An Ambitious Approach to Planning a Small Texas City

Bastrop, a fast-growing city located north of Austin, is plotting growth on a street grid.

1 minute read

November 17, 2019, 11:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Texas

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"Bastrop, Texas, adopted new, groundbreaking land-use regulations this week that address flooding and establish a street grid as a framework for growth—one of the first cities in the US to do so since the middle of the 20th Century," reports Robert Steuteville.

"The Bastrop Building Block (B3) code is the result of the Building Bastrop initiative, launched in August 2018 with the goal of creating fiscally sustainable, geographically-sensitive development that is authentic to the city," explains Steuteville.

"The city is therefore determined to grow, like downtown, in the form of a grid—one that responds to geography and nature. The city adopted a Transportation Master Plan that establishes a street grid not only in undeveloped parts of the city, but also in an extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ), for which the city has transportation, environmental, and subdivision controls."

The article includes a lot more about the ethos enacted by the city's recent planning efforts, and the process implemented by the city and its consultants in reaching this culmination.

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