North Houston District 2023 Parks Master Plan

May 2023   Houston, TX

Client

  • North Houston District

Category

Award/Recognition

  • Special Recognition, Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) Parks and Natural Areas
  • Best Practice, Bronze, American Planning Association, Houston Chapter
Key Points

The 2023 North Houston Parks Master Plan is an effort to take stock of the existing parkland, partnerships, and community needs to create a cohesive network of parks, open spaces, and trails.

Collaborative

The project fostered collaboration among stakeholders, utilizing community feedback to shape recommendations and priorities.

Transformative

Through its efforts, the project aimed to transform the district's parks network, enhancing connectivity and community resiliency while leveraging partnerships for positive change.

The project aimed to develop recommendations that connected, activated, enhanced, and unified the system across three scales: districtwide quadrants, Greens Bayou Greenway, and Tom Wussow Park. The plan identified strategies that synthesized the existing conditions of the district and envisioned new ideas that would create a cohesive parks network while strengthening community resiliency and leveraging district partnerships. Intensive data analysis and public engagement efforts brought out opportunities to improve connectivity, utilize open spaces, enhance existing infrastructure, and develop a more unified park system. The final report included these recommendations and proposed a new concept plan for Tom Wussow Park.

Building off the efforts of the recently completed livable centers study, public engagement involved two (2) Public Pop-Up Events to establish a foundation of community perspectives, such as general sentiments and needs. With community feedback, the project team engaged with a Stakeholder Committee in a series of three (3) meetings, connecting the group to project goals and requesting their feedback on initial concept plans and implementation. The project’s engagement component fostered the creation of a plan best suitable for the community, partners, and vision of the North Houston District.

Please see the full plan here

 

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