Planning Department announces update of Imagine Austin, due by late 2026

Austin’s Planning Department has announced its plans to update Imagine Austin, the city’s 30-year strategic plan, over the next two-and-a-half years. The department plans to begin six months of community engagement that will end in December and provide the initial topic areas of most importance for assessing how the city will look 30 years into the future.

Passed in 2012, Imagine Austin considered how transportation options, housing affordability and environmental protection should fit into the city’s future, with the goal of making Austin more livable, connected and inclusive.

City Council allocated $3 million in the current city budget to cover the costs of updating the plan by the end of 2026.

April Geruso, division manager in the Planning Department, said the city’s population growth and major initiatives such as Project Connect are some of the factors that need to be wrapped into the new Imagine Austin. Other major comprehensive plans such as the Austin Strategic Housing Blueprint, the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan and the Water Forward Plan need to be acknowledged in the document, she said.

“We just want to make sure that the values – sustainability, equity, resilience and access to opportunity – are incorporated and integrated into the update. Over time, there have also been a number of amendments to Imagine Austin, major documents and other different elements to the comprehensive plan that have been adopted,” she said. “With growth comes the externalities that we face. We are a very popular community. Over time, that has meant that affordability has gone down, that there is a shift in where people are living in the city and folks that have been here a long time are trying to determine how they can remain. … It’s become more challenging as things become less and less affordable.”

One of the major hopes that resulted from the first Imagine Austin plan was that the city would update its Land Development Code to help the city adapt to the area’s growing population. City Council abandoned a comprehensive code rewrite in 2018, and legal challenges have slowed some attempts to update areas of the existing code.

That slow pace has frustrated those who were heavily involved in the 2012 plan, including Planning Commissioner Greg Anderson, who was policy director for former City Council Member Sheryl Cole during the plan’s creation and passage.

Calling the existing code “oppressive,” Anderson said the next version of Imagine Austin needs a strong vision from city leaders as well as wide-reaching community involvement to create a clear idea of what the city will look like by the middle of the century.

“The fact that we haven’t been able to legalize compact and connected development as called for in Imagine Austin means we are getting further and further away from the goals of Imagine Austin,” he said. “Hopefully, staff is really trying to take the work that’s already been done in Imagine Austin and then trying to really figure out how to achieve the goals that have yet to be fulfilled. Because if this is just another plan for planning’s sake, what will be the value for Austin at the end?”

Anderson added that the final document will need to include clear steps for implementation to avoid interpretations of its contents that create conflict with different ideological groups within the city.

“Hopefully, we can make it actionable, that the work being done can be acted upon versus a pretty document that we all are excited about but doesn’t really do anything,” he said.

In an emailed statement regarding the process, Mayor Kirk Watson signaled he has different ideas about how staff should move forward with updating Imagine Austin.

“While I appreciate our Planning Department, this isn’t the right way to start a community outreach process and is out ahead of what was envisioned.”

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