City of El Paso, Texas | 2022-2023 | Link
While working at Stantec’s Urban Places, CommunityScale team members contributed to El Paso’s Downtown + Uptown master plan. El Paso’s uptown and downtown have not experienced the commercial and housing growth that is bringing prosperity, economic diversification, and vitality to other cities. The City of El Paso Capital Improvement Department (CID) sought our urban planning and public consultation expertise to explore opportunities to add mixed-income housing, improve streetscapes, attract investment and small businesses, better connect the commercial downtown and residential uptown areas, and celebrate the city’s diverse living culture across all of downtown and uptown.
“To identify where do we need to make improvements in infrastructure… It means things like roads, sidewalks, streets, trees, lighting, bike lanes… And so we need to do a needs assessment and that’s what this plan did. Second is that we really need to be focusing on how do we make it easier for people to redevelop or to invest in their properties.”
Alex Hoffman, City of El Paso, Texas
Interactive map of land available for mixed-income housing redevelopment. View the entire report on the City’s website.
Creating the actionable plan is a highly collaborative process. It began with online surveys, data gathering, and analysis of demographics in the defined project area. We also gained significant input from the community through several public and stakeholder meetings. This process is revealing the wants and needs of stakeholders and avoiding the “top-down” way of previous, abortive, revitalization proposals. Our team is developing goals that include attracting employment, promoting equity and inclusivity, encouraging adaptive reuse of existing structures, diversifying housing, promoting commercial vibrancy, expanding mobility, enhancing walkability, and providing dynamic public spaces.
