Evaluation

             The first completed village in The Woodlands was a great success ecologically. The methods of both forest preservation and storm water runoff reduction met the goals that had been laid out. The woodlands are woodlands, and in some cases, the storm water runoff reduction was more effective than they had dreamed it could be (Morgan and King, 1987; Forsyth, 2005). In addition, there are now over 135 miles of pedestrian/bike paths in The Woodlands (Forsyth, 2005), and 6500 acres of "open space", which includes parks, fields, golf courses, and forested areas; this comprises over ¼ of the land in The Woodlands.

However, things have otherwise not progressed so successfully. Problems arose within the community about the aesthetics of the storm water system. Complaints over pools of water forming in yards were common, and there was an obvious disconnect between the developers and the new residents - Ian McHarg at one point complained that the major problem of the development was that there wasn't enough education available for residents of why the systems were in place (Morgan and King, 1987). This kink in the system has led to drastic changes in development practices for The Woodlands. Because of the dependency on market demand, many of the techniques of low impact development that had been used in the first villages were abandoned in the mid 1980s (Forsyth, 2005). The natural drainage system was replaced with the curb gutter system (Forsyth, 2005).

The code of covenants for the community have become more lax, allowing for more invasive species to be planted and for more trees to be cleared by property owners.   Looking at an aerial photo of the earlier communities versus the newer communities, it is visibly clear that the focus on forest preservation has diminished. The vice president of TWDC, Dan Leverett expressed his sentiments on forest preservation in describing the urban core of The Woodlands, "We have moved in our urban design to a more formal street tree planting design with our architecture now embracing the streets instead of hiding behind the forest preserve" ( Leverett , 2006). The social goals for the community have also changed. The push for having a diverse community was more or less abandoned in the mid 1980s. The present population size of The Woodlands is at 75,000, with an expected final population size of 125,000 persons (Forsyth, 2005). The gross population density today is 4.6 persons per acre, with 79% of residential units being detached (Forsyth, 2005). The lack of diversity has reportedly become a serious problem within the community, but there does not seem to be a solution to this problem (Forsyth, 2005). It is tragic to see the early successes of The Woodlands abandoned , but it seems that this is simply how The Woodlands will have to develop from now on to meet the market demands.  

            The transferability of these methods, of course, is highly dependent on the local ecosystem, as these methods were planned specifically for the Gulf Coast Plain. While The Woodlands has moved away from its original plans, the rest of the environmentally conscious world of developers have at least learned from most of the original practices in The Woodlands. Although it is rarely mentioned, the fconcept and practice of Low Impact Development is clearly based on the storm water system present in the early villages in The Woodlands. In addition, many instances of suburbia in Houston have since implemented the vegetated swale system (although it seems the majority of these systems link directly to the bayous rather than filtering further in ponds), and there are now pedestrian/bicyclist systems along many of the bayous in Houston, which seem to reflect those systems in The Woodlands. This positive change in the Bayou City has been highly needed, as Houston is renowned for its flooding and combined sewer overflows. The applicability of the forest preservation construction methods at a scale as large as The Woodlands is not very feasible for most developers to take on; however, on a smaller scale, people have followed McHarg's practices for years. Besides these limitations, the spread of the techniques used in The Woodlands has been fairly impressive.

            The Woodlands was creating a dream into a realty for many of the people involved. There many ideals that went into the project, and many successes that came out of it. Even though the community has changed radically since its beginning years, with the ecological practices being denied for the sake of the economic survival of the community, Ian McHarg still referred to it as the closest representation of his idea of designing with nature (Forsyth, 2005).