The South Team considered an area rich in historic and recreational resources flanking the San Antonio River in the vicinity of Mission San Jose. The team sought ways to knit the existing and potential resources together more effectively to create a "destination-oriented" whole. A pedestrian bridge over the San Antonio River would connect Mission County Park with a historic acequia and the ruins of the Hot Wells Hotel on the east bank. (The owner and potential redeveloper of the Hot Wells property was a team member.) A hotel, conference center and culinary institute were proposed for the property now occupied by the city's last surviving drive-in theater. 

The main river channel, straightened and widened by the Army Corps of Engineers, would be softened with landscaping, and a remnant of the original channel would be reclaimed as a lake and marsh to retain and filter runoff.

The East Team focused on a portion of Salado Creek as it winds through a largely residential area of the far East Side. The team sought to retain the natural beauty and flood-control properties of the creek while also increasing public access to it. New streets were proposed parallel to the creek to link now-fragmented residential enclaves, to create new opportunities for housing development, to provide additional passive surveillance of the creek right-of-way and to link residential neighborhoods with potential sites for commercial development. 

Noting that the creek is stressed mainly by storm water runoff, the team proposed bioremediation techniques such as storm water wetlands and retention areas. The team urged the removal of houses that were built within the flood plain.

The West Team sought to combine neighborhood redevelopment with improvements to Apache Creek/Elmendorf Lake between South Zarzamora and Rosedale Park. The team proposed removal of houses and some commercial structures at the edge of the creek to allow widening, more gradual sloping enhanced landscaping of the banks in some areas, thus improving the retention and natural filtration of runoff and allowing a more parklike environment. New parkways would be built parallel to the creek to increase public access and passive surveillance, to use the creek as an opportunity to link rather than divide the neighborhood, and to create sites for about 1600 new housing units in courtyard configurations. 

The team proposes a zocalo, a mixed-use neighborhood center built around a new public square, on Commerce Street facing Elmendorf Lake, to provide new opportunities for small-scale businesses in an attractive environment and with access to both city-wide and neighborhood markets.

The North Team studied an undeveloped 1,700-acre site in a hilly area over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, immediately north of Loop 1604. Areas such as this are typically seen as suitable only for large-lot residential development. The team sought an economically viable alternative model that would allow more intensive development in concentrated areas, requiring less automobile use, and still remaining under the 15-percent impervious cover limit for recharge zone development. Thus, the team proposed a group of "hill villages," with a mix of housing types and limited commercial and institutional sites wrapping around the middle ranges of the hills and connected by roads. 

The hilltops would be retained as open space, as would the valleys. This approach to development, in contrast to the large-lot norm, would allow the aggregation of larger areas of relatively unimpeded natural habitat and provides greater opportunities for filtration of runoff before it reaches recharge features.