The Houston School of Urban Study is under development. It will take several years of interdisciplinary work before a definitive statement can be offered. Broadly, Rice's Houston School of Urban Study is an approach that integrates and lies at the intersection of primary research, student training, and community outreach. It is a holistic theoretical perspective that integrates the latest understandings of human beings and utilizes a methodology that emphasizes answering questions through the triangulation of research methods. It focuses on space, being in the communities of study (the city as laboratory), and producing mutually beneficial relationships and knowledge. It uses a schematic model of human society that examines the interlinkages of three clusters: the environmental cluster (weather, water, terrain), the macrosocial cluster (population, technology, social organization, politics, economics, macro cultures), and the microsocial cluster (individuals, households, small groups, subcultures). Moreover, to date, urban life has not existed apart from differentiation, specialization, segmentation, segregation, and stratification. A core aspect of Rice's Houston School of Urban Study will be to focus on these processes, assess how they affect scholarship, study their impacts, consider whether these processes must be part of urban living, and experiment with ways to overcome or minimize the negative consequences of these processes. Finally, Rice's Houston School of Urban Study seeks to develop better ways of communicating research findings to communities.

The Houston School of Urban Study will seek to integrate the social sciences and other disciplines (such as history, religious studies, English, the School of Architecture, and even at times disciplines such as civil and environmental engineering), rather than trying to separate from them. It will employ the combined training and skills of scholars from a variety of disciplines, and work in conjunction with Houston leaders with the vision of translating new research into understandable and useable knowledge. With teams of faculty and students, CORRUL will systematically develop Rice's Houston School of Urban Study through the following means:

• Academic conferences which bring to Rice scholars from around the nation and world to discuss what Rice’s Houston School of Urban Study should look like, focusing on the newest and best ideas and methods for studying race, religion, and urban life.
• Public symposia with community leaders and members to discuss the major public issues.
• Internal workshops to discuss and forge the Houston School of Urban Study.
• Papers developing the theoretical and methodological components of the Houston School of Urban Study.
• New courses that use the Houston School of Urban Study approach and help further refine it. 
• Training of students (undergraduate and graduate), including having students serve as “translators” by taking new academic knowledge, synthesizing it, and converting it into forms understandable to broader audiences.  This will include removing jargon and developing alternative communication forms using multimedia presentation techniques.
• Research using and developing the theoretical and methodological components, including:
  • Socio-Spatial Analyses
    • Map settlement and migration patterns of racial and ethnic groups over time.
    • Map the location patterns of churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples.
    • Map the location patterns of income, wealth, and poverty across the Houston region.
    • Chart Houston region neighborhoods, detailing housing stock, business activity, educational institutions, population, parks, and related features.
    • Chart the location and reasons behind residential and commercial growth, both through in-fill of Houston proper and the rapid expansion at the edges of the Houston region.
    • Tracking immigration patterns and the lives of immigrants and their off-spring, mapping where they come from and where they settle.
    • Study how Houston is impacted by its physical setting—What are the strengths and limitations?  How can the former be further developed and the latter minimized?
    • Develop urban indicators of sustainability, and regularly produce reports for cities.
    • Simulations to forecast and understand development patterns.
    • Examine the relationships between the urban core and suburban and exurban areas.
  • Cultural Analyses
    • Conduct an on-going series of ethnographies, studying and documenting the lives of Houstonians and their organizations.
    • Studies of cultural life.
    • Studies of religious life and organization.
    • On-going attitudinal research through the well established Houston Area Survey.
    • Studies of identity creation and marketing—Who shapes Houston’s image?  What is that image? Why that image?  How is it communicated?  What effects does it have?  How is Houston perceived by those outside of Houston?  What do non-Houstonians know about Houston?  What don’t they know?
  • Institutional, Organizational, and Environmental Analyses
    • On-going studies of the Houston regions’ transportation and other infrastructure systems.
    • Studies of the health of Houstonians.
    • Studies of family life.
    • Studies of the political system and voting behaviors.
    • Economic studies.
    • Study the history of Houston and its relation to contemporary times.
    • Comparative studies that examine the uniquenesses and similarities of Houston with other global cities.
    • Studies which examine the impact of national and global forces on Houston.
    • Studies examining how Houstonians find housing and the factors that shape their search and eventual settlement patterns.
    • Examine who the influential players are shaping the development of Houston?  How does growth and development occur?  Why do people move or leave the area?

Fall 2006:

Emerson instituted a Houston School course called Urban Life and Systems.  In this course, students are placed in groups, and each group is assigned to two Houston communities—one urban and one suburban.  Through a semester-long series of assignments, the students spend much of their time in their assigned communities, conducting ethnographies of life in these neighborhoods.  They are expected to learn who the influential people in the communities are, attend neighborhood association meetings, volunteer time at local schools or other local organizations, learn the history of the communities, interview business people, religious leaders, political activists, government officials, and residents.  Some of the class meetings are off campus, in meeting places of these neighborhoods.  Students write up extensive reports and create presentations that will be offered to the communities and archived at CORRUL.  In this way, we will create a living history of urban life in Houston and begin establishing partnerships with Houston’s communities.