The City adopts its first ever general plan, Plan Houston.
HOUSTON, September 30, 2015 – Today, Houston’s City Council adopted Plan Houston, a tool for more effective governance. Plan Houston will enable the City to enhance services to current residents and help the City prepare for anticipated growth. This effort will improve coordination between City departments and government agencies and ensure efforts of the City and its partners are as effective as possible. Plan Houston makes the City’s operations more pro-active, efficient and transparent. The plan can be found online at https://planhouston.org/.
“With the adoption of Plan Houston, we have ushered in a new and more coordinated era of planning,” said Mayor Annise Parker. “This plan can be a powerful tool to proactively address challenges we know the city will face in the coming years.”
At its core, Plan Houston is a framework for sound planning and policy making. It provides consensus on broad principles that can guide City efforts. It includes vision and goals for the entire community – generated by Houstonians themselves.
Plan Houston includes 12 Core Strategies, each with its own set of more specific actions. These actions are the starting point for implementing the plan. They will inform future initiatives to be taken by the City to improve coordination and effectiveness.
The Plan also includes supplemental information in the form of performance indicators and an online planning coordination tool. The indicators will track the community’s progress towards achieving the vision and goals and will inform future policy making. The planning coordination tool identifies the planning efforts of many Houston-area agencies on a map. The tool allows the public to better understand and benefit from planning activities in their area.
As part of the Plan’s implementation, the Planning and Development Department will begin facilitating a process to develop the fiscal year 2017 annual work plan. The annual work plan is a list of policy and planning projects for all departments of the City to pursue in upcoming fiscal years.
Plan Houston creates a strategic framework for a more effective organization and enables a path to a thriving, more successful Houston.