Blueprint Houston has hired a consultant to advise and
direct the public outreach effort.
He is Gianni Longo of ACP Planning. Longo will will help design and
facilitate Blueprint Houston’s public meetings that will occur over the
next few months.
Mr. Longo is a founding Principal of
ACP, a firm that was formed to improve the livability of communities through
the integration of visioning, strategic, and long-range planning, urban design,
and related services. For the past two decades, he has pioneered the
development of programs designed to involve citizens in the decision making
process. Mr. Longo has developed expertise in visioning and strategic planning
that has physical and economic development implications. He designed “Vision 2000”
in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, one of the first city visioning programs in the country. The program is now considered one of
the most successful vision programs in the nation and is credited with virtually
turning around a place once known as “America’s Dirtiest City.” The 40 goals developed during Chattanooga’s
“Vision 2000’ resulted in more than a billion dollars in
investments.
Most recently, Mr. Longo designed
the creative public involvement strategy for “Imagine New York –
Giving Voice to the People’s Visions,” an effort that brought together nearly
4,000 people throughout the New York City region to share their ideas and
vision for rebuilding lower Manhattan and memorializing the World Trade Center
tragedy. He also designed “Vision
2030: Shaping the Future of the Baltimore Region,” a regional vision plan
for the future of the five-county Baltimore area, as well as the Vision Plan
for Metropolitan Washington, D.C., and the Comprehensive Plan for the City of
Myrtle Beach, and many others.
Mr. Longo is an architect by
training and has strong physical planning and design expertise. He has been involved in numerous
comprehensive planning projects and has been published widely.