Human Nature

St Collisions and Resiliency in
Galena Park’s Urban Food Desert

University of Houston, ARCH 5500
Image Credits: Far right, Benjamin Blankenburg and Shaila George

Situated north of the Ship Channel and east of Houston’s downtown, the City of Galena Park is home to a community of 10,000 people. The original settlement accommodated agriculture and ranching livestock but by the 1880s the city converted into a “railroad center” serving the new Port of Houston. The city’s industry shifted once again during the early 1900’s with the introduction of the petrochemical industry and the community established a population of Ship Channel workers. Traces of the all-white segregated schools and the neighboring all black community, Clinton Park, also remain with the dead-end streets delineating where the former barricade existed between both neighborhoods.

Today, over 80% of the city’s population is Hispanic. Nearly thirty percent of the population live in poverty and face significant health and environmental challenges from the toxic air exposure released from the high-risk industrial facilities that surround the community. The city is also vulnerable to experiencing the grave impacts of chemical release during a facility accident or explosion. The proximity to the industrial facilities poses infrastructural threats due to the rail lines that surround the city and intersect with the city’s exits making it difficult to for emergency help to reach the accidents. The Ship Channel creates flooding problems, including the largest reported gas spill during Hurricane Harvey. With more than 50 industrial facilities surrounding the low-income community, the “societal impacts” are often overlooked or even “justified.”