A Radically Different Planning Process in Brownsville

One of the poorest cities in the country is in South Texas, adjacent to the Mexico border. In Brownsville, the average annual household income is $15,030, according to the American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates from 2013-2015. The Rio Grande Valley region, however, is rich with the cultural history of immigrants. More than 90 percent of households identify as Hispanic or Latinx, and many families are mixed status, meaning one or more family members are undocumented.

Finding affordable housing is difficult in Brownsville. The occupancy rate for affordable housing is near 99 percent (the ideal rate for a city of comparable size is 95 percent), and since last year, the public housing program has been at capacity, with an average wait time of 2 to 4 years. With efforts underway to revitalize the downtown area, and new industries like SpaceX making the region their home, it could become even more difficult to find affordable housing in the city. All the changes make it clear that it is extremely important for Brownsville residents and civic leaders to take a hard look at what equity in the city would and could look like.

At Las Imaginistas, a socially engaged art collective working along the U.S./Mexico border, we focus on a variety of community development issues including development of microeconomies and the inclusion of community voice in regional planning processes. As recipients of a national socially engaged art fellowship called A Blade of Grass, Las Imaginistas worked on a 12-month community engagement program in Brownsville called Hacemos La Ciudad (We Make the City).

This is what we did ...