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TMO has brought together several data sets into our first report on metropolitan Texas, People, Land, and Water: Stories of Metropolitan Growth. In People, we analyze socio-demographic trends on diversity, education, poverty, and more, revealing several trends about the people of metropolitan Texas. In Land, the physical expansion of metros is analyzed against population growth, density, and imperviousness, finding that growth is both more efficient and increasingly intense. In Water, consumption patterns are examined by source and end-use, finding decreasing water use per capita; however, increasing population growth will outpace efficiency improvements.

An Observatory Framework for Metropolitan Change: Understanding Urban Social–Ecological–Technical Systems in Texas and Beyond

Our interest in social vulnerability is to provide data and information that decision makers can use to consider vulnerability and advance resilience across the state of Texas. The information provided can be useful to urban policy-makers at the municipal, county, or regional planning authority level, or from the perspective of the state as a whole.

Climate and community resilience refers to a set of indicators to assess the risks that certain climate-related hazards pose, how those risks are spatially and socially distributed, and how households, neighborhoods and cities can build resilience. Climate-related hazards – flood, wildfire, extreme heat, among others – causes damage and loss to property, infrastructure, livelihoods, service provision and environmental resources. Some communities are disproportionately exposed to and affected by climate hazards more than others based on social vulnerability. We present a multi-risk assessment that considers how hazard risk and vulnerability interact. We first assess social vulnerability and each risk separately (considering for each hazard a specific analysis of exposure and vulnerability) and then the aggregation allows a multi-risk index evaluation.

The concept of urban resilience, particularly through a systems framework, has advanced tremendously over the past decade. Relatedly, collaborative and network governance is increasingly considered essential for the sustainability of urban social-ecological-technical systems. However, empirical evidence explicitly linking metropolitan networks to resilience planning and implementation is sparse. We address this gap by researching a network of organizations pursuing resilience strategies within and across two major metropolitan areas in Texas – Austin and San Antonio. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach that includes qualitative and social network analysis (descriptive and exponential random graph modeling), we examine the factors that drive network formation around blue-green infrastructure in the study area. The planning and implementation of general resilience strategies across metropolitan jurisdictional boundaries is dependent upon the social infrastructure available for governance (i.e., the relationships among organizations engaged in resilience building activities). Our findings demonstrate the tendency for network closure as a key governance feature for resilience implementation. Providing urban policy-makers and planners with information about why networks form can facilitate implementation of blue-green infrastructure in this rapidly growing, climate change impacted region and beyond. Applying a network paradigm provides insights to build general resilience for adaptation and transformation in metropolitan systems.

This work presents an analysis of patterns of vulnerability and neighborhood change in the 25 metropolitan regions (MSAs) in Texas. The mapping tool in this report allows users to examine patterns of neighborhood change in Texas metros over the 2000-2018 period. The maps in this report portray important socio-demographic characteristics and patterns of change at the census tract level.

The first key measure developed is a vulnerability index for each census tract in the Texas MSAs. The vulnerability index registers demographic and socioeconomic factors in a neighborhood (census tract) that may make it more vulnerable to a range of factors including displacement due to rising housing costs, environmental shocks (such as flooding) and public health challenges (such as COVID-19).

We further develop a framework that attempts to measure the displacement risk (or gentrification pressures) that residents in urban census tracts might face across the 25 Texas metros. To conduct this analysis we analyzed patterns of demographic and housing cost change over the 2000-2018 period.

The analytic framework and maps in this report aim to provide policy makers and community members with useful information on patterns of vulnerability and possible displacement risks in their metro areas based on secondary data. It is important to note that these patterns need to be checked in light of specific contexts and local knowledge in each metro and local jurisdiction.