Dripping Springs Comprehensive Plan

Dripping Springs is a unique place. Called the Gateway to the Texas Hill Country, it is also considered the Wedding Capital of Texas. Foundational to this is the beautiful landscape with rolling hills, natural vegetation, creeks with swimming holes, and views of the countryside. In recent years, the City has become an attraction for retirees and second homes, so much so that land prices have spiked, making it impossible to find living wage and workforce housing. The DTJ team’s charge is to balance maintaining the community’s lifestyle, protecting the natural landscape, and accommodating the demands of a fast-growing community with its infrastructure and housing needs. Added to this challenge is the pressure for growth in the City’s ETJ or GMA that is more than double in size than the city proper.

The 2040 Dripping Springs Comprehensive Plan establishes the vision for the community for the next 10+ years. The Plan is a roadmap for fostering a desirable and sustainable place to live, work, and visit. It establishes policies and strategies for advancing key community priorities, including land use and development, parks and open space, transportation systems, economic growth, and sustainable infrastructure. The Plan will serve as a guide for managing future growth in a way that enhances the community character of Dripping Springs.

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CLIENT

City of Dripping Springs

LOCATION

Dripping Springs, Texas

DESIGN SERVICES

Planning
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Guiding Principles + Public Engagement

“As the Gateway to the Hill Country, Dripping Springs is a friendly and charming community with unique scenic beauty. We are committed to exhibiting the best of small town life in Texas by preserving our natural resources, neighborhoods, and dark skies.”

The 2040 Comprehensive Plan process identified a wide range of community values and guiding principles that guided the Plan process, including preservation, nature, and environment; rural, country, and small town; community, friendly, and family-oriented; charming, quaint, and local; historic and cultural; dark sky and quiet; and, growing, economic opportunity, and balance.

The values reached consensus through the community’s consistent articulation of what is important to them. For example, the initial survey’s two questions asked residents to describe in their own words what Dripping Springs meant to them and what their favorite feature of the City was. Ultimately, the common theme throughout the public engagement process was maintaining the Hill Country character and charm while supporting thoughtful and sustainable growth.

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Opportunity Areas

The opportunity areas were designated place types based on utility access, roadway access, hydrology, topography, vegetation density, and adjacent uses. In drafting the final Future Land Use Map, we subdivided the existing PDD areas into their appropriate constituent place types, rather than leaving them as a single development parcel, to better understand the overall community fabric.

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Mapping Analysis
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