I used to be the other way around, haha. I loved SA's height until i finally did some exploring of other cities. SA is really missing out. I'm not asking for a 1000ft building, though that would be nice, but I do want to see omething stand out. One thing i did notice though is that our DT is slightly more spread out for its size which contributes the most to the way it looks. Ive been to many cities in the Midwest and East Coast and with buildings much closer they look larger and grander even though there are fewer of them which are shorter too. Any infill though is great. My greatest fear is that we are going to become too much of a tourist city to attract any major business to the core at least. I used to love going to the riverwalk until it got to the point where i Moved only 20 feet a min during the summer without risking falling in. I love the Vistana because it makes itself known...It was a bold attempt downtown which paid off incredibly. If more midrises could make themselves known as the Vistana did then we'd have one heck of a DT.
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Originally Posted by oldmanshirt
Nothing wrong with the skyline that filling in a few gaps couldn't fix.
I really think the only reason SA's skyline suffers is because its in the same state as Dallas and Houston. Among Southwestern cities its not noticeably lacking in height, and actually compares well with some larger cities/metro areas like Sacramento, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland. I'm talking pure height here, not urbanity or quality of downtown living or recreating.
I used to think SA needed to get some 500'-600' towers downtown like yesterday, but after seeing the quality and beauty that can go into a "short" development like the Vistana, I'm more of a mindset that a 17-25 story building can be just as good if it interacts well with the street and the surrounding buildings. Lets focus on getting people in downtown and eat up some surface parking however we can, and leave the you-know-what measuring to other cities  |