Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
I actually love view corridors for all of the reasons mentioned here and because it makes cities develop in different ways. The last thing I want is for Austin to look like every other city with just a forest of skyscrapers and nothing to look at. To me, it's worth whatever challenges and slowdowns that may come with it, because in the end it adds value to the city by adding beauty, uniqueness, and character. The capitol is central to not just the city, but also our identity as a city. I would hate for that to get lost in a forest of buildings. We have to keep in mind what's important. Development now at the expense of all else is not worth it in the end. There has to be direction to the development. I don't want to be Houston.
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CVCs promote a less dense, less contiguous, less vibrant, less interesting down town and contribute to Austin being more sprawling and more Houston-like. Two things I will say about Houston:
1. The problem with Houston's CBD isn't tall buildings, its that they used to do this:
(And even Houston has realized that that is deadly growth and is remedying this wrong)
That's the same kind of contiguous downtown promoted by CVCs, and
2. Austinites love to say how they don't want to be Houston and then implement landuse policies that make Austin more like Houston.
View corridors are incredibly pricey propositions encumbering dozens of properties and condemning large amounts of the city to low intensity auto-oriented business like drive though banks (seen a few of those blighting the CBD?). Austin already has a huge area blighted by the state. Some of the CVCs protect views so remote you have to use a pair of binoculars to get a meaningful view, or so site specific you have to stand on a single square meter to see them around billboards. We have a view corridor that protects views from a cemetery...that's right, we protect the views of people no longer alive to enjoy them. Some even protect views which no longer exist. If there were a reasonable number down a few selected corridors it would be fine. There are 35. The entire north east quadrant of the CBD is virtually off limits with predictably grim results. Much of the NW corridor is equally off limits (and they already have to fight OWANA on EVERYTHING). WWs very modest goal of putting 25K people downtown seems nearly out of reach because there are so few parcels available for dense development. There is an enormous cost to CVCs that the city just absorbs.
Finally, for me this is not about skylines, its about creating the best possible city experience at the level of the street. And you cannot achieve the critical mass and the consistency people need by blighting large parcels of the city. Look at the areas that have come alive in recent years: they're the areas largely unaffected by the CVCs.