Planning Matters
December, 2008
Leaders’ Conference on the
City’s General Plan
First Increment: Next Steps?

Leading off the Conference were Dr. Carol Lewis, Chair of the Planning Commission, and Marlene Gafrick, Director of the Planning Department, explaining the background for the development of the General Plan and demonstrating the use of the web site. Mike McEnany, AIA, Blueprint Houston board member offered comments on the General Plan (see below). Then Lewis and Gafrick were joined in a question/answer session with participants in the Conference by other members of the drafting committee—Steve Spillette, Planning Fellow in the Department, Jeff Ross, Chair of the General Plan Committee of the Planning Commission, and Bob Eury, President of Central Houston, Inc., and a founder of Blueprint Houston .

Participants broke into three discussion groups led by Blueprint Houston board members, Randhir Sahni, AIA, Homer Clark, and Joe Webb, AIA. The groups generated a series of questions, concerns, and suggestions for next steps.

Questions included:

How can we engage the public, the Super Neighborhoods, and the political will of the elected and appointed officials in growing the General Plan? How do we increase communication about the Plan to stakeholders and interested parties? How do we measure success? How do we ensure enforcement? How can we develop and link the guiding principles from the Citizen’s Vision to the evolving General Plan and to the implementation plans throughout the City? How can Blueprint Houston focus efforts to help in evolving and growing the Houston style General Plan?

Some suggestions for next steps:

Create a public awareness and education campaign to get the General Plan in front of the citizens and engage them in its evolution. Develop a toolbox for Super Neighborhoods, Civic Associations, and other concerned citizen groups to evolve the General Plan and to implement the Plan at the neighborhood level. Create a planning and development handbook that institutionalizes and explains the planning and development process in Houston.

Proceedings from the Conference have been sent to the panelists for their review and comment.

Do you have questions or issues to add to the list? Clearly, there is work for Blueprint Houston to do. To get involved, call Emily Braswell at 713-522-0590 or email emily@blueprinthouston.org.

The General Plan is available at http://www.houstontx.gov/planninng/GeneralPlan/GPHome.html

Urban Corridor Planning Update

The City Legal Department is working with an external law firm to draft an Urban Corridor Planning ordinance. This next phase of planning will include many opportunities for public input and comment. The Mixed-Use/Transit-Oriented Development Committee of the Planning Commission has reconvened to provide guidance in shaping the ordinance. After their review and approval the ordinance will go to the Planning Commission and to the City Council committee on Regulation, Neighborhood Protection, and Development, and finally to the full Council. Each step in this process will provide opportunities for community input.

Dates to Remember

The Texas Lyceum Conference on Transportation
December 3, 2008
Reliant Arena
$175
See www.texaslyceum.org for more information and to register.

State of the Bay Symposium
What is Needed to Sustain Our Estuary?
January 12-14, 2009
Galveston, Texas
Galveston Island Convention Center at the San Luis Resort.
Questions? Email emccaule@tceq.state.tx.ur

 

LEADERS’ CONFERENCE
Thank you for participating in the Leaders’ Conference and making the informative presentation on The Houston General Plan.

We commend the Planning Commission and Planning Department for beginning the process of creating The Houston General Plan. We understand that the planning effort is to take an incremental approach instead of comprehensively addressing all of the elements normally included in a general plan.

The mission of Blueprint Houston is to “assure the creation of a general plan based on citizens’ vision, values and goals”. Let me repeat “assure the creation of a general plan based on citizens’ vision, values and goals”.

Believe me, we understand how difficult accomplishing that mission will be for all of us, particularly in the City of Houston.

Our major concern is that the Houston General Plan section entitled Our Vision and Priorities is not in a form that can guide planning efforts by the City of Houston, Super Neighborhoods and other agencies with planning responsibilities. The section “references” the extensive citizen participation efforts of Blueprint Houston, the Houston Area Survey and Envision+Houston Region and “incorporates” them into the Houston General Plan.

However Our Vision and Priorities does not explicitly and efficiently provide the guiding principles that are the foundation for future planning efforts.

We are pleased that these two tasks have been included in the Mobility Plan.

However we think the correct approach would have been for Our Vision and Priorities to provide the policy framework of guiding principles that would inform the Mobility Plan and other planning efforts.

We hope that this conference will raise constructive issues about the Houston General Plan, reach some consensus on the next critical steps and begin an engagement of Super Neighborhoods, Civic Associations, the development community and interested citizens of Houston.