"Plan El Paso" Draft Now Online

The City's effort to create a comprehensive intelligent growth strategy for El Paso has now been published in draft form. Planning firm Dover Kohl and Partners (http://www.doverkohl.com/) has completed the brunt of the work on the project to create policies that will help dictate the City's future development, and City Council will vote in the coming months on incorporating the new policies into the Comprehensive Plan.

The plan includes many progressive growth strategies, including buildings with little or no setbacks (with parking in the rear of the building), transit-oriented developments that are pedestrian friendly, tree-lined streets, architectural guidelines that promote interesting facades, and layouts that encourage walking or bike-riding.

There are key focus areas that showcase the new ideals, including Remcon/Mesa on the West Side, the demolished Northpark area in the Northeast, Zaragoza east of Joe Battle on the East Side, and long stretches of Alameda near UMC and through to the Lower Valley. Downtown is also very important in the plan, as mentioned in multiple chapters.

It is clear that city beautification is incorporated into most facets of the Plan, as is a focus on increasing the canopy (trees) as much as possible in order to decrease the impact of the stifling sun on pedestrians.

Find the full draft plan here: http://planelpaso.org/2012/04/complete-plan-el-paso-draft-online/

Note: The plan is available in two parts, both very large PDFs. Please keep this in mind when clicking on each to open and view them. They may require long download times.

Cover of the draft plan.