Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
Austin's land use policies don't make Austin more like Houston. I don't know if you can tell, but the amount of development happening in both cities isn't even comparable. We have ~20 downtown projects that should be underway this year while they have 5? Or fewer? It's not just about density. That alone doesn't make a city interesting. It's diversity; different areas having different characters. I don't know about you, but sometimes when I'm downtown I just hate the fact that there's so many people making you feel rushed, and it's getting worse. The infusion of residents in downtown -- as opposed to just visitors -- gives these (rich) people, many of them not even from here, a sense of ownership over the streets and people not from downtown Austin, who just want to enjoy the city, are seen as nuisances, tourists, slowpokes. So urban areas with less busyness can be nice. Enjoying being downtown without some exasperated yuppie muttering under their breath about you would be nice, considering I was born and raised in this city. That's also not who we are as a city. We're not people who are go-go-go all the time and not able to relax and enjoy things. I get that we can expect more of this, with more highrises going up, but hopefully they assimilate to Austin's character, rather than determine it.
You're afraid of sprawl, but sprawl is not always bad. As Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk say in their book Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, it's about "sprawling the right way"; meaning: sprawling urbanism. You're worried about downtown not being dense enough while I'm concerned with turning the whole of Austin into downtown, so to speak.
The thing about the CVC is that it can catch you off guard, surprise you when you least expect it, and you think "Wow, this is a really amazing view!" But it's not an accident. So it kind of creates a positive impression of our city as something with subtlety and serendipity, two hallmarks of civilization.
Further, the CVC allows for zoning changes and increased building heights if the developer provides added benefits to the city in some way. So this is a way of taking advantage of largely self-interested parties and turning it into something that benefits the city as a whole.
Regarding that picture of Houston, I posted that on tumblr over a year ago and it got reblogged hundreds of times, so I'm a big reason why people know it exists. My point still stands: regulation like the CVC adds to the value of a city more than it detracts from it and this can be seen in the fact that Houston is shit while Austin isn't. And I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
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There's a lot to disagree with the above post, so don't take a lack of a comment below to be an endorsement - but I do want to call attention to a couple of things you have flat wrong.
1. I'm well acquainted with Duany and Plater-Zyberk and seen many of lectures and even met Andres Duany and I've read Suburban Nation cover to cover a few times and I can tell you categorically that it is not a prescription "sprawling the right way". It is an absolute unapologetic indictment of sprawl. Duany's entire career to date has been focused on designing urbanism and resisting sprawl. There are multiple town vs sprawl lectures available on youtube, they are excellent and I highly recommend them to anyone interested in urbanism - I would gladly provide links if you like. I am not aware of any time or any point in any of his materials where he says something to the effect of "sprawling the right way". If you can site something, please provide a link or page site, I'd like to read that. However, I suspect you fundamentally misunderstand what he means by sprawl.
2. The CVCs are not negotiable and there is no zoning change available to developers to get out of them, they are categorical. You mistake these for general density caps such as 8-1 FAR that can be avoided through density bonuses. You cannot give developer concessions to get density bonuses on a lot capped under a CVC. Most of the existing CVCs are implemented by both the state legislature and to get around them would, quite literally, take an act of state legislature.
3. Austin land use policies indeed do make Austin much more akin to Houston than to any truly urban city. We are kissing cousins. Austin has hills and not very distinguished architecture, Houston is bigger, flatter with better architecture. But the densities are remarkably similar Houston being a bit denser. Houston is also much larger of course and has about 30 years worth of growth on Austin, but give us time. . .we're growing in a very similar fashion.
Austin CBD has come a long way, but it ain't there yet. We have a few interesting pockets and some promising development on the way, but the distance between where it is today and what it could be someday is still great.
And if you want Austin to be more like that picture and less like what Austin could be, then yes, things like CVCs and enforcing parking requirements and flat out making development in the CBD less attractive to developers is the way to ensure we continue to have large sections of the devoted to drive-through banks and surface parking lots.
Finally, while I kind of get the people who over-value view corridors generally, at least they are overvaluing something. I find the argument that somehow the CVCs are good independently of the view corridors to be strange. Why would we purposefully blight whole swaths of land in the CBD for no reasonable purpose whatsoever? If you wanted to have height caps there are far more rational, equitable and (most importantly in a city that is not a museum) flexible ways to do that.