Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
I know that neighborhood groups are stakeholders, but I disagree that they should be deciding the essential character of those neighborhoods. It is the right of all Austinites to decide the character of their city, and those neighborhoods are part of the city. Neighborhoods are not governmental jurisdictions. You don't own a whole area any more than anybody else just because you have property there. You're a stakeholder there, but you shouldn't confuse that with ownership. The character of many of these neighborhoods needs to be radically changed, not preserved. It was a mistake to build neighborhoods of those characters in the first place.
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It is exactly because they are stakeholders that they should be deciding the character of their neighborhoods. We should have a variety of neighborhoods all with their own charm, not some monolithic block of semi-urban trash. In Austin, neighborhoods are given tremendous say in their future.
Why should these neighborhoods be radically changed? Why was it a mistake to build them that way in the first place? You don't give me an argument. You simply state it as fact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
I don't understand the obsession with corridors. Corridors don't inhibit walkability. And they don't compliment transit. Grid-based density does. Corridors just promote sprawl and car-centricity. If people move out of neighborhoods because of curb-appeal issues in relation to denser development then they are not desirable residents. They are NIMBYs who are roadblocks to this city's needed progress and champions of stagnation. I can understand that they would have the mindset of "I got mine" in relation to wanting to keep things the same where they live, but many Austinite don't "got theirs", and they should.
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Corridors don't inhibit walkability, you're right. I never said that. They
do compl
ement transit simply because corridors are where the buses travel en masse and where any future urban rail will be located.
They live there, get over it. The fact that they are typically wealthy is exactly
why they are desirable as residents.
They pay more in taxes. They basically fund everything that the city does. Want density? Thank them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
Density should be everywhere. Calling something "downtown" or "in the urban core" is just semantics. There should be just as much high rise construction east of 35 as there is west of it, IMO. We have to stop treating suburbs like neighborhoods and start treating them like individual houses, like on Rainey Street. Times have changed. There's no reason for single-family homes existing within that proximity to historic downtown. I know these people like living there, but that real estate is in way too high demand. All the space above their heads is possible living space and many Austinites want to live in a more central location. Notice, they don't just want to live in or near an urban location. They want to live in a central location.
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Did I ever say that there shouldn't be mid-to-high rise development east of 35? I just believe that such development should be focused on corridors so as to save the character of neighborhoods and so that we don't have urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is basically when you have high-rises nowhere near public transit so those people still have cars that they use regularly to drive to downtown (or elsewhere) for work.
I'm fine with, like I said, in 25-50 years to revisit the issue and promote density within the neighborhoods after the corridors have been built out. The problem is that there really isn't enough demand for density at the moment for us to develop more than just the corridors. It really seems like you are overestimating both that demand and the general population of Austin.
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