Best Practices Section

Houston Data Priorities

Use Houston Sustainability Indicators to decide where World Cup investments should reduce burdens, improve services, and leave measurable community benefit.

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Houston evidence base

Use neighborhood indicators to target benefits

The 2016 HSI report shows why World Cup sustainability planning should not rely on a single citywide metric. It aggregates indicators to Houston Super Neighborhoods and combines social, economic, mobility, environmental, and built-environment variables.

For World Cup 2026, those indicators can help identify where event operations should improve access, reduce costs, add shade or public space, strengthen transit connections, or support public services that remain useful after visitors leave.

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Priority Indicators

Access to transit and the share of residents using transit to work.
Population within walking distance of parks, food access, floodplain exposure, and land-use mix.
Housing-plus-transportation cost burden, unemployment, poverty, primary jobs, and school performance context.

How to Use Them

Identify neighborhoods where event demand may add pressure to already-stressed systems.
Prioritize public services and temporary installations where indicators show overlapping needs.
Evaluate legacy by whether the intervention changes access, public-space quality, or community capacity after the tournament.

Cover page of the 6th Houston Sustainability Indicators Report — **HSI report source**The 2016 report provides the local data foundation for community-scale planning.
Extracted text: The 6th Houston Sustainability Indicators Report, Sustainable Communities and Public Education. Lester O. King, Shell Center for Sustainability, Rice University, October 2016.

Houston Sustainability Indicators overview page — **HSI data platform**The report describes a public indicator platform for monitoring urban performance and policy implications.
Extracted text: HSI aggregates 2014 data to Houston Super Neighborhoods and integrates land cover, greenhouse gas, air quality, business, parks, capital projects, Census, and ACS data for sustainability monitoring.

HSI sustainability indicators and metrics table — **Metrics table**Social, economic, access, flooding, sprawl, density, and land-use indicators can inform World Cup priorities.
Extracted text: HSI metrics include race and ethnicity, education, graduation rate, income, poverty, housing-plus-transportation costs, parks access, food deserts, unemployment, jobs, transit, floodplain, density, and land-use mix.

HSI page showing five indexes explaining variance in housing values — **Combined indexes**The HSI analysis identifies five indexes explaining 73% of variance in housing values, showing the value of multi-indicator targeting.
Extracted text: The HSI analysis identifies five indexes that together explain 73 percent of variance in housing values: wealthy, ex-urban, African American, bedroom, and industrial communities.

HSI Super Neighborhood ranking page — **Neighborhood prioritization**The report argues that simultaneous indicators are more robust than ranking neighborhoods by poverty or income alone.
Extracted text: The Super Neighborhood ranking uses multiple indicators at once, which the report describes as more systematic and robust than ranking communities only by poverty or income.

Sources: Lester O. King, The 6th Houston Sustainability Indicators Report: Sustainable Communities and Public Education, Shell Center for Sustainability, Rice University, 2016, pp. 5, 9, 17-23; Abraham, "The Idea of Sustainability to Evaluate Growth and Development in the Houston Region," 2021, pp. 36-46.