Pocket Prairies Implementation Framework Report

Houston’s rapid growth over the past century has transformed the regional landscape. Today, Houston is a city of 2.3 million residents and growing, and the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area is home to 7.5 million people. While that growth has brought with it economic opportunity, cultural diversity, and other benefits, it also creates new challenges. Over 99% of the coastal prairies that once covered much of the region have been lost —and along with them, the natural sponges, air and water filters, cooling features, and wildlife habitats provided by these landscapes. Much of the area is now developed, increasing impervious surfaces like roadways, parking lots, and building that exacerbate stormwater runoff and create urban heat island effects. Combined with impacts from climate change, Houston is experiencing increasing and persistent threats from storms, flooding, heat, drought, and other hazards.

In response to these and other challenges, the City of Houston has focused on comprehensive approaches for increasing the city’s resilience— the capacity of its residents, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems to survive, adapt, and thrive no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience. The Resilient Houston strategy, completed in 2020, created a framework for action at multiple scales—from the region to the city, to the bayous, to neighborhoods, to individual properties.

At every scale, the City of Houston, regional partners, local nonprofits, and community organizations have been working to protect and expand the important functions provided by the natural landscapes. This includes efforts to conserve and restore coastal prairies as well as efforts to implement nature-based solutions into the build environment—practices that install natural features or processes into the environment to adapt to and mitigate environmental change while providing measurable co-benefits to communities.

The purpose of this report is to provide programmatic guidance to City of Houston departments and partner agencies and organizations for the implementation of small-scale nature-based solutions on underutilized spaces within Houston’s built environment, including vacant lots, parts of neighborhood parks, and along roadways or bayous. These small-scale interventions, when implemented citywide and alongside larger-scale efforts, can support the creation of a network of green spaces that restore some of the natural functions of Houston’s historic landscape, help the city adapt to a changing climate, and provide multiple benefits to communities.

While much of the existing, well-established local guidance on pocket prairie implementation focuses on specific planting regimes and best practices, the focus of this guide is on programmatic considerations. Recommendations are drawn from local and regional case studies as well as lessons learned from local partners who have implemented and managed prairie restoration and nature-based solution projects.