San Antonians March in Support of Climate Plan for City's Future

Students lead the march from UTSA's downtown campus to the City Chambers in Main Plaza during the March for Science held April 6. 

San Antonio has already realized itself as a city that's ready to adopt climate change legislation.

It has done this by investing in carbon-free buildings and vehicles. Helping create a circular economy by diverting organic matter from landfills and installing solar panels. Promoting ecosystems and biodiversity. Mitigating the city's urban heat island to improve carbon sequestration. Adding more bike lanes. Improving strategies to educate people about why climate matters.

The list of initiatives goes on.

The City's effort to mitigate climate change is already underway. Between 2014 and 2016, the City reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 10%, received recognition as sixth in the nation for installed solar capacity (161 megawatts), and began implementing adaptation actions outlined in the SA Tomorrow Sustainability Plan.

In January, it released SA Climate Ready, a draft of the Climate Action Adaptation Plan released in January. Steering committees and work groups will gather public input on the document through April 25 with a final plan set to be released this fall.

The City received support and partnership from more than 90 stakeholders to compile the report, including CPS Energy, the City of San Antonio Office of Sustainability, the Sierra Club, and Climate Action SA.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg has been a vocal advocate of strategies to address climate change. He joined a coalition of mayors across the U.S. to uphold the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement weeks after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from it and created a Climate Action Plan that City Council passed on June 22, 2017.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg speaks at the March for Science rally held in San Antonio April 6.

The plan is designed to provide a roadmap for the necessary greenhouse gas emissions reductions San Antonio will need to meet its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, as well as establish a process for identifying and evaluating the impacts of climate change solutions for the city's most vulnerable population.

With its adoption of SA Tomorrow Plans in August 2016, San Antonio should be set to meet present and future challenges and energy scenarios.

Yet it currently lacks a meaningful plan that will help implement these changes throughout the city's neighborhoods and populations.

What's more, making San Antonio a greener city will require the participation of all San Antonians, not just some. We need to redesign the buildings in which we live and work, adding rooftop gardens and smart energy. We need to change how we eat, what we classify as trash, and start taking recycling seriously.

While the City can enact policies and provide incentives, but it will be up to individuals to urge their lawmakers to help create and implement the plan we need to address the issues we face down the road.

San Antonio is projected to change quite a bit in the next 30 years. The population is estimated to grow by 1.1 million people in the next 20 years. It is supposed to get hotter and drier with less rainfall.

Area environmental advocacy groups are heeding the call to do more to take climate action and adaptation.

On April 6, March for Science - San Antonio, climate leaders marched from UTSA's downtown campus to the City Chambers in Main Plaza.

Mayor Nirenberg poses for a photo with high school students from the Ignition Green program.

The forecast called for thunderstorms with hail possible, but there was no rain that morning, and the sun even peeked out from behind the clouds a few times in the afternoon.

This year, march organizers dedicated their efforts to supporting CAAP. Guests at the rally heard from march leader and CAAP Steering Committee Member Peter Bella, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University Gunter Schade, and District 7 City Councilwoman Ana Sandoval.

"We're not marching because we're a tribe that's going to cut through all the noise and change the world ourselves--we're marching to make our numbers grow, and they're growing in cities across the country," Nirenberg told the crowd. "They're growing in cities across the world. They're growing because people are starting to change in their hearts. They're starting to change the economies we live in. They're starting to change the businesses that depend on the consumer dollars that we provide. And guess what? Everybody's benefiting."

District 7 City Councilwoman Ana Sandoval encourages people to talk to their representatives.

Attendees listen to speakers during the rally in Main Plaza.

Sandoval implored attendees to visit with neighbors who are skeptical about climate change and remind their council representatives of the urgency of the issue.

"Arm in arm, we evaluated this issue and talked about (the) ways we could take action in San Antonio-- not just to reduce greenhouse gases or soot, but to prepare us for what's coming," she said. "We know there will be hotter days. We already see them. We know there will be more intense flooding that's going to affect our community--the residents of my district and the districts of all our other councilpeople," she said.  "How can I, in good conscience as a leader not be concerned just about today in the city, but the future of the city?"

Adventures in Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi, Texas, is known as "The Sparkling City by the Sea," and while staying with my parents at their home on North Padre Island this summer, I had the chance to visit some of the local sites and attractions, including those in downtown Corpus Christi Bay, Flour Bluff, and Mustang Island.

Not surprisingly, the Island is home to some beautiful beaches. Warm, southern winds carry salubrious breezes from the Gulf of Mexico to the shore, where strong waves churn the surf day in and out.

My parents' house is within a 15-minute walk of the beach. Every afternoon, I followed the scenic, winding access road until I saw the thin strip of green-blue sloshing ahead past the dunes.

I realized quickly that no two days are the same on the beach. Every day, a new flock of tourists had driven down in their cars, trucks, RVs, and oddball transport (I saw an old, retired ambulance one day) to enjoy the coast. Different-colored flags were hitched to Bob Hall Pier each morning to alert beach goers to hazards, including strong currents and rip tides, jellyfish, man-o-war, and high levels of bacteria in the water.

A variety of fish and wildlife live at the shore, including seagulls, willets, pelicans, great blue herons, snowy egrets, and royal terns. Dunes rise up from the edge of the wrack line, scoured by wind and rain. Morning glories and railroad vines snake down their sides, and sand crabs pop into sight. Located in a humid subtropical region that closely borders a tropical savanna climate, the barrier island is home to some of the softest, most humid air I've felt.

Thankfully, the breeze kept me cool in the 95-degree heat as I frolicked in the waves, admiring the silhouette of a blue heron rising high up on one of the sandy hills or a group of people riding on horseback, or a pod of pelicans flying in a "V" overhead.

                                       

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A sea turtle rides one of the jetties. Gulls pluck mussels from the sargassum. A little girl pulls her dad in the water. A little boy drops his popsicle in the waves.

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One morning, my parents drove us to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where we went on a boat tour and had the chance to view some of the area's birds as well as whooping cranes. The refuge is one of the last for the giant whooping crane.

Later in my trip, I traveled downtown to walk around and take some pictures of Corpus Christi Bay. It was about a 30-minute drive to the area, but the time was worth it, because the city offers a view of some really interesting streets. Downtown is quiet and serene with shops and businesses located throughout a growing cultural district.

The city's tagline really became evident when I saw some of the pristine white buildings, walls, and gates that had been bleached by the salt and sun.

Starry-Eyed Bike Ride

After living in San Antonio since February of 2013, I've had the opportunity to explore many of the city's streets, neighborhoods and historical districts on my bicycle.

I titled this blog post "Starry-Eyed Bike Ride" because I always set out on my bike with the hope that my latest ride will be as thrilling as my last. It usually is, but I also worry quite a bit about my safety as I'm sharing the road with motorists.

With the San Antonio City Council's adoption of the SA Corridors plan on Feb. 8, the time seems apt to take life by the handlebars and say what I hope this plan will do to ensure we live in a bicycle-friendly city.

Don't get me wrong: San Antonio has plenty of streets that are fun to explore on two wheels, and they're all the better for intrepid cyclists. There isn't enough adequate signage, greenway or avenues reserved for cyclists and pedestrians, however, to make it a truly safe place.

This is based, first and foremost, on personal experience. Since first moving to the Alamo City with the sky-blue hybrid bike that my parents gave me for my birthday, multiple experiences have shaped my views of cycling in San Antonio.

I bike every weekend. Weekdays sometimes, too. By now, I've forged a route from our apartment in Alamo Heights through the Olmos Basin to Trinity University and back.

One Thursday night over the summer, I joined a legion of riders who leave from Bike World on Broadway Street and cycle through the Olmos Dam to St. Mary's Street, the King William neighborhood and down Alamo Street.

A few weeks later, I biked down Broadway through Brackenridge Park and along the portion of Avenue B that was open at the time, taking St. Mary's south before turning back.

Riding near the Alamo Heights athletic fields.

It was an ambitious trip for someone who wasn't familiar with downtown San Antonio. Many of the lanes are one-way, and I quickly learned that while cyclists have the right-of-way on downtown St. Mary's, a ride in early to mid-morning was a jarring experience.

For one, vehicles park on either side of the street, making it dangerous for passing cyclists. Also, drivers are impatient. I remember several cars honking their horns as I cycled down the lane, while others passed me and zoomed ahead.

The right lane is reserved for buses, making it difficult for cyclists to enter the lane to make a right turn.

I did not feel safe. In fact, I recall a chain-jangling journey, thudding over bricks.

Then there was the street grate incident.

I'd just turned right off Broadway onto Third Street and was rolling along when, all of a sudden, my front bike tire slipped into a street grate with wide gaps, sending me flying over the handlebars onto the pavement.

All the traffic behind me stopped, but I was so shaken, it took a moment to remember what happened. It didn't register that the friendly man who helped me out of the street had been riding his bike behind me when it happened.

I've also seen other cyclists get into mishaps and wrecks, such as the time I was sitting outside Sip on Houston Street when a van edged into the intersection at a red light, throwing a passing cyclist who was obeying traffic rules off his bike onto the pavement.

Though the man was unharmed, the sight of him falling into the street on his bike was enough to dissuade me from riding through that area.

Maybe that's why I'm so excited about SA Corridors.

In addition to its support of a progressive plan for San Antonio that will attract federal funding for rapid transit lines, including bus rapid transit or light rail, it will also mean collaboration between the City of San Antonio's Planning Department and VIA Metropolitan Transit to create a "road map" to improve walking and biking over the next 20 years.

Local groups are encouraged by this news to come up with their own ideas to improve cycling and bike-friendly housing throughout San Antonio's neighborhoods.

One of those groups is San Antonio Neighborhoods for Everyone, which is currently drafting its own proposal to shape the City's future land use decisions and to make neighborhoods welcoming to people of different incomes, including underserved populations.

SANE held a meeting of Urbanists--cyclists who are interested in improving street safety--at Sancho's Cocina y Cantina in January, where guests broke into two groups to discuss unsafe streets and affordable housing.

The first group urged for improved bike safety on main thoroughfares, greenways, crosswalks and sidewalks, while the second advocated increasing engagement from renters by holding infill development workshops and programs to help people transition from residents to homeowners.
Upcoming Urbanist meetings are to be determined.

On the 1950s and Not Fading Away

This might sound crazy, but I feel like I somehow traveled back in time to the 1950s and returned home safely to 2017 at some point during this year, reaching the conclusion that I like things way better the way they are today.

As a Millennial, I'm not averse to admitting how much cultural appropriation that sentence contains. These days, everything is feeling like a mashup of something else. Originality seems more desirable than ever. 

I sometimes wonder if people won't look back on our generation and perceive us as the ones who had history at our fingertips and could revisit any period if only we weren't so distracted by our computers and phones. We're like the people who visited the moon but couldn't step off the spaceship.

As a child of the 1980s (I was born in 1984), I know as much about the '50s as the following decade, and my parents aren't talking (What was it the flower children always said? "If you remember anything, you weren't there?")

When I say I feel like I traveled back, I don't mean I woke up one morning in a poodle skirt, listened to the Ronettes and hung out with my friends at the drive-in eating hamburgers and drinking milk shakes while honking for curb service, although that does sound pretty fun.

Nor am I referring to President Trump or the rumors that to "Make America Great Again," he meant opening the vault of one of the most misogynistic, racist and materialistic periods in American history and making it now.

What I mean is that in my mind, the 1950s offer an eternal perspective – the midcentury blitz that will always be preserved in people's minds as a time when life moved in stereo, when we didn't just have good but great fun with our friends in fabulous cars on sunset boulevards.

In this sense, the 1950s were retro before they even happened, as much a style or essence as a period in time.

I enjoy hearing stories from people who survived the decade. Lately, my husband has been practicing the Buddy Holly song "Not Fade Away" on electric guitar, and today, I looked up some of the lyrics to the famous song:

"My love a-bigger than a Cadillac

I try to show you and you drive a-me back.

Your love for me a-got to be real

For you to know just how I feel

A love for real not fade away."

I noticed that this is one of the most hopeful and cynical songs I've heard. Not only is Buddy Holly comparing his love to a Cadillac, there's an undertone that the love might not survive, while the Cadillac will. The song is hopeful in that it's about love, but it's also very materialistic.

That's how I imagine the 1950s actually were. They set a standard based on materialism and then challenged people to transcend it by love alone. 

Could that be done?

Yes, but for how long? The '50s lasted only a decade. Not very long in the grand scheme of things, and since I tend to think we measure history not by decades, but by centuries and millennia, the years probably felt much smaller when they were happening.

Why is this?

I think it's because they're tangible through an ever-growing nostalgia – the kind that helps keep drive-in diners like the Bun 'N' Barrel on Austin Highway popular in 2017. It's also a way of commemorating the past while keeping it accessible and current.

The Bun 'N' Barrel has been offering burgers and barbecue to San Antonio patrons since 1950s from its location at 1150 Austin Highway.

Does it really matter what time we're traveling back to – or if we ever actually go on the trip – if we know we can go there anytime?

I think technology has taken this idea a step further. I think we might be witnessing a key moment when we can actually glimpse another time period and decide if we want to venture there. 

Skipping ahead to the '60s – a time when people seemed to try to forget everything they learned 10 years earlier.

From what I've heard (not much,) the '60s counterculture might actually have been as spectacular as people who were there say it was. The free love, walking around barefoot and not caring about showing up to work wearing the previous night were real.

In the '50s, when people said you looked tired, it was a euphemism for "You look like shit." In the '60s, no one cared. You could show up to work with tangled hair and dilated pupils. It didn't matter. You were a living, breathing, organism. You had roots and a history, and every day you were growing, expanding, into an even more organic being.

It's no wonder that when we watch TV shows like "Mad Men" that pay homage to the '50s, they're doused in alcohol. Alcohol is an antiseptic, and the '50s were defined by cleanliness, bright, gleaming surfaces and interior lighting.

People couldn't help getting in touch with their grittier side a decade letter. They wanted to discover what they'd suppressed or forgotten about by aspiring to such rigid ideals.

When I looked up the word "decade," I learned that its Latin root, beyond the Greek meaning "the root of ten," is literally "a falling away," a decay.

I wonder if when Buddy Holly wrote "Not Fade Away," he was heeding the inevitable decline of certain ideals to follow. Is the song an antidote not only to the decadence of the era, but decay itself – the tumult of the '60s and the events of the previous decade that led to them?

In America, we go through many iterations of history. Our values change constantly. We've often seen things in black and white and transcended the racism and vitriol that marks our history, only to revisit it all over again.

Why does this happen? Why revisit a period that we'd supposedly put behind us?

I didn't travel back to the 1950s, but I have my answer. We all want the best of both worlds. We don't want to fade away.

So why am I afraid that now it's going to come at a higher cost?

Featured photo: Oil painting, "Burger in the Clouds," 20 x 32" on canvas. (Photo and painting copyright Undercover San Antonio.)

The Dog at the San Antonio Missions

During a recent Sunday trip to the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, I stopped at Mission Concepción. I'd come to take some pictures of the light at sunset – practice for a series of paintings I was completing – and since it was still too early in the evening, I killed time by ambling along the walkways and reading the information tablets.

Dragonflies buzzed in the ambience, their long bodies zigzagging across the deep sky overhead. A man walked on the sidewalk, listening to music through headphones. A young couple made out on a blanket spread in the grass. Nothing too out of the ordinary seemed to be happening.

Suddenly, I saw a dog approaching from Mission Road. The dog ran across the street, peering around nervously, and he sat down in the grass next to where I stood. The dog was slender, with fine black fur and burning red-orange eyes. Since he wasn't wearing a collar or name tag, I couldn't determine if he was a stray.

I debated whether to call Animal Care Services to report him before realizing it was 6:30 and that the organization closed at 5 p.m. on Sundays. I looked around, wondering if someone would be coming for the dog.

As we stood together, the driver of an SUV pulled into the parking lot. Four people climbed out, along with two dogs of their own on leashes. They started up the sidewalk, taking in the scenery excitedly, as if it were their first time there.

When the visitors saw me with the dog, they started toward me, the dogs in the lead with their tails wagging. One of the dogs came up to the one sitting next to me and sat beside him like they were instant companions.

"Aww, he wants to be friends," one of the women said. I offered a wan smile. 

"He isn't mine," I said. "He came over here from that neighborhood."

She looked surprised.

"Oh."

"Have you ever seen him?" I asked.

"No, I haven't."

"I think he might belong to someone. If so, they're letting him run loose. That doesn't seem right. He could get hit by a car."

"Sorry," the woman said, shrugging as she walked away to rejoin her friends.

I stayed at Mission Concepción for another hour until the light began streaming across the field, throwing blue and violet shadows against the limestone – the colors I'd made the drive to the South side to see. I lifted my camera and began taking photos, and at one point, the dog sat in the grass as if he'd posed for a similar picture countless times before.

Though I've never owned a dog and don't know much about their behavior, I know there's a reason they're referred to as man's best friend. As I walked around the perimeter of the Mission snapping photographs, the dog followed me, stopping where I stopped and staying close behind.

When I finished, the sun was going down and everyone else had left but me and the dog. I looked into its eyes, glowing amber-red. I wished I could adopt him and take him home with me. Still, we had a cat at home, and no experience taking care of dogs.

Sometimes I wish things were different – that there weren't stray cats and dogs without owners wandering the streets of San Antonio having to be taken to clinics to be euthanized. Then, I try to think back to a time when human beings and their pets were undomesticated and roamed the earth like beetles, armadillos and coyotes. Animal control and neutering wasn't an issue then. Life and death overflowed. The idea that death was a part of life was less an idea than a reality, as it is in nature.

Since moving to San Antonio, we've taken in a cat whose previous owner died. Though the owner lived at the apartment complex for 20 years and fed her, the cat, 'Annie,' roamed outdoors during the day. I spoke to the woman a few times, and she claimed the cat had another owner before her. I remember the April morning four years ago when I first saw Annie's face appear outside our window.

This made me realize that even with a safe home, the cat often went outside during the day and at night. Rather than being a strictly indoor cat that ate canned or dried food and sunned itself on window ledges, Annie, given the option, wanted to be an indoor and an outdoor cat.

After taking care of Annie for the last six months, I know that some animals won't ever be domesticated. I read in a book that a feline's environment in the first six months will determine its behavior for the rest of its life, and with multiple owners, it's more accurate to say she lives at the apartment complex rather than in any one apartment.

Still, I know it's morally wrong to let Annie be an indoor and an outdoor cat. She's a threat to the local avian population. Since cats are predators, they kill for sport as much as for survival, and I feel irresponsible for the birds, beetles and moths that have died on my doorstep.

On the other hand, it seems equally wrong to force a wild animal to live indoors. The room would be torn to shreds, and since I consider it insane to remove a cat's claws, much less, neuter it, we've struck a kind of harmony in letting her go outside during the day and hoping the steady supply of cat food will dissuade her from killing birds.

Though this may sound irresponsible, it's the truth. There is no way we could domesticate Annie, and I'm honestly happier knowing she's content.

Still, standing there with the dog that night, I seemed to face the consequences of my decision in not knowing where the dog came from. I felt bad leaving it there alone, and even considered asking someone who lived at one of the neighboring houses if they'd seen the dog before or knew who took care of it. Glancing around, however, I realized it was almost dark and that I had to be getting home.

As I walked back to my car, I was surprised to see the man in the headphones whom I'd noticed walking around the grounds earlier. Though it was twilight, I could make out the features of his face. He was tall and wore a t-shirt with a space ship traveling to Jupiter printed on the front.

I watched in disbelief as the dog whom I'd befriended in the last hour ran over to him, lowering itself on its haunches into the grass right next to him.

"Is that your dog?" I asked.

The man removed one of his earbuds and peered toward me.

"Yes," he said.

"You let him run around?" I asked. "Aren't you afraid someone will take him?"

The man shrugged.

"No one will take him," he said. "He's mine."

"He's supposed to be on a leash," I scolded. "You're not supposed to let dogs run loose. I thought he was a stray. He could get impounded, or worse."

The man shrugged again, looking a little ashamed.

"I live nearby," he said.

"Don't you have a yard?" I pressed.

"I don't have a yard," he said. "He likes to run around. He hasn't got anywhere else."

I watched as the man started across Mission Street again, the dog following in his footsteps. The man seemed to sense that I was watching him, and he turned on his heels, glancing back in my direction.

We stared at each other across a seemingly endless divide that hadn't existed a few moments before.

"It will be OK," he said.

Creative Native: From Conventions to Comics

Outside the new entrance of the Henry B. González Convention Center, looking west on Market Street.

As a San Antonio native who moved back about four years ago after growing up in Indiana, I recently started a new position working in tourism for a local nonprofit organization, Visit San Antonio.

As a representative, part of my position involves wearing a red jacket and working at the new-designed Henry B. González Convention Center as a customer service representative, providing guests with information about nearby hotels, restaurants and attractions.

Outside the Henry B. González Convention Center.

Visit San Antonio is a new organization. 

Before last October, it was part of the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau, and all employees worked for the City of San Antonio.

Last fall, however, the City granted Visit San Antonio nonprofit status, and it's now a separate entity that benefits from the City's 9% Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT).

A 1.75% tax collected by Bexar County, a 6% state tax, as well as visitor, industry, history and preservation programs also support the City's tourism industry.

2% of the City's HOT allotment goes toward the Convention Center, which underwent a $325-expansion that was completed in January of 2016.

The Convention Center now sports a new entrance on Market Street, 514,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space, the 54,000-square-foot "Stars at Night Ballroom," a 5,000-square-foot outdoor reception space for more than 700 guests, a new park stretching between the Center's west facade and Alamo Street and a direct connection to the River Walk and Hemisfair Park expansion.

It's a big deal for San Antonio because the Convention Center attracts new conventioneers, clients and tourists to downtown and the River Walk. Of the 7% of the Hotel Tax that stays in City revenues, 35% of that money is given to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

It's an equally big deal for residents, however.

One of the things I've learned about San Antonio since returning here is the city has many sides.

The San Antonio that hosts conventions and trade shows to downtown is not the same San Antonio that attracts people to events focusing on art and history, such as the upcoming San Antonio Zine Fest from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct 7, at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.

The exhibit will showcase work by national and homegrown creators, vendors and panelists and will feature workshops for adults and kids.

The first official San Antonio Zine Fest poster, designed by Regina Román.

As a painter and writer who tries to attend as many of San Antonio's homegrown shows as I can, I really hope I can make the show, but in the meantime, I've realized that working in San Antonio's hospitality industry has created a strange overlap in my professional/personal life.

I know that people who go to the Convention Center aren't necessarily going to be interested in attending a zine fest on the West side, or braving the mid-September and early October heat to see many of the nearby murals done by local artists.

San Antonio is located in a subtropical climate zone, with temperatures soaring into the nineties throughout the fall months. This makes it a fantastic challenge to convince people to venture outdoors during what are considered prime months for outdoor recreation and relaxation in cooler cities.

As a "creative native" – a term I use to describe creative people who either grew up in San Antonio or have a strong tie to the place – wanting to excel in a creative field here and touting the city's visitor appeal aren't mutually exclusive goals.

The new 54,000-square-foot "Stars at Night Ballroom" at the Henry B. González Convention Center.

Romantics have described San Antonio as a city comparable to Venice or Spain, with broad, scenic vistas and the preservation of a certain mystique.

Despite these strong words, there's always a certain stigma that cities supporting tourism are transient places with little to offer residents.

The River Walk – ever the economic boon – can't seem to shake its reputation as a place for cheap, carnivalesque thrills conducive to pub crawls and one-night stands, and the highways soaring over downtown San Antonio are notorious for reckless motorists and the deterioration of the city's historic neighborhoods.

San Antonio is embroiled in constant controversy about how much should change and what should remain, and it's not difficult to fathom how a poet or a painter's rendition of San Antonio won't be the same as a businessman's.

After exploring much of the city on foot, I've realized how important it is to focus on building walkable communities in many of the neighborhood nodes of activity and to help counteract the negative effects of gentrification.

Hemisfair Park is a great example of this. Once the site of the 1968 Worlds Fair, it's become a kid and pedestrian-friendly campus with splash pads, fountains, public art, trees and shade. Architects have redesigned it to showcase the old acequía to demonstrate how it contributed to the development of the San Antonio Missions and the city's architecture.

Hemisfair has evolved with the economic and social times. Once the site of a railcar crash, the rail line is now removed. So is the zipline that once carried people over the Japanese Tea Garden in Brackenridge Park.

As individuals and companies have made careers out of safety and risk management, cities have followed suit, redesigning public spaces to make them as much an exercise in safety and urban planning as an escape.

Much has changed in San Antonio in just the last 25 to 30 years, and since moving back and experiencing life here, I've often wondered why it's so hard for people to embrace change in a city that plays host to a constant stream of national and international guests.

Walking along East Commerce Street in Dignowity Hill, about 10 minutes from the Convention Center.

I've learned that as much as people want to preserve the city's historic landmarks – Alamo Plaza, for example – they also want exciting and radical change.

In late August, just days after my husband and I ventured downtown to watch a movie in Travis Park hosted by Slab Cinema, City officials removed a statue and a Confederate war memorial at its center after loud voices proclaimed it supported racism.

A move in May by the San Antonio City Council to pass the Alamo Master Plan redesigning Alamo Plaza as a public space – a plan that would involve removing vehicular traffic and repairing and relocating the Alamo Cenotaph, among other changes – has been four years in the making, if not much longer.

It ignites debate about the future of what is both a battle memorial and a major tourist attraction in the heart of the city.

Alamo Plaza: Tourist attraction, battle memorial, or both – and what does it mean for San Antonio?

As I continue my work as an attaché for Visit San Antonio, I hope to see positive change that aims to keep San Antonio a unique city separate from Texas's other major metropolises but that also lives up to all the excitement it offers to visitors.