Rice’s Shell Center funds effort to measure city sustainability

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
E-MAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Rice’s Shell Center funds effort to measure city sustainability
Project will develop methodology to gauge economic development, social factors and environment using Houston as a case study

A city’s sustainable growth involves many factors, from the kinds of jobs created to transportation to water and air quality. Rice University’s Shell Center for Sustainability (SCS) has awarded a grant to a team of Houston researchers that will develop a methodology to measure sustainability, using Houston as a case study.

Team member Jim Blackburn, professor in the practice of environmental law at Rice, said, ”Sustainable development is a concept that seeks to combine economic, environmental and social factors in decision making and thinking about various types of human activities. It is a key to understanding where our society is heading.”

Blackburn will be joined by Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology at Rice and director of the Urban Research Center of Houston, and Barton Smith, economics professor and director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston.

“In our core team, we have a representation of the classic three-legged stool of sustainability,” Blackburn said. “I hope to combine my knowledge of Houston’s natural and human environment with their understanding of Houston’s social and economic structure to develop a set of indicators that will serve Houston well into the future.”

“This is going to be real challenge,” said Klineberg, who has directed the Houston Area Survey since 1982. “It is very difficult to get agreement on these issues. This work will provide a type of radar pointing us to the type of future that we are building in Houston. We hope that this work will inspire the wider community on these issues so that the decisions that we make today and tomorrow will build a better future.”

The goal of the SCS grant is to develop efficient, transparent methods for effective measurements of Houston’s successful development for the future. Among the issues to be considered are the number and types of jobs being created, social equity in job creation, the abundance and quality of natural ecological systems, water and air quality, urban habitat, food security and hunger, and transportation adequacy and equity. “The scale of this project is quite broad,” Klineberg said. “This is going to be an interesting challenge.”

Peter Hartley, academic director for the SCS, the George and Cynthia Mitchell Family Chair in Sustainable Development and professor of economics at Rice, said the project can be viewed as both a research and a teaching project. The grant provides for an undergraduate course at Rice based on the project’s methodology.

The project also calls for building an advisory team of Rice faculty members and others that will help identify resources for the course and understand issues as diverse as a new engine for economic development, ways to measure social equity and the role of ecology in the city of the future. “We will be trying to find people to tap from within and outside of the Rice campus,” Blackburn said. “We are looking for ideas for a sustainable future and how to measure and evaluate those concepts. This is an exciting project, and the course that we are developing should be a great learning experience for the students and the teachers alike.” 

The mission of the Shell Center is to create an interdisciplinary program of research, outreach and education to address actions that can be taken to ensure the sustainable development of living standards, interpreted broadly, to encompass all factors affecting the quality of life, including environmental resources. The center was launched in early 2003, with funding from Shell Oil Company.

To speak with Blackburn or Klineberg, contact Franz Brotzen at franz.brotzen@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.