75 Ways to Confront Rapid Urban Growth in an Unincorporated Community

This case study analyzes a recent urban planning effort in the community of Comfort, Texas—which, like 90% of its neighbors in the Texas Hill Country—lacks a municipal government. The Texas Hill Country region is home to three of the ten fastest growing large counties in the United States, yet a widespread aversion to government fosters a lack of regulation that today threatens the local quality of air, water, and land. On November 3, 2015, 71% of Comfort residents voted against a proposition to incorporate their community. While the vote was clear in its rejection of municipal government, it did not suggest how a loose assortment of property owners, developers, non-profits, utility districts, and county officials might address the multiple and pressing challenges associated with rapid urban growth. Comfort Vision 2050 offers a plan tailored to the realities of life in an unincorporated community, establishing a novel approach to urban planning that is decentralized, non-governmental, incremental, actionable, coordinated, measurable, and transparent. The urban action plan specifically provides a list of 75 Strategic Initiatives that are small-scale, diverse, and possible to achieve without the benefit of municipal government. Collectively, the plan suggests a dispersed, distributed decision-making process that does not rely on a single organization or individual for success. This case study describes the efforts of a university-based community design center to develop a novel approach to urban planning in an unincorporated community. Ultimately, Comfort’s experience highlights the need to develop regional planning strategies that can address the needs of unincorporated communities, which after all need urban planning for all the same reasons that cities do: to prevent the fragmentation of local ecologies, maintain critical infrastructures, ensure access to housing, preserve physical and cultural his¬tory, attract and keep good jobs, expand critical services, facilitate civic discourse, and ensure timely decision-making.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.109.77

Volume Editors

ISBN
978-1-944214-37-1