Great parks create connection, strengthen identity, support well-being, and give a community room to grow. We bring planning, landscape architecture, and community engagement together to help communities turn big ambitions into places people can experience every day.
Meet Urban Alchemy
Explore Our Parks Work
WHY IT MATTERS
Parks sit at the intersection of some of a community’s biggest questions: How are we growing? Who are we serving? What do people need now, and what will they need 10 or 20 years from now?
We help communities answer those questions together. From system-wide master planning and community engagement to the design of individual parks and public spaces, Urban Alchemy brings the technical expertise, creative thinking, and follow-through to move from possibility to implementation.
Build meaningful community input into the work from the beginning.
Connect individual parks to broader goals for growth, mobility, recreation, resilience, and quality of life.
Create plans grounded in funding, phasing, implementation, and the realities municipalities face.
A Growing City. A Collective Vision.
Melissa, Texas was growing fast. Its parks system needed to grow with it.
Urban Alchemy led the City’s first major community-wide engagement initiative to create a Parks, Recreation & Open Space Master Plan shaped not only by projected growth and technical analysis, but by the people who call Melissa home.
The result is a community-supported, Texas Parks & Wildlife Department-compliant roadmap for future parks, trails, recreation facilities, open space, land acquisition, and investment.
COMMUNITY PARK CONCEPT
NEIGHBORHOOD PARK CONCEPT
PARK-LEVEL WORK
A master plan creates the roadmap. Individual parks are where communities get to experience it.
A signature park carried forward from the Melissa master plan into design. Urban Alchemy is shaping the site into a destination that holds everyday neighborhood use and community-wide gathering at the same time, with the plan’s priorities for trails, shade, and water carried through to the ground.
Designed For
Families, sports, gathering, and nature
UAC’s Role
Landscape Architecture, Planning, Engagement
Whats Taking Shape
Trail connections, shaded gathering space, and a water feature at the civic heart of the park
A visual archive of featured projects across public, private, and institutional spaces. Each project tells its own story—of partnership, possibility, and purpose made real.
Urban Alchemy Collective created a community-driven master plan to guide Melissa’s future parks, trails, recreation, and open spaces.
Urban Alchemy Collective is leading a community-driven master plan to guide inclusive revitalization, housing stability, and coordinated investment in Cattleman Square.
Urban Alchemy Collective facilitated a Policy Lab exploring innovative, community-driven solutions for the future workforce.
Urban Alchemy Collective reimagined a vacant site as a connected, nature-based park for recreation, gathering, and future growth.
Urban Alchemy Collective created a community-driven master plan to guide Melissa’s future parks, trails, recreation, and open spaces.
Urban Alchemy Collective created a community-driven master plan to guide Melissa’s future parks, trails, recreation, and open spaces.
Urban Alchemy Collective created a community-driven master plan to guide Melissa’s future parks, trails, recreation, and open spaces.
Urban Alchemy Collective created a community-driven master plan to guide Melissa’s future parks, trails, recreation, and open spaces.
Urban Alchemy Collective is leading a community-driven master plan to guide inclusive revitalization, housing stability, and coordinated investment in Cattleman Square.
Urban Alchemy Collective facilitated a Policy Lab exploring innovative, community-driven solutions for the future workforce.
Urban Alchemy Collective reimagined a vacant site as a connected, nature-based park for recreation, gathering, and future growth.
Urban Alchemy Collective created a community-driven master plan to guide Melissa’s future parks, trails, recreation, and open spaces.
What does this community need? Who haven’t we heard from yet? What will growth change? What can realistically be funded? What will make people choose to come back?
Our approach brings communities, decision-makers, planners, and designers into the process to create places grounded in both ambition and reality.
We listen, learn, and assess the full context. That means understanding the project goals, site conditions, community priorities, and the people involved so we can move forward with a clear sense of what the project needs.
We co-create concepts that push possibility and reflect community needs. Ideas are shaped through collaboration, tested against real conditions, and developed into a direction that is both creative and grounded.
We refine, test, and get hands-on. As the design takes shape, we work through the details, coordinate the pieces, and develop the plans and recommendations needed to move the project forward.
We show up and follow through, because a plan is only as good as its execution. We stay involved through implementation to help carry the vision through the decisions, coordination, and adjustments that come with bringing the work to life.
Long-range strategies that connect community priorities, growth, funding, and implementation.
Places designed around how people actually gather, move, play, and experience their community.
Community Engagement
Trail connections, shaded gathering space, and a water feature at the civic heart of the park
Systems that connect parks, neighborhoods, destinations, and people.
On Project DC, Urban Alchemy Collective has demonstrated a strong ability to lead a complex and sensitive community engagement process with professionalism, care, and clarity. Their team shows a clear understanding of the nuances involved in housing- and equity-focused work, prioritizing spaces where residents and stakeholders feel informed, respected, and meaningfully included.
“UAC’s outreach strategies resulted in one of the most robust engagement efforts in recent city projects, including over 1,200 unique points of community input, bilingual outreach across all major plan phases, and interactive workshops that led directly to several final plan priorities. They ultimately helped deliver a 10-year vision that is clear, actionable, and deeply reflective of our community’s character and values.”
“Urban Alchemy Collective distinguishes itself through its ability to balance big-picture vision with practical implementation. Their deliverables were clear, well-organized, and policy-aligned plans that have directly informed City decision-making, capital planning, and future investment. They translated community input into clear priorities and actionable recommendations our leadership could confidently implement.”