Where is College Station as a community, and where do we want to go?
We’ve proactively explored these questions as part of the city’s Comprehensive Plan and Neighborhood and Master Plans. However, with October designated as National Community Planning Month by the American Planning Association, our residents, businesses and elected officials have a valuable opportunity to stop and take stock of where we are, where we want to go, and the best ways to get there.
New Ideas and a New Commitment
College Station residents have been unified and clear in their preferences. You want our community to remain a great place to live, work and play, and to maintain our strong neighborhoods, distinct districts and great opportunities. To achieve these and other goals, the city has identified a number of new ideas, including a renewed commitment to long-range planning, innovative public-private partnerships, streets that help connect people and places through multiple means, and respect for the limits and constraints of our natural features and resources.
Throughout the next year, we’ll further develop many of these new ideas. We’ve already begun work with residents of the Southside Neighborhood to plan for their area’s future, and with the City of Bryan to fully realize the potential of the BioCorridor Master Plan developed last year with the Research Valley Partnership. Other exciting initiatives will include the start of the Wellborn District Plan, completion of the Medical District Plan, and development of a city-wide Economic Development Master Plan.
Becoming the Best We Can Be
Due in part to the city’s past planning efforts, College Station finds itself atop several “best of” lists from such recognized sources as Forbes, Money and Kiplinger magazines. Likewise, many of the city’s planning efforts have been acknowledged as exemplary by our peers. Most recently, our planning program was cited by the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association, and the Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Greenways Master Plan was recognized as one of the best planning efforts in the entire state. The future should be no less successful — provided we all continue to work together to develop new ideas for a stronger future while planning to make our community the best it truly can be.
