Texas A&M University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

ENDEAVR (Envisioning the Neo-traditional Development by Embracing the Autonomous Vehicles Realm)— is an ambitious project to re-envision ”smart” city solutions in small towns with students from a wide range of university degree programs in urban planning, landscape architecture, visualization, computer science, and civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. ENDEAVR launched in 2018 with a $300,000 grant from the Keck Foundation, which supports projects that promote inventive educational approaches.

“Smart” city solutions can help communities make big improvements in important areas like better traffic flow, improved public safety, better optimized utility systems, and many other public benefits from an extensive, high-bandwidth digital network and autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles can significantly improve the lives of socially vulnerable populations. For example, roughly 25.5 million Americans have travel-limiting disabilities, 29.8 million people are age 75 and up for whom driving might be a considerable safety risk, and 20.6 million Americans live in households without cars.

The university partnered with the City of Nolanville, a small Central Texas town 10 miles east of Fort Hood, the country’s largest army base. The partnership began in 2014 to develop the city’s first comprehensive master plan. Since then, the City has made great strides to implementing policies and actions to improve quality of life and sustainable solutions. Because of the strong relationship, the City joined the ENDEAVR project to address needed gaps. For example, the City continued to see inequitable support for its diverse population (25% Hispanic, 16% African American), its large number of residents in poverty (20%), and the large number of veterans, persons with disabilities, and senior citizens.

This year, the City worked with the university to update its comprehensive plan to embed smart city solutions into its priorities and capital improvement projects to foster the diversity in the community and continue to make Nolanville “A Great Place to Live”.
Texas A&M University received the 2021 W.K. Kellogg Award for Exemplary Community Engagement from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities for its work in Nolanville, entitle: Nolanville, Texas: Democracy in Action.

Comanche County is a rural county (pop. 13,529) located between Fort Worth and Abilene, just south of Interstate 20 in North Central Texas. Roughly 28% of the county is of Hispanic or Latinx descent. The county contains three incorporated municipalities. There are several unincorporated communities in Comanche County with populations ranging from 100-200 residents.
Agriculture has long been the county’s main economic driver with major producers of dairy, melon, and cattle ranching. The County’s central location provides easy access to major state and interstate highways, allowing for the export of goods. The county is vulnerable to flooding and has faced a number of storms that has led to extensive damage, among other issues.
County leadership identified the need to establish a county-wide vision that would guide them in identifying and prioritizing goals to work toward as the county continues to grow. Texas Target Communities partnered with Comanche County to develop a county-wide plan to guide growth over the next twenty years.
Students from the Applied Transportation Studio course contributed to the plan by surveying the county’s transportation network and providing recommendations for improvements and expansions in roads, sidewalks, and other transportation related issues.
By engaging local stakeholders and capitalizing on the county’s strong relationships, through a series of surveys and online tools, the process produced a vision to embrace the unique agricultural heritage, strengthen connections throughout the county and region, and prepare for the future by promoting vitality, health, well-being, and safety. The resulting plan includes themes and ideas to enhance the health and well-being of residents of all ages, improve the county’s infrastructure and resilience from hazards, and support economic development.
The Comprehensive Plan themes, which outline the six over-all goals, are Managed Growth, Thriving Economy, Reliable Infrastructure, Resilient and Proactive, Multigenerational Wellness, and Intentional Relationships.

Hurricane Harvey demonstrated how natural disasters and changing environmental conditions can substantially increase pollutant releases from industrial facilities. The location of many of these facilities in already vulnerable communities may further exacerbate the public health impacts of these releases. Texas A&M University is partnering with the community of Galena park, TX, an underserved community in east Houston that suffers from frequent flooding and environmental justice issues, as well as being the location of the largest reported chemical spill after Harvey. Our long-term goal is to improve the resilience of this community to hurricane/flood-induced releases of metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The project has formed a community task force and is engaging the broader public to: (1) comprehensively characterize the potential for hurricanes/floods to cause releases of metals and VOCs from use, production, and storage facilities located in Galena Park, thereby resulting in exposures to young children and the elderly; (2) identify/characterize important non-chemical stressors in this neighborhood, including social vulnerability and baseline health data, and their potential to exacerbate health impacts from metal and VOC exposures; (3) identify and evaluate promising structural and non-structural infrastructure solutions to reduce risks from metals and VOCs released by industrial facilities. All of these objectives incorporate active Community Engagement to ensure that the work is accurate and responsive to the community’s needs.

The Institute for Sustainable Communities (IfSC) produces transformative research that offers solutions for more sustainable and vibrant communities, translate the research to action through engagement, and create high impact learning experiences for students. IfSC works with communities in the Houston area to engage them in understanding and finding solutions for their urban problems. IfSC works closely with the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service (t.e.j.a.s.) to investigate the issues related to pollution and environmental justice along Houston's Ship Channel. Researchers (faculty and students) work closely with t.e.j.a.s to take water, soil, air, and particle samples to understand the heavy metals and petroleum chemicals in "fenceline" communities. T.e.j.a.s. guides the research and IfSC translates findings for community members so they can make the most informed decisions about their own health. These communities were also flooded during Hurricane Harvey and our relationship has led to quick research response to understand the level of exposure from the flood waters. This relationship has led Texas A&M to apply and win a $10 million Superfund Research Center to further investigate the public health consequences of communities with chronic exposure from petroleum refineries.
The Texas Target Communities Program (TxTC) is a high impact service-learning and community engagement program. Since 1993, TxTC has assisted more than 60 underserved communities across Texas, invested 12,000 hours of student and faculty expertise per community, and connected communities to resources for assessing and leveraging community assets. TxTC is interdisciplinary to provide the tailored support communities need to solve complex problems. TxTC’s mission is to provide training, tools, and assistance necessary to facilitate the transformation of communities from high risk/low opportunity to equitable, resilient, and adaptive by mitigating threats to the economy, environment, and culture.

additional url: http://ifsc.tamu.edu/