Urban Planning & Community Engagement
An urban planning and community engagement consultancy, led by Dr. Ivis García, PhD, AICP.
Async takes on planning and engagement work across the field — with particular depth in housing, hazard mitigation and recovery, and participation design — and pairs a twenty-year practice with production speed that lets a small firm deliver like a much larger one.
What we take on
Services
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01
Hazard mitigation & disaster recovery
Mitigation plans, recovery program design, and buyout and elevation studies for cities, counties, and the agencies that fund them. This is Dr. García's deepest credential — on federal and state recovery dollars the participation record is graded by FEMA, not just written up.
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02
Housing studies & needs assessments
Housing needs assessments, housing element work, and comparative policy scans across jurisdictions. Document- and data-intensive work for clients who want the person who signed the last one to sign this one too.
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03
Community engagement design & facilitation
Engagement plans, bilingual (English/Spanish) facilitation, and survey instrument design for other firms' projects that need a credible engagement lead. Co-author of APA's first PAS Report on culturally responsive engagement.
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04
Demographic & equity analysis
Socioeconomic change studies, GIS-based equity analysis, and community demographic profiles for cities, counties, and nonprofits — the analytical layer behind housing, hazard, and engagement work, and increasingly commissioned on its own.
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05
Comprehensive plan consistency audits
A focused review of how a jurisdiction's zoning, ordinances, or development pattern line up against its adopted comprehensive plan — a lower-scope engagement, often the first step toward a full plan update.
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06
Comprehensive & long-range planning
Comprehensive plan updates, small-area and neighborhood plans, and the goals-and-policy framework underneath them. Dr. García coordinates the Master of Urban Planning program at Texas A&M, and the work draws on the same body of practice she teaches from.
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07
Digital engagement, data & AI-assisted analysis
Online engagement platforms, interactive dashboards and story maps, and AI-assisted synthesis of public comment, survey open ends, and long document sets. The judgment stays human and attributable — the tooling is what lets a small firm turn around volume that normally takes a much larger team.
What the record shows
Track Record
technical reports
under her direct role
on those awards
and research
- AICP — American Institute of Certified Planners
- IAP2 — public participation training
- ABCD — Asset Based Community Development trainer
- English & Spanish, full professional proficiency
- Clients include cities, transit agencies, housing authorities, nonprofits, and state commissions
Who leads the work
Principal
Dr. Ivis García, PhD, AICP
Associate Professor, Texas A&M University
Twenty years of combined practice and research in housing, disaster recovery, and community engagement. Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning at Texas A&M University, where she coordinates the Master of Urban Planning program, and President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning for 2025–2027.
Her practice concentrates on the parts of a project that cannot be automated or outsourced: designing a participation process that will survive review, running engagement in communities that are usually undercounted, and standing behind the findings in front of a council or a funding agency.
Get in touch
Contact
Based in College Station, Texas. Currently taking on subcontract and direct engagements nationwide.
admin@async.city