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Superneighborhood 27: A Brief History of Change [Research and Debate]
- Author(s): Rogers, Susan
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Superneighborhood 27: A Brief History of ChangeSusan RogersIn cities across the United States, sandwiched quietly between the newly coveted urban space of the central city and the suburban sprawl of the periphery, are outwardly conventional landscapes experiencing profound trans-formation. Neither urban nor suburban, they represent a hybrid condition—part global city, part garden suburb, part swinging singles complex, part disinvestment.In Houston, the Gulfton community, “Superneighbor-hood 27,” is one of these landscapes. The name derives from an effort in 1999 to divide the city’s vast expanse into 88 districts to encourage neighborhood-oriented government and enhance community participation. More pertinently, however, Gulfton is an American “gateway,” similar to those in other cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Washington, D.C. As immigrants increasingly bypass the abandoned or gentrified cores of U.S. cities, they have come to settle in low-rent suburban environments like Gulfton.One resident recently described this new geography succinctly: “In parts of Central America, people don’t say they are coming to Texas or Houston. They say they are coming to Gulfton.”1Gulfton’s history tells a story of fluid populations that offers insight into the social construction and use of space in overlooked areas of American cities.Boom and BustPrior to the 1950s Gulfton was a greenfield, entirely undeveloped, seemingly peripheral to nearby Houston. The first isolated subdivision did not spring up there until the mid-1950s. Named Shenandoah, its small ranch-style homes occupied sixteen well-manicured blocks. Then, all of a sudden, Houston’s population exploded. In Gulfton, that meant construction of thousands of apartment units in the next two decades, completely surrounding the small subdivision.The apartments were initially built for a young, pre-dominantly white population. Their desire for a singles lifestyle was clearly evident in advertisements of the time. One complex boasted seventeen swimming pools, sev-enteen laundry rooms, seventeen hot tubs, and two club-houses.Many of these young people came to Houston from the declining manufacturing cities of the Midwest and North-east, part of a great migration that was reshaping the coun-try and giving rise to a powerful new sunbelt economy. Up north, bumper stickers read “Last one out turn out the lights.” But in oil- and job-rich Houston, they were met by a welcome only Texans could provide: “Yankee, go home.”Of course, as Texans now know, such booms do not last. By the 1980s, the local economy, following the price of oil, went into a tailspin. Gulfton, along with many other areas, was hit hard. Thousands left, rents fell, and vacancies rose.At about the same time, new waves of foreign immigra-tion were beginning to bring a new group of residents to Houston. Seeking expanded opportunity or fleeing war and poverty, they came from such countries as Vietnam, El Salvador, and Mexico. The borders these new residents crossed were often distant, difficult and dangerous, but their goal was the same as that of the previous migrants—to find a better life on the flat plains of the steamy sunbelt. Apartment owners, in an attempt to remain solvent, began targeting their advertising to these new immigrants, listing vacancies en espanol, offering move-in specials, ignoring their previous “adults only” policies, and drastically reduc-ing rents.2These new residents would profoundly transform Gulf-ton. Between 1980 and 2000, and without the construc-tion of one additional apartment complex, its population nearly doubled.3 The transition from a predominantly white singles community to a dense ethnic enclave was far from smooth, however. Shenandoah barricaded its streets to separate itself from the greater community; the area was renamed “Gulfton Ghetto”; and for a short time it was one of the ten most crime-ridden communities in Texas.4As a result of demographic change, Gulfton today is simultaneously globally linked, locally severed, socially connected, and physically divided. Not unlike the dense ethnic enclaves of America’s past, more than 60 percent of its residents are foreign born. They hold citizenships from 42 different countries, and speak as many languages.A global infrastructure keeps such people connected to countries of origin, native cultures, languages, families and friends. Telephones, cable television, the press, and wire transfers all help to keep the conversations, politics, and money flowing.5Gulfton’s multilateral globalization (versus unilateral Americanization) also offers a glimpse of an alternative future. ADOC footwear, with shops in Guatemala, El Sal-vador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, has only one store in the U.S., and it is located in Gulfton. Pollo Campero, a Guate-malan chicken franchise recently opened its second store in the U.S.—in Gulfton. Gulfton also has three branches of Salvadoran banks and countless importers who stock local shelves with global products.Such conditions, however, mean that many residents have few local ties. Undocumented status also keeps many residents from fully participating in local economies and politics. Meanwhile, language barriers make Gulfton easy for the powerful to ignore.Nevertheless, the same characteristics that separate Gulfton from its surroundings create strong internal bonds. Informal social networks assist new residents in adapting to life in the United States—securing housing, education and employment, and teaching more mundane skills such as how to use modern appliances and ride the bus. And these networks extend back to residents’ coun-tries of origin, reproducing Gulfton’s status as “gateway,” and encouraging new waves of family and friends to join current residents.Community networks also serve as conduits of infor-mation. Word that an employer has cheated his workers spreads quickly, and may force him to look elsewhere for laborers. And news that La Migra is raiding construction sites looking for undocumented workers, whether true or false, may shut the sites down.The Houston Chronicle recently confirmed the power of such a grapevine. After residents of the Willow Creek Apartments hastily packed their things in response to rumors of a raid, “one resident who said she was living here illegally said she heard it from a neighbor. The neighbor, she said, simply heard it from ‘la gente’—the people.”6New Populations, Same NeedsThe more than 15,000 apartment units in Gulfton were never constructed with the lofty goal of “building commu-nity.” According to Robert fisher and Lisa Taaffe, “Gulfton developed in the 1970s and declined in the 1980s as a purely short-term, relatively spontaneous speculative process which focused on producing apartment complexes, night-Rogers / Superneighborhood 27Research and DebateGulfton is simultaneously globally linked, locally severed, socially connected and physically divided.Places 17.23736
Superneighborhood 27: A Brief History of ChangeSusan RogersIn cities across the United States, sandwiched quietly between the newly coveted urban space of the central city and the suburban sprawl of the periphery, are outwardly conventional landscapes experiencing profound trans-formation. Neither urban nor suburban, they represent a hybrid condition—part global city, part garden suburb, part swinging singles complex, part disinvestment.In Houston, the Gulfton community, “Superneighbor-hood 27,” is one of these landscapes. The name derives from an effort in 1999 to divide the city’s vast expanse into 88 districts to encourage neighborhood-oriented government and enhance community participation. More pertinently, however, Gulfton is an American “gateway,” similar to those in other cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Washington, D.C. As immigrants increasingly bypass the abandoned or gentrified cores of U.S. cities, they have come to settle in low-rent suburban environments like Gulfton.One resident recently described this new geography succinctly: “In parts of Central America, people don’t say they are coming to Texas or Houston. They say they are coming to Gulfton.”1Gulfton’s history tells a story of fluid populations that offers insight into the social construction and use of space in overlooked areas of American cities.Boom and BustPrior to the 1950s Gulfton was a greenfield, entirely undeveloped, seemingly peripheral to nearby Houston. The first isolated subdivision did not spring up there until the mid-1950s. Named Shenandoah, its small ranch-style homes occupied sixteen well-manicured blocks. Then, all of a sudden, Houston’s population exploded. In Gulfton, that meant construction of thousands of apartment units in the next two decades, completely surrounding the small subdivision.The apartments were initially built for a young, pre-dominantly white population. Their desire for a singles lifestyle was clearly evident in advertisements of the time. One complex boasted seventeen swimming pools, sev-enteen laundry rooms, seventeen hot tubs, and two club-houses.Many of these young people came to Houston from the declining manufacturing cities of the Midwest and North-east, part of a great migration that was reshaping the coun-try and giving rise to a powerful new sunbelt economy. Up north, bumper stickers read “Last one out turn out the lights.” But in oil- and job-rich Houston, they were met by a welcome only Texans could provide: “Yankee, go home.”Of course, as Texans now know, such booms do not last. By the 1980s, the local economy, following the price of oil, went into a tailspin. Gulfton, along with many other areas, was hit hard. Thousands left, rents fell, and vacancies rose.At about the same time, new waves of foreign immigra-tion were beginning to bring a new group of residents to Houston. Seeking expanded opportunity or fleeing war and poverty, they came from such countries as Vietnam, El Salvador, and Mexico. The borders these new residents crossed were often distant, difficult and dangerous, but their goal was the same as that of the previous migrants—to find a better life on the flat plains of the steamy sunbelt. Apartment owners, in an attempt to remain solvent, began targeting their advertising to these new immigrants, listing vacancies en espanol, offering move-in specials, ignoring their previous “adults only” policies, and drastically reduc-ing rents.2These new residents would profoundly transform Gulf-ton. Between 1980 and 2000, and without the construc-tion of one additional apartment complex, its population nearly doubled.3 The transition from a predominantly white singles community to a dense ethnic enclave was far from smooth, however. Shenandoah barricaded its streets to separate itself from the greater community; the area was renamed “Gulfton Ghetto”; and for a short time it was one of the ten most crime-ridden communities in Texas.4As a result of demographic change, Gulfton today is simultaneously globally linked, locally severed, socially connected, and physically divided. Not unlike the dense ethnic enclaves of America’s past, more than 60 percent of its residents are foreign born. They hold citizenships from 42 different countries, and speak as many languages.A global infrastructure keeps such people connected to countries of origin, native cultures, languages, families and friends. Telephones, cable television, the press, and wire transfers all help to keep the conversations, politics, and money flowing.5Gulfton’s multilateral globalization (versus unilateral Americanization) also offers a glimpse of an alternative future. ADOC footwear, with shops in Guatemala, El Sal-vador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, has only one store in the U.S., and it is located in Gulfton. Pollo Campero, a Guate-malan chicken franchise recently opened its second store in the U.S.—in Gulfton. Gulfton also has three branches of Salvadoran banks and countless importers who stock local shelves with global products.Such conditions, however, mean that many residents have few local ties. Undocumented status also keeps many residents from fully participating in local economies and politics. Meanwhile, language barriers make Gulfton easy for the powerful to ignore.Nevertheless, the same characteristics that separate Gulfton from its surroundings create strong internal bonds. Informal social networks assist new residents in adapting to life in the United States—securing housing, education and employment, and teaching more mundane skills such as how to use modern appliances and ride the bus. And these networks extend back to residents’ coun-tries of origin, reproducing Gulfton’s status as “gateway,” and encouraging new waves of family and friends to join current residents.Community networks also serve as conduits of infor-mation. Word that an employer has cheated his workers spreads quickly, and may force him to look elsewhere for laborers. And news that La Migra is raiding construction sites looking for undocumented workers, whether true or false, may shut the sites down.The Houston Chronicle recently confirmed the power of such a grapevine. After residents of the Willow Creek Apartments hastily packed their things in response to rumors of a raid, “one resident who said she was living here illegally said she heard it from a neighbor. The neighbor, she said, simply heard it from ‘la gente’—the people.”6New Populations, Same NeedsThe more than 15,000 apartment units in Gulfton were never constructed with the lofty goal of “building commu-nity.” According to Robert fisher and Lisa Taaffe, “Gulfton developed in the 1970s and declined in the 1980s as a purely short-term, relatively spontaneous speculative process which focused on producing apartment complexes, night-Rogers / Superneighborhood 27Research and DebateGulfton is simultaneously globally linked, locally severed, socially connected and physically divided.Places 17.23736
is that Gulfton contains more than one hundred semi-private swimming pools, many now filled in, but only one public park. Each apartment complex where these pools are located is an enclave unto itself—gated and guarded as a result of violence a decade ago. Furthermore, you could comfortably fit sixteen standard downtown blocks in one superblock of Gulfton, but sidewalks are infrequent. And with the exception of the park, the main public space is the street, meaning that children have few safe places to play, teenagers lack proper space to hang out, and mothers struggle just getting around.clubs and warehouses.”7 In other words, the area was built rapidly for short-term profit without concern for any sup-porting infrastructure of parks, recreation centers, libraries, sidewalks, public spaces, small blocks, or other amenities.One indicator of this lack of public infrastructure today Irrefutably, the physical landscape of Gulfton speaks of division and neglect. Yet, ironically, it also exhibits key characteristics that have recently been endorsed as indica-tive of a smart, sustainable neighborhood—relatively high density, a mix of uses, and access to transit. Most of these characteristics were never built into the neighbor-hood, however. Rather, they emerged as its demographics changed, illustrating the power of social transformation to shape space.The densest neighborhood in Houston, Gulfton today is more than five times as dense as the city’s average. The 2000 U.S. Census counted more than 45,000 people living in its approximately three square miles—although com-munity leaders suggest the real number may be closer to 70,000.8 Many of these residents are members of families. Some 14 percent ride public transit to work; another 32 percent walk, bike or carpool.In many ways, Gulfton also defines the image of a self-sufficient, mixed-use community. Residents can find most anything they need within walking distance: furniture, automobile repair, groceries, bank services, laundry, books, medicinal herbs, a Saturday night out, or a Sunday morn-ing service.It could be suggested such an environment is both a product of necessity (more than 20 percent of Gulfton households do not have vehicles) and a result of Houston’s lack of zoning laws. Regardless, small commercial and employment centers are thriving; along the main thor-oughfares the storefronts are all occupied (with additional commercial space under construction). Several blocks of homes in the Shenandoah subdivision have even been adapted to house small tiendas, auto repair, hub-cap stores, and beauty shops.On the whole, then, Gulfton has a distinct identity, cre-ated not through architecture or planning, but through the choices its residents make in their daily use and activation of space. New forms of commerce activate under-utilized parking lots. Enterprising shop-keepers reclaim the prem-ises of abandoned car dealerships. Day laborers occupy median strips, vying for opportunity, while community organizations work to ensure them dignity.As new cultures occupy its formerly homogenous, branded spaces, Gulfton has become animated by the sounds, smells and activities of a dense, diverse, culturally rich community.New Suburban RealitiesIn the last two decades, more than $1.5 billion have been expended in the center of Houston to increase density in the urban core, link it with transit, and provide amenities for middle-class families and tourists. Meanwhile, Gulfton and similar communities have been largely ignored.9Perhaps Gulfton’s nondescript character—its 1970s garden apartments, strip malls, and small office blocks—offer few enduring qualities of interest to architects or Rogers / Superneighborhood 27Research and DebateTop: Gulfton images, from left to right across spread: pedestrian; apartment complex; Metro riders; bicycle vendor; Jane Long (Gulfton area) Middle School; residents; re-use of abandoned auto dealer; Church Market. Photos by Belinda Kan-petch and Levi McKee.Gulfton Land Use Diagram, Commercial (Black) and Industrial (Grey).Places 17.23938
is that Gulfton contains more than one hundred semi-private swimming pools, many now filled in, but only one public park. Each apartment complex where these pools are located is an enclave unto itself—gated and guarded as a result of violence a decade ago. Furthermore, you could comfortably fit sixteen standard downtown blocks in one superblock of Gulfton, but sidewalks are infrequent. And with the exception of the park, the main public space is the street, meaning that children have few safe places to play, teenagers lack proper space to hang out, and mothers struggle just getting around.clubs and warehouses.”7 In other words, the area was built rapidly for short-term profit without concern for any sup-porting infrastructure of parks, recreation centers, libraries, sidewalks, public spaces, small blocks, or other amenities.One indicator of this lack of public infrastructure today Irrefutably, the physical landscape of Gulfton speaks of division and neglect. Yet, ironically, it also exhibits key characteristics that have recently been endorsed as indica-tive of a smart, sustainable neighborhood—relatively high density, a mix of uses, and access to transit. Most of these characteristics were never built into the neighbor-hood, however. Rather, they emerged as its demographics changed, illustrating the power of social transformation to shape space.The densest neighborhood in Houston, Gulfton today is more than five times as dense as the city’s average. The 2000 U.S. Census counted more than 45,000 people living in its approximately three square miles—although com-munity leaders suggest the real number may be closer to 70,000.8 Many of these residents are members of families. Some 14 percent ride public transit to work; another 32 percent walk, bike or carpool.In many ways, Gulfton also defines the image of a self-sufficient, mixed-use community. Residents can find most anything they need within walking distance: furniture, automobile repair, groceries, bank services, laundry, books, medicinal herbs, a Saturday night out, or a Sunday morn-ing service.It could be suggested such an environment is both a product of necessity (more than 20 percent of Gulfton households do not have vehicles) and a result of Houston’s lack of zoning laws. Regardless, small commercial and employment centers are thriving; along the main thor-oughfares the storefronts are all occupied (with additional commercial space under construction). Several blocks of homes in the Shenandoah subdivision have even been adapted to house small tiendas, auto repair, hub-cap stores, and beauty shops.On the whole, then, Gulfton has a distinct identity, cre-ated not through architecture or planning, but through the choices its residents make in their daily use and activation of space. New forms of commerce activate under-utilized parking lots. Enterprising shop-keepers reclaim the prem-ises of abandoned car dealerships. Day laborers occupy median strips, vying for opportunity, while community organizations work to ensure them dignity.As new cultures occupy its formerly homogenous, branded spaces, Gulfton has become animated by the sounds, smells and activities of a dense, diverse, culturally rich community.New Suburban RealitiesIn the last two decades, more than $1.5 billion have been expended in the center of Houston to increase density in the urban core, link it with transit, and provide amenities for middle-class families and tourists. Meanwhile, Gulfton and similar communities have been largely ignored.9Perhaps Gulfton’s nondescript character—its 1970s garden apartments, strip malls, and small office blocks—offer few enduring qualities of interest to architects or Rogers / Superneighborhood 27Research and DebateTop: Gulfton images, from left to right across spread: pedestrian; apartment complex; Metro riders; bicycle vendor; Jane Long (Gulfton area) Middle School; residents; re-use of abandoned auto dealer; Church Market. Photos by Belinda Kan-petch and Levi McKee.Gulfton Land Use Diagram, Commercial (Black) and Industrial (Grey).Places 17.23938
40 Places 17.241Research and Debateplanners. But the study of Gulfton could inform future building practices and suggest innovative means for inter-vening in existing landscapes. We could begin by advocat-ing enhanced public transit where people already ride it. And we could work toward assuring that all new communi-ties have adequate open space, libraries and schools, and that a standard infrastructure of sidewalks and lighting exist in all communities.The study of Gulfton also suggests that new means and processes of intervention should be developed that reflect an understanding of conditions as they really are, and that respond to these conditions creatively.For example, we could work to turn utility right-of-ways into linear parks or alternative types of street. We could work with the day laborers to construct new employ-ment centers. We could design pocket parks and plazas to replace empty parking lots and barren medians. We could re-image the edges of apartment blocks and better weave them into the community. And we could reclaim vacant sites for new community amenities—a library, a play park, a basketball court. Such a program of interventions could identify underutilized space, learn from how it is being used, and seek ways to make it public.Kenneth Frampton recently pointed out that a “report by the British government states that ninety percent of what will exist twenty years from now has already been built.” This is informative for Gulfton and the other older suburbs that are emerging as gateway communities across the U.S. While we can learn from our mistakes as we build in the future, we must also seek to adapt these places to support the people who currently call them home—and their American dreams.The story of Gulfton is one of both fluidity and stasis. It tells how social and cultural bonds can breathe life into dead spaces regardless of how mean or inhospitable they are. But it also tells how physical form endures, and is hard to retrofit once constructed. Innovative means of trans-forming the physical fabric of these fragmented landscapes must be invented, and we must learn from those who resist and push against division and isolation—both as designers and as human beings.To travel to Gulfton today is to travel the world with-out leaving Houston. In what could normally be defined as suburbia, one encounters great diversity, unforeseen density, and unanticipated cultural and social networks. Gulfton is not representative of a perfect union between town and country. But it is an emergent social landscape that defines a range of new possibilities.Notes and AcknowledgementThe author wishes to thank the students enrolled in her fourth-year design studio at the University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture in the fall of 2004 for their interest and engagement with the Gulfton community.1. Beatrice Marquez, as quoted in Debra Viadero, “Personal Touches,” Education Week, date, number and volume, page number, etc. needed.2. See Nestor P. Rodriguez and Jacqueline Maria Hagan, “Apartment Restructuring and Latino Immigrant Tenant Struggles: A Case Study of Human Agency,” in After Modernism: Global Restructuring and the Changing Boundaries of City Life—Comparative Urban and Community Research (City: Publisher, 1992), pp. 164-81.3. According to the U.S. Census, for the tracts that make up the Gulfton commu-nity, the population was 26,855 in 1980; 31,898 in 1990; and 45,106 in 2000. The Census listed 444 fewer housing units in Gulfton in 2000 than in 1980 and 2000, mostly due to abandonment.4. See Robert Stanton, “Residents Rise up in Southwest Houston,” Houston Chronicle, July 19, 2001, p. 1.5. One good example is the popular television program “Salvadorenõs de Corazon,” broadcast by the Houston affiliate of Azteca TV. The show provides Central Ameri-can residents with a weekly slice of home, and is produced by David Batres, who lives in an apartment in Gulfton.6. Houston Chronicle, need author, title, date, and page number.7. See Robert Fisher and Lisa Taffe, “Public Life in Gulfton: Multiple Publics and Models of Community Organization,” in Community Practice: Models in Action (City: The Haworth Press, 1997), pp. 31-56.8. Gulfton has been defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a “hard to enumerate” tract. It is therefore likely that it has been undercounted. See Jo Ann Zuniga, “Afraid to be Counted: New Immigrants Often Bring Fears from Homelands,” Houston Chronicle, February 20, 2000, p. A.1.9. See Joel Warren Barna, “Big-Ticket Urbanism,” in Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston, Vol. 60 (Spring 2004).Rogers / Superneighborhood 27Top: Gulfton Land Use Diagram, Commercial (Black) and Industrial (Grey).Opposite: Gulfton images: parking lot cactus; and women walking with stroller. Photos by Belinda Kanpetch, Levi McKee, and Charlene Hickl
40 Places 17.241Research and Debateplanners. But the study of Gulfton could inform future building practices and suggest innovative means for inter-vening in existing landscapes. We could begin by advocat-ing enhanced public transit where people already ride it. And we could work toward assuring that all new communi-ties have adequate open space, libraries and schools, and that a standard infrastructure of sidewalks and lighting exist in all communities.The study of Gulfton also suggests that new means and processes of intervention should be developed that reflect an understanding of conditions as they really are, and that respond to these conditions creatively.For example, we could work to turn utility right-of-ways into linear parks or alternative types of street. We could work with the day laborers to construct new employ-ment centers. We could design pocket parks and plazas to replace empty parking lots and barren medians. We could re-image the edges of apartment blocks and better weave them into the community. And we could reclaim vacant sites for new community amenities—a library, a play park, a basketball court. Such a program of interventions could identify underutilized space, learn from how it is being used, and seek ways to make it public.Kenneth Frampton recently pointed out that a “report by the British government states that ninety percent of what will exist twenty years from now has already been built.” This is informative for Gulfton and the other older suburbs that are emerging as gateway communities across the U.S. While we can learn from our mistakes as we build in the future, we must also seek to adapt these places to support the people who currently call them home—and their American dreams.The story of Gulfton is one of both fluidity and stasis. It tells how social and cultural bonds can breathe life into dead spaces regardless of how mean or inhospitable they are. But it also tells how physical form endures, and is hard to retrofit once constructed. Innovative means of trans-forming the physical fabric of these fragmented landscapes must be invented, and we must learn from those who resist and push against division and isolation—both as designers and as human beings.To travel to Gulfton today is to travel the world with-out leaving Houston. In what could normally be defined as suburbia, one encounters great diversity, unforeseen density, and unanticipated cultural and social networks. Gulfton is not representative of a perfect union between town and country. But it is an emergent social landscape that defines a range of new possibilities.Notes and AcknowledgementThe author wishes to thank the students enrolled in her fourth-year design studio at the University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture in the fall of 2004 for their interest and engagement with the Gulfton community.1. Beatrice Marquez, as quoted in Debra Viadero, “Personal Touches,” Education Week, date, number and volume, page number, etc. needed.2. See Nestor P. Rodriguez and Jacqueline Maria Hagan, “Apartment Restructuring and Latino Immigrant Tenant Struggles: A Case Study of Human Agency,” in After Modernism: Global Restructuring and the Changing Boundaries of City Life—Comparative Urban and Community Research (City: Publisher, 1992), pp. 164-81.3. According to the U.S. Census, for the tracts that make up the Gulfton commu-nity, the population was 26,855 in 1980; 31,898 in 1990; and 45,106 in 2000. The Census listed 444 fewer housing units in Gulfton in 2000 than in 1980 and 2000, mostly due to abandonment.4. See Robert Stanton, “Residents Rise up in Southwest Houston,” Houston Chronicle, July 19, 2001, p. 1.5. One good example is the popular television program “Salvadorenõs de Corazon,” broadcast by the Houston affiliate of Azteca TV. The show provides Central Ameri-can residents with a weekly slice of home, and is produced by David Batres, who lives in an apartment in Gulfton.6. Houston Chronicle, need author, title, date, and page number.7. See Robert Fisher and Lisa Taffe, “Public Life in Gulfton: Multiple Publics and Models of Community Organization,” in Community Practice: Models in Action (City: The Haworth Press, 1997), pp. 31-56.8. Gulfton has been defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a “hard to enumerate” tract. It is therefore likely that it has been undercounted. See Jo Ann Zuniga, “Afraid to be Counted: New Immigrants Often Bring Fears from Homelands,” Houston Chronicle, February 20, 2000, p. A.1.9. See Joel Warren Barna, “Big-Ticket Urbanism,” in Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston, Vol. 60 (Spring 2004).Rogers / Superneighborhood 27Top: Gulfton Land Use Diagram, Commercial (Black) and Industrial (Grey).Opposite: Gulfton images: parking lot cactus; and women walking with stroller. Photos by Belinda Kanpetch, Levi McKee, and Charlene Hickl