By filing complaints and opposing liquor license renewals, community members are forcing cantinas to comply with neighborhood standards or move out. The experience of visualizing change and then seeing it happen is powerful, said Navarro, a Second Ward native who coordinated the area's neighborhood planning efforts. The beauty is it actually gets residents to be a part of the planning. They have a vested interest in its success. But the process of rebuilding a community by imagining its future is time-consuming, said Oxman, the Houston attorney.
Some people drop out from sheer exhaustion.
Others get discouraged by the sometimes cavernous gap between current reality and the goal, said David Chrislip, a Colorado researcher who has coordinated many community visioning collaborations. The connection between what's happening now and what might happen has to be strong. Even in Houston, the work done at scores of community coffee latches and neighborhood meetings might have stagnated in the back offices of city hall. The city council still has not yet formally accepted a final Imagine Houston report. Houston, however, is not waiting around for official sanctioning.