Galveston FuturesSustaining a Livable and Resilient

Community

Bill Merrell & Bob HarrissTexas A&M - Galveston

Purpose of This Meeting

· To initiate a conversation and project on our common, long-term future on Galveston Island

· Community participation is essential to our vision for the design and conduct of a project on sustaining a livable, resilient Galveston Island

· We will present a few concepts, but our primary goal is to get your advice

Galveston Futures Mission

Engage our community in visioning, designing, and sustaining a livable and resilient Galveston Island through broad civic participation supported by state of the art technology.

Foundational Belief

Critical issues facing our city today require:

• Short-term actions should be based on a long-term vision for livability

• We need more civic participation in designing the future of Galveston Island

Critical Gap

• Expert Knowledge

• Public Experience

“Public sentiment is everything.

With it, nothing can fail.

Without it, nothing can succeed.- Abraham Lincoln

Diverse Participants and Neutral Materials

The Technologies

Tools for Learning

Tools for Designing

The Technologies

Tools for sharing

Critical Success Factors for a Galveston Futures Discussion

• Every Voice is at the Table

• Linked to Decision-makers

• Right Content, Structure, & Process

• Deliverables that Make a Difference

The Galveston Futures Challenge

• Ensuring diverse, informed participation

• Building credibility and trust within constituent groups

• Creating dedicated and resilient leadership teams to design and staff the process

• Relatively high cost of achieving and maintaining a long-term visioning and design institution

A Galveston Futures Design Charrette

Phase I – A Spring 2006 demonstration project

The Galveston Visioning and Design Process

Where arewe now?

Where arewe going?

Where do wewant to be?

How do we get there?

Let’s Go!!

CommunityProfile

Trend Statement

VisionStatement

ActionPlan

Implementation

Visioning Action Plan

Livability &SustainabilityAssessments

AdaptiveImplementation

Trends

CaseStudies

Scenarios

AlternativeFutures

Choosinga Future

Vision for 20XX

How are we doing?

Measures of Success

Community Participation

[Modified from EPA/625/R-98/003, p. 16]

Galveston: A Visionary Past

Galveston served as “a laboratory of sorts, a testing ground for new ideas about government, society, and technology”

Patricia Bixel and Elizabeth Turner

Galveston and the 1900 StormUT Press, 2000.

Major Questions for Discussion Today

• Does this basic approach make sense to you? • Would it be an effective method of forming an

appropriate vision and uniting the community behind it?

• How could the approach be improved?

• If successful, how could the Galveston community assume ownership of the vision and the process to continuously refine it and measure progress toward common goals?

Galveston: The Resilient City

“Galveston City is several acres of people, mainly optimists safeguarding a community of interests, endowed with grit, persistency, an abiding faith in their ultimate destiny and a notion that theirs is the best place on earth.”William Phares Chochran

Source: P. Bixel and E. Turner, Galveston and the 1900 Storm, UT Press, 2000.