I don't know anything about Dubai. My experience is primarily in the east of Asia - China and surrounding countries. I know a lot of buildings are only partially used in China, even with the massive population.

This is a bit off-topic, but I think some of you may find it interesting: with around 1.3 billion people, China has an urban population of 50.6% in 2011 (some estimates put it at 53% as of 2013). Migrant workers are leaving the farms and flooding into the cities looking for work. People are building "mixed-use developments" (though it stretches the term a bit) at an alarming rate, but the truth is the housing costs prevent your average Chinese from being able to afford them. Rent is surprisingly cheap compared to buying, however. It makes no sense. We had an apartment in another city that cost about $340/mo USD to rent, but it would have easily cost (at least) $250,000 USD to buy. Crazy, right?

Most migrant workers are room-renters - a 3/4 bedroom apartment is split into rooms (even the living room is walled off to make another room) and the rooms are rented to factory workers. Density goes up, but taking care of the complexes and neighborhoods go down because there is little personal investment. Also, as factory workers are somewhat nomadic (go where the money is), the neighborhoods lack a mature feeling, even after several years. This is different than neighborhoods in city cores, of course, but it's largely similar.

All this to say, a lot of people look to cities in Asia as encouraging developments - things get done quickly and they're flashy and nice-looking, but the quality is often lacking and little maintenance causes 2-year-old buildings to look 20-years-old. I'm proud of my hometown (Austin) and the way it's developing. I'm looking forward to ten years from now - and more! I hope it eventually gets a quality mass-transit system. Many other things are already in place. Over time, it's going to be even more impressive than now and the potential is great. Think of the connections between cities in the Texas Triangle once high speed rail becomes a reality - and with Houston and Dallas already having decent transit developments with more in the works, San Antonio hoping to do the same, and Austin (dragging its feet, but talking a lot nonetheless), it'd be a great marriage between these four metro areas. Okay...done dreaming now.

Thanks for letting me share all of this - back on topic now.:)

Not quite sure where to put these photos. Some screening is going up on the new parking garage at 5th and Brazos:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8636/...d4c71aa1_b.jpg


And next door at the Littlefield apartments you can see the redone windows and balconies:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8661/...c980c651_c.jpg

I like the screening on the garage.

I don't know if this has been discussed or not, but this was in the news yesterday:

http://www.burntorangenation.com/201...sketball-venue

If they tore down the Statesman building, it would be great. Hopefully they build the arena in a way that conforms to the street/sidewalk and that helps create walkability and accessibility to (future) public transit nodes.

There's a thread for it in the Austin section, and it's not very popular.

Agreed - it should be on campus (I support the location immediately south of the soccer/track stadium). If it works out to have city involvement, great, if not, the city should build its own event center. The city is easily large enough to support its own. If that's the case, the Statesman location might be good for it, but traffic would be a hurdle.

I am all for a new stadium downtown with a connected subway station :cheers:

Amen!

Taken this weekend along I-35 south (2/21/15). Seaholm and Northshore under construction.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...C_0698-001.JPG

I was traveling on Barton Springs Rd. last night and notice the Aspen Heights will make a great impacted from Butler Park. All these towers are lining up like I have never seen before. So proud of Austin. :)

I need to get out and take some pictures of the full skyline from a distance.

Just because this thread doesn't get updated too often...the big news this week is that demo begins next week for dual branded Aloft and Element Hotel on Congress Ave. Here's the rendering:
http://i1121.photobucket.com/albums/...ntownAloft.png
http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=206616

Here's one of the local news stories about it:
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/bl...store-new.html

I drove by that site yesterday. It's skinny but it's so long. This is going to be a wide building looking at it from the north or south, even with the setback.

The lot is 160 feet long, and the setback requirement is 40 feet (from Congress). So the tower itself will be 120 feet long. That's not too bad really.

What would be considered long? For instance, what is JW Marriott or one of those where a wall essentially takes the entire block? I'm not as up on these sorts of details as many of you guys.

The JW Marriott is around 275 feet long. So yeah, almost twice as long.

I wasn't suggesting it was a bad thing. Just made the comment because you can't really tell that by looking at the renderings.

:cheers:

Photo courtesy of Austin Business Journal

From Mt. Bonell? Or is there a better vantage point?

I'd recommend the view from Barton Creek Mall. The mall is about 300 feet higher in elevation than the Congress Ave. bridge downtown. To me, the view of downtown from there was spectacular even before downtown was much to look at. Something about the way the view groups the buildings.