The Knowledge City’s physical fabric is designed to be an environmental lesson in the virtues of well-planned urban living made legible. Houston’s weak regional planning policies have allowed growth to sweep across the prairies and into floodplains, accommodated by levees that ironically have only added to the widespread problem of flooding. The Knowledge City aims to become a leader in educating the region’s workforce by providing STEM related education from kindergarten through jobs (‘K thru J’).  Joint degree programs are negotiated with several institutions of higher learning working together collaboratively. Collaboration spaces are in mixed use buildings including housing, retail, recreational amenities, and other uses within the urban center of the project.

Seventy percent of the site lies within the floodplain of the Brazos River. The plan locates its highest densities on higher ground, in the ‘Uplands’ above the floodplain at a site adjoining Interstate Highway I-10. An open-ended grid and mixed-use blocks contain university education and vertically stacked multi-family housing in an ever-changing engagement of urban living and learning in the same place. In the lower floodplain area, Island neighborhoods of compact housing with a retail village center elevate development above floodwater that then flows freely between the islands, not reliant upon a levee containment system. The islands are connected by bridges for vehicles, but also pedestrian walkways and bike lanes, and agricultural use continues in the residual open spaces. The whole of the city is a large-scale live-in demonstration of environmental principles and urban resilience – a didactic city.