The Vision of the City

Imagine if there were more bikes and pedestrians than cars, walking and biking in the shade to wherever they needed to go? (Photo: City of Austin website)

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Nextdoor recently, obsessively reading the endless stream of posts about the impending doom that the Land Development Code rewrite will be delivering to the City if it passes. There are foreboding tales of the wanton destruction of entire neighborhoods and ways of life, warnings about massive flooding, wholesale removal of the tree canopy, and the total displacement of existing residents to make way for canyons of apartment buildings which will block the sky and choke the streets with gridlock.

I keep reading these posts because I am trying to understand the hopes and fears of Austin residents. Many people who have lived in Central Austin for a long time have gotten used to a certain way of life: a single-family home on a large lot, an easy drive to all of the amenities that the City has to offer, free and ample parking, and a relaxed, small-town vibe that Austin is known and loved for. It’s hard to blame these people for fearing the very real changes that are happening in the City. They are absolutely correct that the future of Austin will not look or feel much like the Austin of the past. Like all cities in history that matter, change is and will be a constant feature of the built environment. And Austin is a City now, make no mistake. The population of the Austin area is now around two million, with half of those in the City limits. Austin is now the 11th largest city in the United States. It’s definitely not close to being the densest, though. A quick (and admittedly amateur) study that I performed using GIS data indicated that of those million people, only around 200,000, or 20%, of Austin residents live in the central core, which I loosely define as being bound by Anderson Lane and 183 on the north, I-35 on the east, Ben White on the south, and Mopac on the west. This is the area where any part of central Austin can be reached without using or crossing a highway, and in my opinion has the best chance of someday becoming a truly compact and connected City that can be traversed easily by walking, biking, or transit, in addition to (or instead of) private cars. This area is roughly the same size as Amsterdam, which holds over three times the amount of people, and somehow does it with little to no traffic gridlock and a humane, pedestrian-oriented way of life.

We have all witnessed the rapid push of capital and development on the east side, where the existing residents have historically had the least power and wealth. This will likely continue, because of basic laws of economics and capitalism that we live under here. This growth is exacerbated by the historic resistance to development by the residents that live west of I-35, and especially west of Lamar Boulevard. These people have much more clout, wealth, and influence, and seem to be the loudest voices against the LDC rewrite at this point, at least from my limited viewpoint perusing the Nextdoor feed and from witnessing the proliferation of anti-“Code Next” signs popping up in front yards. I don’t think they are bad people; they are protecting what they see as their self-interest and way of life, which is completely natural. What I think is lacking is a Vision of the City that all Austinites can get behind. The Imagine Austin plan issued in 2012 was an honest attempt at creating that vision, and the picture it painted certainly helped convince us to move back to Texas, after all but giving up on it many years ago. But maybe it didn’t go far enough, or maybe it was presented in a way that gets architects and urbanists like me excited, but didn’t do much for the average person living in Brentwood or Hyde Park.

It’s a real dilemma; the idea of a dense, walkable City of interconnected neighborhoods in a wonderful place like Austin sounds like a slice of heaven to me. Austin is livable outside for at least 10 months a year in the shade, which is more than we can say for New York, Chicago, Seattle, or Toronto. Imagine a neighborhood of houses, duplexes, triplexes, small apartment buildings, small shops, restaurants, offices, schools, libraries, markets, parks, and plazas, all under a canopy of beautiful shady live oaks, connected by shared-use paths and streetcars. Taco trucks and outdoor cafes on every corner. Imagine North Lamar as a beautiful tree-lined boulevard with a street wall of wide sidewalks, shops, restaurants, apartments, and a light rail line, instead of the dangerous, heat-blasted, utility-pole infested hellscape it is today. What if the people of Austin spent their daily routines meeting each other and being neighbors in active streets and parks, instead of stuck inside their cars and houses? What if Central Austin was not designed as a place to drive through as fast as possible, but as a place to be lived in? What if there were enough homes for all kinds of people, rich or poor, single or family-oriented? What if everyone in Central Austin could procure all the necessities of life within a 10-minute walk of their homes, under shade? How can this vision take root and be seen as a desirable future for all of the residents of Austin? This is a real question; we’re not sure we have the answers. We started URBS to try to figure that out.