2024 Recipients
Texas Planning Awards
![apatx22awards2](https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/IMG_8098_3.width-500.jpg)
Awards For 2024
![](https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/638550911609130000.width-120.png)
Comprehensive Planning Award
City of Amarillo | Vision 2045
For a comprehensive or general plan that advances the science and art of planning.
City Plan – Vision 2045 innovates comprehensive planning for more conservative communities, advancing meaningful planning work while acknowledging Amarillo's hesitancy for land use regulation. Experiencing typical suburban growth along affluent edges as the older core declined, planning has not been viewed as a solution to community challenges arising from these growth patterns. An inclusive process was required to recast planning as a roadmap for positive change and actively address concerns over the plan's potential impact on property owner rights. Ultimately, it evolved into a community-supported guide that strongly emphasizes a voluntary approach to improving Amarillo.
![](https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/ETOD-Roadmap_v3.width-120.jpg)
Advancing Diversity and Social Change Award
CapMetro - Equitable Transit-Oriented Development Study
This award honors an individual, project, group, or organization that promotes diversity and involves historic underrepresented groups, positively impacts the quality of life for low- or moderate-income individuals, and/or addresses structural inequities within a community through specific actions or contributions within the planning profession or through planning practice.
CapMetro, in partnership with the City of Austin, spearheaded the ETOD Study to integrate future transportation investments with tools and policies focused on community preservation and economic access. This groundbreaking project emphasizes equity, prioritizes underrepresented voices, and aligns transit and housing strategies across multiple agencies. It represents a unique opportunity to implement significant infrastructure policies. The study developed an equity-based ETOD Priority Tool to align policy and investment for the entire Project Connect system. The ETOD Final Report established the foundation for the ETOD Policy Plan, a citywide guide ensuring future transit development supports residents of all incomes and backgrounds. Accepted by Austin City Council in March 2023, the Plan led to the successful ETOD Overlay code amendment in May 2024. This amendment restricts non-transit-supportive land uses and permits increased height for existing multifamily and commercial properties in exchange for affordable housing, promoting a more inclusive and accessible urban environment.
View nomination
![](https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/IMG_1511.width-120.jpg)
Planning Landmark Award
Rio Vista Farm Bracero Reception Center
The Rio Vista Bracero Reception Center ("Rio Vista"), a recently designated 11.1-acre National Historic Landmark made up of 24 contributing buildings, is nationally and internationally significant for its association with the Mexican Farm Labor Program of 1951- 64, also known as the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program was a binational temporary guest worker program administered by the US and Mexico, which deployed Braceros to fulfill agricultural contracts across thirty-eight states after arriving from Mexico at US Reception Centers. By 1959, Braceros comprised nearly a quarter of US agricultural workers, greatly enhancing the profitability of the US agribusiness labor, providing a steady and reliable supply of highly skilled farmworkers, and broadly influencing US Latino populations, particularly in states from Texas westward. As the only standing reception center in the US, Rio Vista tells the untold story of Braceros and the millions of Mexican Americans who trace their lineage to this very site.
![](https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/Screenshot_2024-08-21_222556.width-120.png)
Planning Advocate Award
Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool | City of Austin
This award honors an individual, appointed, or elected official who has advanced or promoted the cause of planning in the public arena.
Determined to relieve displacement pressures on low- and moderate-income families and restore housing opportunities amid Austin’s growing housing crisis and economic divide, Leslie Pool, Austin’s Mayor Pro Tem, championed a planning initiative to create more starter homes and denser urban neighborhoods to give Austin families a fighting chance.
With housing limited by an outdated land development code, Leslie Pool and her District 7 team built a coalition of the public and private sector planning professionals needed to effect change. The coalition and community groups crafted HOME (Home Options for Mobility and Equity). The plan offered more housing types and smaller lot options for a denser, more walkable and resilient city.
Her initiative included a robust information campaign, with a dedicated website, panel events, as well as media and community outreach to educate the public on the importance of community participation in the planning aspects and implementation of HOME.
Community of the Year Award
![](https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/Welcome_TX_Georgetown_2015_24_WBlog.width-1200.jpg)
City of Georgetown
The City of Georgetown adopted nine plans this last year including the Downtown Master Plan, Austin Avenue Corridor Study, Austin Avenue Pedestrian Bridges, Future Mobility Plan, Amended Future Land Use Plan, Sidewalk Master Plan, Transit Development Plan, Wayfinding Plan, and Economic Development Strategic Plan. Collectively, these projects provide a long-range vision for enhanced mobility, economic development and community character for Georgetown, one of the fastest-growing communities in the country. The city strived to ensure each plan was completed in unison. To achieve the highest level of engagement and feedback for the plans proposed, the city strategically coordinated community support through a variety of engagement methods using visual preference boards, statistically valid surveys, and aligning outreach efforts with large community events. Each plan casts a vision to include specific implementation actions and provides development recommendations that will be reflected in the adoption of the Unified Development Code (UDC) update.
Journalism Award
Community Impact
Texas Chapter Award
TBA
Legacy Project Winners
TBA
Texas Planning Legend Award
TBA
Chapter President's Award
TBA
Planning Achievement Awards
In addition to the planning awards, the jury also selected achievement award recipients for 2024. These awards recognize good planning work. Achievement award recipients are collectively recognized at the Texas planning awards ceremony.
Best Practice
This award is for a specific planning tool, practice, program, project, or process. This category emphasizes results and demonstrates how innovative and state-of-the-art planning methods and practices help to create communities of lasting value.
- Gold Award: Livable Places
- Gold Award: Houston Parks Board Design Guidelines for Pedestrian and Bike Trails
Environmental Planning
This award honors efforts to create more sustainable and greener communities that reduce the impact of development on the natural environment and improve environmental quality.
- Gold Award: El Paso Regional Priority Climate Action Plan
- Silver Award: San Marcos Natural Areas Land Management Plan
Grass Roots Initiative
Honoring an initiative that illustrates how a neighborhood, community group or other local non-governmental entity utilized the planning process to address a specific need or issue within the community.
Implementation
Recognizing an effort that demonstrates a significant achievement for an area—a single community or a region—in accomplishing positive changes as a result of planning.
- Gold Award: Dallas Sidewalk Master Plan
- Silver Award: Mesquite Downtown Infrastructure Plan and Front Street Station
Public Outreach
This award honors an individual, project, or program that uses information and education about the value of planning to create greater awareness among citizens or specific segments of the public. The award celebrates how planning improves a community’s quality of life.
- Gold Award: Texas Trees Foundation: Southwestern Medical District Urban Streetscape and Park Project
- Silver Award: Prairie View Livable Centers Study
Resilience
This award recognizes a strategy that increases the ability of a community to recover from and adapt to shocks and stresses (natural disasters, human-caused disasters, climate change, etc.), resulting in it becoming stronger and better prepared than ever before.
Transportation Planning
This award honors efforts to increase transportation choices for all populations, reducing dependence on private automobiles and helping to ease congestion and reducing climate change impacts.
- Gold Award: East Berry Street Corridor Study
- Silver Award: City of Midland Comprehensive Safety Action Plan
- Silver Award: Connecting Texas 2050 Statewide Long Range Transportation Plan
Urban Design
This award honors efforts to create a sense of place, whether a street, public space, neighborhood, or campus effort
- Gold Award: University of Houston Downtown Campus Master Plan
- Silver Award: Waco 25th Street Corridor Implementation Plan
Economic Development
This award honors economic development