It doesn't matter so much what areas we call "downtown." It's mostly psychological. What matters is how those areas are zoned. You can have areas north, south, east or west of what is officially considered downtown and still have tall buildings. An example of that is the Hyatt and handful of midrises south of the river and the RBJ Tower east of I-35 and south of the river. At the same time you can have areas that are officially considered downtown but have them be low density and lowrise. An example of that are the old houses on the northeast side of downtown. They're inside of downtown, but that area is lowrise mostly and mostly less dense since they're "single family" even though most are actually occupied by small businesses.
Expanding the official boundaries is nice and all, but without dense zoning designation it doesn't matter what you call it.
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Originally Posted by wwmiv
I agree with that conceptualization of downtown and actually believe that the city has a longstanding habit of describing downtown too broadly. Section 1 is really what would be called "downtown". The urban core, as opposed to downtown, is what you see superimposed onto that map (although I would also include the University proper and West Campus as part of what is considered the urban core).
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The area that map shows as being downtown has been officially considered that for a long time. For probably more than 100 years.
By the way, while UT and West Campus are certainly part of the urban core these days, just a little over 100 years ago that whole area was single family homes on the edge of town. Hyde Park was largely developed to replace what was cannibalized by the University of Texas. There were even a lot of single family homes right in downtown. Even the Capitol complex was filled with them.
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