Quote:
Originally Posted by Jdawgboy
Also building bigger houses or building 3 to 6 two story condos on what was a single family lot doesn't do much to increase overall population density but it does affect property values for surrounding neighbors. Having two story "condo" houses built right up just feet from my back yard did play a part in how I feel about these types of developments
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Yeah, see this is literal NIMBYism. You are literally mad that it happened behind your house. Le Coq Block happened because it "just wasn't right" for Hancock Blvd. The "Taco PUD" just "didn't make sense for the area". This is what NIMBYism is. Soft arguments about why development X is specifically wrong.
If there is a hard argument "It's a club that plays loud music in a residential area", "Don't tear down Grand Central Station", "The street has a maximum hourly capacity of 1/2 the buildings units" I'm all ears. But nebulous things like "there is a tall thing behind my back yard" sounds like an argument for some cluster bamboo being planted, not a change in code.
You are also wrong that allowing larger houses or multi-family developments where single family developments were doesn't help density. It can literally double it for a given lot. If you have a single family home turned into a duplex you now have two homes. A quadplex gives you 4. Relative family sized will play a factor in this, but it will show a massive increase in density.
Even larger houses cut down on sprawl. I had a 3 story really ugly McMansion go up next to me. It's horrid looking, but it doesn't bother me. It also prevented that buyer from buying a mansion further outside of town that would have led to an increase in sprawl. None of the 4 3 story houses that have gone up adjacent to my house have directly affected my life, and my houses value isn't going down. In fact, because you *could* tear down and build two units it is actually more valuable than ever.
There are arguments about the "character of the neighborhood" to be made. Very few people want to advocate for Houston like building in Austin with no zoning laws at all. But, one of the most important steps for a city like Austin to take is intermediate density increases in what were inner-city suburban developments from 70+ years ago.
78704 is on track for a 17.16% increase in population density over 10 years. Now a lot of that is going to be down to buildings like Lamar Union or the Catherine, but the single family areas are becoming far more dense, and because single family housing makes up the bulk of the land-area in the zip code, that is the land most in need of density. And yeah, that means at some point in the future we'll be having arguments about VMUs on Barton Hills or Bluebonnet, and arguments about nightlife cropping up on them as well. It's not today, it might not even be 20 years from now but it's coming. As Austin grows it is not reasonable that there be a giant suburban tract 2 minutes from downtown. If we really are going to be an mSA of 3.5-4 million we're going to have to take a long hard look at areas that developed for a city of a few hundred thousand and understand what is reasonable in the long-term, and yeah. It may not be a comftorable conversation, but fighting density disproportionately affects minorities and poorer Austinites.
It's easy to forget that the UWS was built as single family homes and after WW2 the brownstones were subdivided into multi-family units by floor. Change is inevitable, and with a rapidly growing city density needs to be part of that conversation, though not the only part.
You have a right to your property. Trying to come up with reasons why you have a right to your neighbors property or what happens to the "character" of the neighborhood is some really odd mental gymnastics that tries to make a moral or legal claim that by living (or owning) in a general vicinity that you have a right to the things that indirectly affect your Quality of Life that are done on property you don't own.
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