Awhile back, I wrote a short column called “FutureBurg,” in which I tried to imagine what Harrisburg could look like some years from now.

It wasn’t an overly ambitious vision, just a hope that things might change for the better with a few new businesses, some more customers and maybe a paint job or two. Writing it, I was concerned that readers would take me as a silly naïf for even suggesting that Midtown, in particular, could become more of a destination—or at least have fewer weedy fields and more pedestrian traffic.

Little did I know that, a year and a half later, my fellow Harrisburgers would go all Marty McFly on me.

Recently, the city’s Planning Bureau unveiled 40 concepts based on resident input that it might incorporate into the city’s new comprehensive plan.

No, there aren’t any “Back to the Future”-style hover boards or self-tying sneakers, but there is a splash park in Allison Hill, an urban mews in Midtown, skate and bike parks throughout the city, and a “Northern Gateway” Uptown consisting of blocks of high-density development along what is now a long stretch of nothing.

That made my earlier vision look like—let’s just say, total garbage.

By design, the comprehensive plan is supposed to be a planning document for the next 20 years, so these projects hardly have to happen overnight. However, standing in City Hall during the unveiling, viewing the concepts, I couldn’t help but think, “How the heck is this stuff ever going to happen?”

Sure, a few concepts seem doable. Improving the Market Street underpass is a must just for safety reasons, and I can foresee a couple more two-way streets and a friendlier, more accessible Market Square.

But five new roundabouts; saving Shipoke from floods; multiple conservation areas; a summer dock on the Susquehanna River; a water taxi; maker space on Allison Hill; a vast, interconnected biking network; and local transit loops citywide?

That’s the stuff dreams are made of (with apologies to Bogart).

I’m all for dreaming—we have to dream. But the pragmatist in me screams out for a path to make these dreams a reality. Without that, these concepts will remain stuck in the sci-fi world of flying cars and robot waitresses.

Do I believe that, in 20 years time, Harrisburg will have an “iconic” eastern gateway, a play-way along Curtin Street, “progressive growth areas” citywide and a series of pedestrian-only streets? It seems unlikely.

I understand that these concepts are goals in the broadest sense, so a detailed, step-by-step plan is not really what this exercise is about. In fact, the city’s planning bureau (and its team of consultants) should be applauded for taking the musings of hundreds of Harrisburg residents and turning them into coherent concepts.

But, as a practical guy, the word “funding” kept popping into my head, as these projects combined would cost untold millions. Even individually, many of the projects are massive endeavors, far beyond the current reach of a poor, cash-strapped city.

Circa 2035, from my future room in the Homeland Center, I’m likely to view this vision of Harrisburg about the same way that we now look at McFly’s Hill Valley of 2015. Yeah, residents got some things about the future sort of right, but, for the most part, their prescience rates a “D+” at best.

So, Harrisburg, dream on. If you really want that splash park, go for it—make it happen. But please know that most change comes in small steps. It’s incremental, not revolutionary: a building rehab here, a small improvement project there, a new shop where there once was blight. In American cities, transformation is usually a grinding, block-by-block process driven not by the government, but by the accumulated efforts, over many years, of private citizens, homeowners, businesses and developers.

I will wager that, over the next 20 years, the sum of these small, disparate steps will have a far greater impact than what, soon enough, will become a largely forgotten HTML file (wait, it’s 2035—what’s HTML?).

If we want a better Harrisburg, we have to work hard for it, not fantasize about it. We each have to own the responsibility for our city and its future. As Doc Brown could tell you, our actions today will have ramifications, for ill or good, decades down the road.

If, collectively, we’re good caretakers of our city, we might end up with that splash park, but, much more importantly, we’ll have less crime, more shops, better streets, an improved quality of life—the basics of a healthy, thriving community. If not—if we’re neglectful or offload our responsibility to the government—future Harrisburg may look less like the city we want and more like the diabolical creation of that dastardly Biff.

Lawrance Binda is editor-in-chief of TheBurg.

To learn more about the city’s Comprehensive Plan and the concept alternatives, visit www.behbg.com.

Illustration by Rich Hauck