Breaking the Silence . . . Pt. 2: alot going on.

Well, as I've mentioned, I recently returned from a trip to Mexico. For awhile now I haven't been posting and/or working as much as I'd like on Coastopolis but its not because the subject has been far from my mind, quite the contrary, thoughts about planning and the coast have been on my mind for the majority of the last couple of weeks. Other than just my general interest in the subjects, there have been a couple of things that have kept me busy and prevented me from posting.
The main one of these has been the beginning phases of my hometown's comprehensive plan. For the last ten or twelve years or so Brownsville, TX has been growing at an astronomical rate. And for quite some time it has grown and developed without much of a plan for doing so. In the last year however, the Imagine Brownsville effort has gotten underway, with the goal of producing in another 15 months time, Brownsville's first comprehensive plan. While I was home last week, I managed to attend several of the public input meetings that were held and I had some mixed reviews of the process, and watching it unfold stirred in me a lot of different questions. I've been doing my own research on the city, its issues and the process because after having been gone for the last dozen years so much has changed. Furthermore, looking at the town through a planners lens makes it a great deal more difficult to simply jump to some of the easy conclusions I once used to.
While I was at home, as one is wont to do in south Texas, I also spent a few days out on South Padre Island. That area too, has seen some incredible growth and development over the last decade or so, if not longer. While still an amazingly beautiful beach, they too struggle from a variety of planning issues that are more acutely "coastal" than Brownsville, but also acutely "south Texan". And yet the size and number of new high-rise developments, as well as the increase in the number of residences definitely indicates to me that SPI has entered a stage of development that may have more in common with places like the Outer Banks, the Jersey Shore or southern Florida than with its former self.
Though I didn't have much of a chance to meet with either planning department while I was down there, the times that I have been in touch with them, they've always been pretty helpful and I'm hoping to do a bit more research on the area, and also tap them as resources for input on Coastopolis.

. . . so, the long story short is that in addition to trying to find the proverbial "real job" as well as trying to develop Coastopolis I have now also added to my ever growing "to do" list the task of trying to educate myself a bit more on the issues facing the area where I grew up, south Texas, "el valle" . . . wish me luck.