WASHINGTON, DC – The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC), based in Houston, TX, has received a 2016 Innovation Award from the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) for the Designing for Impact project.
Designing for Impact seeks to promote the use of Low Impact Development (LID) techniques in new development. While there is growing interest in LID throughout the Houston-Galveston region, there are still barriers to its broad acceptance, including lack of public awareness, misperceptions, and incompatible local development codes. Designing for Impact provides information and strategies for educating the public about LID functions, benefits, and solutions to overcome barriers to implementation. The project included three related components: publication of a LID guide for local governments; education through a workshop series; and creation of a LID webpage and interactive mapping tool highlighting LID projects already implemented in the region.
NADO is a Washington, DC-based association that promotes programs and policies that strengthen local governments, communities, and economies through regional cooperation, program delivery, and comprehensive strategies. The association’s Innovation Awards program recognizes regional development organizations and their partners for improving the economic and community competitiveness of our nation’s regions and local communities.
Award-winning projects were honored during NADO’s 2016 Annual Training Conference, held October 15-18 in San Antonio, Texas. The 2016 class of award recipients consists of 96 projects spanning 28 states. These projects are presented in an interactive “Story Map” developed by NADO and Esri and include project summaries, funding information, and partners. The Story Map is available online at: https://www.nado.org/innovation-awards/.
“Since 1986 through its Innovation Awards program, NADO has recognized the transformative work regional development organizations perform every day. Award-winning projects showcase best practices across the country in regional development that support prosperous communities, stronger local economies, and improved quality of life for residents,” said 2015-2016 NADO Board President Jeffrey Kiely, Executive Director of the Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments, located in Gallup, New Mexico.
For more information about this award-winning project, contact Jeff Taebel at Jeff.Taebel@h-gac.com or (713) 993-4560.
Since 1967 the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) has provided advocacy, education, networking, and research for the national network of 540 regional development organizations. NADO members provide professional, programmatic, and technical assistance to over 2,300 counties and 15,000 municipalities.
The Houston-Galveston Area Council (www.h-gac.com) is a voluntary association of local governments in the 13-county Gulf Coast Planning Region—an area of 12,500 square miles and more than 6 million people. H-GAC works to promote efficient and accountable use of local, state, and federal tax dollars and serves as a problem-solving and information forum for local government needs. This workshop series is being funded in part through a Clean Water Act grant from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.