An Ambitious Approach to Planning a Small Texas City

"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 20^th 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.