Ideas & Innovation
Relevant insights from our subject matter experts
MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTING SERVICES, URBAN PLANNING + DESIGN
What to Know as You Grow
City leaders: Feeling growing pains in your community? Here’s timely advice for managing growth by planning for it together with your constituents.

Wendy Shabay Bonneau
Urban Planner

Rhys Wilson
How to Simplify Your Development Code Update
These tips can help make the challenging code-revision process more manageable.
Learn MoreHazardous Roadway Overtopping Mitigation (HROM): Managing a Multitude of Road Flood Hazards
After roadway flooding led to multiple deaths in 2018, the City of Fort Worth stepped up its efforts to improve public safety. The City reevaluated priorities for its Stormwater Division of the Transportation and Public Works Department and enlisted help from Freese and Nichols to reduce roadway overtopping. Read more about this ACEC Texas award-winning project.
Learn MoreBoiling Springs: New Ideas For Upgrading Old Dams
Inventive design to help a dam meet higher regulatory requirements produced a cost-effective solution.
Learn MoreInnovation: Aspire Pflugerville 2040 Plan
The Aspire 2040 Plan is a trailblazer and model for creative community engagement, a healthy community, and it is an APA Texas Comprehensive Planning Award winner. It represents an unconventional means of incorporating health and wellness, including a unique Wellness Wheel as the cornerstone, and is truly a people-centered plan.
Learn MoreFrisco Water: Big-Picture Planning to Absorb Big Growth
Well-coordinated master planning for their water, wastewater, reuse and roadway systems has helped the city flourish amid booming growth.
Learn MoreJulie Huerta
David Munn
New TCEQ Tool Ready For Lead and Copper Rule Compliance in Texas
LCRR Reports: Here are new details about the Texas service line inventory template. Learn how Freese and Nichols can help your utility meet the Oct. 16, 2024, deadline.
Learn MoreInnovation: Cleburne Zoning Ordinance and Future Land Use Plan
The City of Cleburne is a growing community, and its older zoning regulations no longer reflected what the community wanted. As the City was continually receiving requests to rezone property and applications for planning development zoning districts to implement modern development styles, staff recognized that new and infill development within the community signaled a need to update the zoning ordinances and began a two-year long process in early 2020 to update its zoning through an intensive public outreach process.
Learn MoreRebekah Gates
Current Drought Conditions in the United States
Learn the details of drought conditions in states across the Southwest and Southeast.
Learn MoreJason Steele
How the Tricolored Bat Federal Listing Could Affect Your Project
A proposal to list the wide-ranging tricolored bat as an endangered species could require more approvals for projects that involve clearing trees, working on bridges and culverts, or impacting other places the bats roost. See how our environmental scientists can help you navigate this development.
Learn MoreLake Arlington Pump Station Shared Operations Improvements
In Texas, the City of Arlington and the Trinity River Authority entered into a partnership to share, renew and operate an existing raw water pump station. The two different owners operate separate raw water pump stations, on Lake Arlington, that service 600,000 people, are less than 600 feet apart.
Learn MoreNina Reins
The Dillard Wetland Restoration: Reducing Flood Risk and Creating a Healthy Retreat for New Orleans
More than 17 years earlier, this wetland area was significantly impacted by Hurricane Katrina and is still recovering. This hydrologic resiliency project is designed to increase stormwater retention capacity and reestablish healthy wetland vegetation and to provide a retreat from urban life with a variety of community improvements.
Learn MoreAnnie Vest
What to Know About the New Oklahoma Disaster Mitigation Recovery Fund
The Oklahoma Disaster Mitigation and Recovery Matching Fund was created to help counties and municipalities impacted by natural disasters and has recently gone into effect. The fund, developed by Rep. Lonnie Sims, R-Jenks in House Bill 3819, is designed to help appropriate $5 million to aid counties and communities impacted by natural disasters or at risk for future loss in their application for recovery and mitigation project financing. The new fund is an opportunity to match federal grant programs like those from FEMA and others.
Learn MoreFeatured Authors
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Wendy Shabay Bonneau
Urban Planner
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Craig Wells
Client Services Leader
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Nina Reins
Water Resources Engineer
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David Jackson
Water and Wastewater Treatment Engineer
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Adam Conner
Hydrologist