21st Century (2000–present)

El Paso Plan El Paso

2012 · United States · North America · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by City of El Paso
Future Land Use Map from Plan El Paso (2012), assigning SmartCode open-space sectors (O-1 to O-7) and growth sectors (G-1 Downtown to G-9 Fort Bliss Military) across the city and its ETJ.
Future Land Use Map from Plan El Paso (2012), assigning SmartCode open-space sectors (O-1 to O-7) and growth sectors (G-1 Downtown to G-9 Fort Bliss Military) across the city and its ETJ. · © City of El Paso — used with credit · City of El Paso / Dover, Kohl & Partners, Plan El Paso (2012), Volume I, Future Land Use Map - Base Sectors (p. 1.32)

Core idea

Form-based smart code, BRT

Why it matters

Border city design-led turnaround

Description

Plan El Paso, adopted in 2012, is the comprehensive plan for the City of El Paso, Texas, prepared by the city with consultants led by Dover, Kohl & Partners. Sitting on the United States side of the US-Mexico border opposite Ciudad Juarez, the plan paired a citywide vision with a form-based SmartCode, walkable infill priorities, and rapid-transit corridors that became the Brio bus rapid transit network. It reoriented a sprawling, automobile-dominated border city towards compact, transit-served development and downtown revitalisation.

Significance

The plan is regarded as one of the strongest American comprehensive plans of its generation, winning national awards from the American Planning Association and serving as a model of New Urbanist and smart-growth principles applied at full municipal scale. It demonstrated that a mid-sized, majority-Latino border city could pursue design-led regeneration rather than continued edge growth. Its pairing of a form-based code with BRT corridors has been widely referenced in debates on retrofitting Sun Belt cities.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.