | The Texas Medical Center is really the great asset that Houston has and it is really the great surprise. We knew about oil and gas, we knew about the port, but the medical center? It has been fascinating to see a city reinventing itself in a variety of ways, recognizing that our location near the East Texas oil fields that accounted for everything in Houston's prosperity in the 20th century will account for less and less and, eventually, for zilch in the 21st century. The Texas Medical Center is a critical piece of Houston's future. If Houston wants to become the third coast for life sciences, it has got to make the investments that will make that pos- sible. Houston has been at the center for the treatment of diseases, but it has not been at the center for the develop- ment of new technologies. The hope is to really transform Houston from a place focusing on natural resources to a place where the source of wealth is knowledge. Q | You founded the Kinder Institute for Urban Research in 2010 with the support of Nancy and Rich Kinder. How did it come about? A | The Kinder Institute came out of the surveys. Houston was increasingly recognizing the value of having this record of time and change, and we thought it was important to have a home for it. We developed the institute and it combined my work with the work of my colleague, Michael Emerson, Ph.D.—now provost and professor of sociology and urban studies at Chicago's North Park University— who was running the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice. We formed one center that, among other things, would provide a permanent home for the Houston Area Survey. We figured it would take 10 years or so to establish the endowment, and the Kinders, bless their hearts, came through and supported us. Q | 2017 was a pivotal year for Houston. We got through Hurricane Harvey and then the Astros won the World Series. What are the major issues the city must face in the coming decades? A | The last time we were in the World Series, we lost all four games to the White Sox. It was absolutely embar- rassing. And now here we are. There are also dramatic differences between that game and now, in what there is to do in the city and its attractiveness. In Houston, we have got to live with water. We have to control that water and work with it. We have to stop building houses in areas that we know are prone to flooding, insist on retention ponds, and we need to build a third reservoir. Houston has no prayer of being a major city in the 21st century if it is perceived by people outside of Houston to be not only flat and hot for much of the year, but also ugly and danger- ously polluted. The beauty of dealing with flood control is that it means that we need more parks and more green space. The Bayou Greenways initiative, which aims to develop connected green corridors with hike and bike trails along the bayous of the greater Houston area, is also a flood control mechanism. So there is a lot of opportunity to create win-win situations, but only if there is a deliberate realization that we cannot leave it up to developers to decide how they want to build and maximize their profits. Q | What will Houston look like in 100 years? A | It will be much bigger. We expect another 3 million people will move into the Houston metropolitan area in the next 20 years—another 1 million into Harris County. It will be less diverse because it is going to be much more Hispanic. We may be as diverse as we are going to be right now. Although, what I do think is going to happen in 100 years is that it will be irrelevant— no one will think about ethnicity. There is not an ethnic divide in Houston that needs to be addressed. There is a class divide and that is going to be the great question. I think we can solve this question, but will we? Stephen Klineberg, Ph.D., was inter- viewed by Pulse reporter Britni Riley. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Source: Outreach Strategists, LLC. Color represents demographic group being a majority in that census tract. @ Dr. Stephen L. Klineberg and the Kinder Institute for Urban Research