Amarillo Comprehensive Plan

Amarillo’s City Plan | Vision 2045 is an innovation in comprehensive planning for more conservative communities—advancing meaningful planning work while acknowledging a City’s hesitancy towards land use regulation. It recasts planning as a roadmap for positive change and actively addresses concerns about the plan’s potential impact on property owner rights.

The Plan comprehensively addresses key facets of city life—businesses, homes, sidewalks, and parks—aligning closely with community values spanning quality of life, economic development, housing, neighborhoods, transportation, health and safety, and growth management.

City Plan replaces a traditional future land use map with a Complete Neighborhoods Scenario, which depicts the community’s vision through Place Types that go beyond land use by providing additional guidance for development characteristics that contribute to better-quality districts and neighborhoods. While Place Types are a more progressive approach, they are also well-suited for a new plan in communities that values flexibility, options and an incentivized approach.

Three Neighborhood Patterns – New, Existing Newer, and Older – guide how Amarillo can change from current to future conditions and address conditions in aging neighborhoods for the first time. This helped create five high-priority actions, including the update of Zoning Code, Subdivision Code, and Development Policy Manual to align with the City Plan Complete Neighborhoods Scenario. The City Plan preserves approximately 80% of the city’s existing conditions while the remaining 20% allows for context-sensitive development through mixed-use districts and more housing variety.

The Plan is based on one of Amarillo’s largest public engagement efforts, with more than 4,000 residents directly contributing to its development. The award-winning engagement process was multifaceted, delving into complex questions about development patterns, land use, and zoning; identifying incompatible uses; and cultivating community-driven goals. To ensure inclusive participation, the Community Connectors program divided Amarillo into 67 neighborhoods, each with a volunteer Connector who served as a link with residents. Lunch-and-Learn events equipped Connectors with information about City Plan, allowing them to disseminate it and gather feedback from their areas. And the City invited key land developers to a series of personalized breakfast meetings. Developers appreciated the open and responsive approach and agreed on an annual review process.

Winner of a 2024 Texas APA Comprehensive Planning Award.