Dallas has ~130 built highrises taller than 35 meters (115 feet) in the skyrise belt from Downtown thru Uptown and Turtle Creek situated in a nearly continuous urban built environment.

Austin and Houston, in comparison, each have ~120 built highrises taller than 35 meters (the minimum cut-off on this forum's database in their urban skyline belts from Downtown (in Austin, thru West Campus). That's no slouch in comparison, if we're only considering total number of highrises.

San Antonio has ~60 and Fort Worth ~40. Of course, this doesn't consider highrises elsewhere in these cities.

Each downtown really excels at a different form of urbanity. Houston excels at height, Dallas at architecture/lighting, Austin at density, San Antonio at preserved urban fabric, and Fort Worth for keeping its historic charm.

If Austin wants to have THE signature skyline of Texas, it needs the height and architecture as well as the density. Four or five well-designed buildings over 800'+ and a supertall with a distinctive crown would be the key to "signature" status, in my eyes.

I wasn't aware Dallas has more then Houston.

All good points, although I was referring solely to downtown and the way it has come together relative to the central downtowns of the other cities. That's not to downplay the others...they're nice as well. And Houston and Dallas have all the outlying skylines that I wish Austin had, but doesn't.

I like the Dallas skyline, would love to see Austin get a super tall.

Well, Houston does have more high rises than Dallas. Most of Dallas' high rises are clustered either in downtown, uptown or along a few of the freeways. I do think Dallas has more high rises clustered in their downtown and uptown, which has really become an extension of the downtown skyline. Houston's downtown is pretty isolated from the other clusters, but the clusters they do have like the Texas Medical Center and Uptown/Galleria are big, tall and dense skylines to themselves. Houston's uptown/galleria area by itself would rank one of the state's biggest skylines, and I think I read once that the medical center has more square footage than Fort Worth's downtown.

Austin may even end up eclipsing Dallas for the number of buildings over 400 feet in the not too distant future, but they still have many more buildings over 500 feet than we do. Most of Austin's gains has been in the 400 foot range.

As Kevin hints at above, this is because the Downtown+Uptown Dallas skyline (a distinct cluster) has more skyscrapers than downtown Houston's skyline cluster. The city of Houston has more skyscrapers overall, however, because there are many major ancillary nodes that Dallas has yet to match.

By the way, Austin actually has 188 completed high rises citywide now. We also have 19 more under construction and 5 more doing their site prep. So in less than 2 years, Austin will have more than 200 completed high rises. That's still far fewer than both Houston and Dallas, which I'm sure each has several hundred high rises. Houston might even have more than 600 or more of them.

https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net...fa&oe=5B41DD21
The Independent Austin - https://www.facebook.com/independent...type=3&theater

Construction is planned to start within 6 months.

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...st-avenue.html
https://i.imgur.com/lrDuL8g.png

looks good! :)

Actually, it looked better before they changed the design, and it was a wee bit taller - 370 feet. I do like the current design ok, it certainly isn't bad, but the older one would have been a bit more unique. This was the old design:

The 58th floor of the Independent has been poured. It's now at 626 feet.

Construction cam *note - select the "skyline" link.
https://www.workzonecam.com/projects...nt/workzonecam

I saw somewhere recently that Austin's urban core alone (river to 15th Street) has some 34 towers (over 300' in height) either proposed, working through entitlements, approved or under construction as of right now.

WOW!

It's 36 now. Several of them are on shaky ground, but it's still a pretty impressive number considering how many have been completed in recent years.

The density downtown is impressive as well. I have a question. Since so many towers are being built downtown, is that area in danger of running out of available lots to build on or is there any natural barriers that would get in the way of development?

I think there are still plenty of lots with low story buildings that could eventually be demolished for a new development, if the market demand was there.

I don't think so... there's still lots of empty lots.

There are still a lot of potential sites for high rises that would require minimal Demo. But it's a lot less than one would assume buy looking at an aerial of downtown because the CVCs prohibit high rise development in large sections of downtown.

Austin's "2nd downtown" in the making, though, at this point I'd call it our 2nd skyline and take a wait and see approach to printing any other labels.

Still, to be talking about the possibility of 360-foot buildings outside of downtown would have been unheard of even a few years ago. Technically Austin has already had some decently tall buildings outside of downtown for decades thanks to the UT Campus and West Campus, but those two neighborhoods make up the same skyline that downtown does. Plus, in 2014 the first 200+ foot tall building came to the south shore just across the river from downtown, but again, that building is part of the downtown skyline, especially since downtown wraps around that area as the river turns.

The Broadmoor and Domain developments will be the first time we've truly had buildings of that height in a skyline defined separately from downtown. 360 feet will be way taller than anything currently outside of downtown. Excluding the UT Campus, West Campus, and the south shore area, the tallest building outside of downtown now is 159 feet. 360 feet tall would have been Austin's 3rd tallest building up until 2004 when the Hilton and Frost Bank Tower were finished that year. 360 feet today would be Austin's 21st tallest.

https://communityimpact.com/austin/c...ncil-approval/

Nice! Look forward to the development.