What a difference a year makes. In the months since our 2015 real estate issue, Houston’s once-white-hot housing market has cooled markedly. Declining oil prices and a glut of new construction brought a (temporary?) end to the rapid rise in home values that residents had grown accustomed to, while the question Where should I live now? is being asked with increasing urgency. Though the chorus of doomsayers is large and loud, it can't drown out one of the eternal truths about this city: it’s a great place to live.

As such, we stepped back from the daily housing rollercoaster, concentrating instead on the fundamentals, the long view. What does the future hold for Houston’s neighborhoods? How are the wants and needs of its citizens changing? We chatted with the city’s top urban planners about the direction the city’s going—hint: it’s all about livability—and with their help, picked 10 areas already nailing this whole quality-of-life thing, plus another seven poised to become Houston’s must-live locales.

There are challenges ahead in this time of tranformation, but there’s also much to be excited about—even if, where we’re going, we’ll still need roads. (Flying cars, it seems, are a ways off.)