Home > 360SoundCheck > Archives > 2008 > December > 30 > Entry
Test entry here
When Austin last approved a comprehensive growth plan, the Armadillo World Headquarters was still standing, MoPac ended at Far West Boulevard and the city’s population was half of what it is today. Email me with your tips.
Download the PDF on the report.
Next year, the city will begin the arduous process of rewriting the now ironically named Austin Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan in an open process that is sure to stir passionate arguments about how Austin accommodates the rapid growth that city leaders project by the end of this decade.
The Austin Tomorrow plan was adopted in 1979. Numerous smaller-scale efforts dealing with issues such as neighborhood preservation, transportation and water quality have taken place in the intervening decades.
The new comprehensive plan won’t replace those detailed documents.
Instead, the goal is to document a community-wide consensus on how Austin should deal with its expansion.
“It’s an opportunity to have us all take a breath and say, ‘What is our overall vision of growth in the city?’ said Jim Walker, chairman of the regional planning group Envision Central Texas.
“It’s important because it will allow us as a community to define what our goals and visions are for the coming decades and then really plot out how we go about achieving that from a lot of different perspectives, such as land use, transportation, parks and public safety,” said Council Member Laura Morrison, who made the need for a new plan a campaign issue.
Austin’s leaders and citizens deliberated for nearly a decade before the city adopted the 176-page Austin Tomorrow Plan, but current city officials want to complete the upcoming process in just two years.
“We looked at comprehensive plans in other big cities, and it’s almost universal that the plans that took a long time were less successful,” said Garner Stoll, assistant director of neighborhood planning and zoning. “The plans that try to do too much got bogged down. It’s really to engage the whole community in establishing the broad policy directions.”
The planning process will include public participation through workshops, focus groups and online opinion surveys.
Austin has budgeted $1.8 million for the plan, $1.5 million of which will go to an outside consultant.
City Council members will select one of the 16 planning groups that has responded to the city’s request for proposals early next year.
In other news
List item
Annother one
A third
Austin has changed a lot since the Austin Tomorrow plan was approved, but Stoll said the city is grappling with many of the same issues, including environmental protection, affordable housing, neighborhood preservation and mobility.
Comments
Click here to report comment abuse.