Bodegas, Spaceports and Re-legalizing Innovation and Culture

The border region of Texas is an area few planners have had an opportunity to explore, especially from a professional planner’s perspective. This participative session will seek to identify and break stereotypes and assumptions about the border region and its built environment. From there, the session will dive into where the border region has been historically in terms of history, culture, design and economy, and how it is changing. Distant from urban planning educational programs, the region tends to have lower staffing levels and staff from a broader variety of educational backgrounds. This has led to a unique laboratory of code solutions, whether El Paso, Brownsville or anywhere in between. We will explore how the equity conversation changes with “first-gen barios” and their unique needs, attributes of a bi-national development community, and economic interests. The region is experiencing new investments and a diversifying economy, which is carrying its own set of opportunities as well as challenges. The conversation will then turn to regulatory approaches in such an environment, focusing on the development and implementation of lean, form-based approaches. Many prior codes essentially made history illegal, in terms of built environment, mixed uses and focus on the automobile rather than other transportation modes. We will explore how codes were used to reconcile challenges ranging from re-legalizing the bodega, accommodating multi-generational and nontraditional households, positioning underutilized core areas for redevelopment and, yes, even spaceports.