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Katherine Gregor has an excellent article in this week's Chronicle about Austin's move towards Vertical Mixed Use zoning on core transit corridors. It does a nice job explaining what the city's VMU overlay means (residential and office space above retail space), why it benefits developers (allows them to build more condos on a given lot), and why it benefits residents (affordability, better building design requirements, pedestrian-friendly, green, integration reduces need for car trips).
The article also discusses a portion of the plan that we aren't thrilled about - for the next 90 days, neighborhoods have the opportunity to say "not in my back yard" in hopes of maintaining their 1980's style segregated suburbanity. On the other hand, neighborhoods not in the plan can opt-in. We'd love to see West Austin get on board - Lake Austin Boulevard, Enfield, Exposition, Northland Drive, Spicewood Springs - get on the bus! These are core transit corridors. They should play in the sandbox with the other kids. Right now, almost nothing west of MoPac is included in the VMU plan. Austinists, let your opinion be heard. Neighborhood associations will be discussing this issue in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: This is the alternative to vertical mixed use development. A sprawling plan for 1,400 single-family homes spread over 450 acres. They call it "mixed-use" because portions are segregated for strip malls and office parks. There's a choice we're making. We're saving our own lives. It's true, we'll make a better day - just you and me.
Image of Guadalupe 31 from Dick Clark Architecture.
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I do like that Guadalupe 31 development, but man, they ripped the shit out of that stretch of Guadalupe building it. I hope the developer is going to pay to fix the road back up.
What's not thrilling about Neighborhood's actually (and finally) getting a say in what they want their life and homes to look like in the next twenty years. Big Box apartments don't look much better than big box stores...
Having grown up in a walkable small city with high density and residences on top of cafes, markets, pizzerias, bookstores....surrounded by trees, planters, benches, people walking with strollers, dogs, people gathering to sip coffee outside....This whole thing makes me cry with happiness, I hope it goes through.
I live south of W. Cannon and west of Brodie, all that's around me are sprawling neighborhoods with nothing pedestrian-accessible. Strip malls selling cell-phones, donuts and dry-cleaning. Big box retail further up on Brodie/290. My area of town is developing at a break-neck pace, and you can be sure it's not VMU-friendly. I hate it!
"What's not thrilling about Neighborhood's actually (and finally) getting a say"
What's not thrilling is the fact that they've been holding the city hostage by demanding (and getting) exactly what they wanted for decades. Only recently has anything like VMU happened, and it was over the objections of those same neighbors.
For 50 years now, we've forced development into one stupid low-density suburban pattern even when economics and demand justified a more dense urban one. It's time to change; simply removing the rules AGAINST doing urban development would be a heck of a start.
Hopefully this will go hand-in-hand with improving the Metro system/public trans in general. The bus is gonna look way more attractive when downtown parking goes up to $20.
Lost all my text thanks to stupid prohibition against URL if not signed in. Argh.
Basically: this is the more apt sprawly comparison: typical MF3 suburban apartment complex:
http://tinyurl.com/youcen
actually uses more space for parking lots than for buildings. Note office buildings across the street; same story.
As for transit - good luck; every downtown building on the drawing board or built within the last 10 years has _increased_ the downtown measure of parking-spaces-per-capita. You have to build the transit first; which is why we need to ditch this commuter rail disaster and build light rail like the 2000 plan.
I don't know about anyone else, but like most REAL Texans I enjoy walking out of my front door in the morning and being able to see a clear blue sky and let the sun warm my smiling face. Every big city with rampant Vertical development (mixed or otherwise) that I've been to is a rude, impersonal rat race, with people fast walking or fast talking on their blackberries with their heads down.
I think that neighborhoods (and other local or community based organizations) have much more of a right and an ability to dictate what is best for themselves and their families than any policy hack with a vested interest in considering only Economic factors (ie, M1EK is a bit MORE than just a concerned citizen, judging by the volume and scope of his posts).
I think Downtown, apartment/condo living is great for some people (yuppies), but I don't think monstrosities like "The Austonian" or whatever shit they decide to put up on South Lamar are the answer. I think that it is easy to forget in our youthful idealism and zeal for "progress" that healthy children need wide open, safe spaces...and that healthy families need a little bit of land to call their own.
I'm with apv. And did I hear you say affordable? Surely, you jest.
Haha, you said affordable! That's fun to say!
By "affordable," I was referring to the fact that in VMU projects, 10% of the units are required to meet the city's definition of "affordable." I expect that prices for the remainder of the units will be based on a combination of supply and demand.
"i.e, M1EK is a bit MORE than just a concerned citizen, judging by the volume and scope of his posts"
And I could just as easily claim that you're a flack for some suburban home-builder, you waste of blood and hair.
Based on my understanding of population projections for Austin over the next couple of decades, I think the only way we'll be able to accommodate the anticipated growth without pushing everyone into Leander and beyond is to embrace denser residential development within the central city.
I hope neighborhoods go for VMU, although I'm not sure there is widespread understanding of this issue. I've been a central city homeowner for almost eight years and I only started cluing into the importance of this stuff over the past couple of months. Once you do your job, take care of your kids, clean your house and buy groceries, there isn't much time left in a day to focus on every one of the numerous important things we should all be thinking about and taking action on. Unfortunately, urban development policy isn't sexy enough to catch most people's attention.
Oh come on duh-mas, blood and hair is a dime a dozen, it's intelligence that is truly dear, sorry I can't spare you any...
In regards to sunshine...The aforementioned town from which I hail with the residences above retail/cafes, etc....
Neighborhood Councils + City Councils also put a cap on how tall buildings could be in certain neighborhood zones.
They prohibited chain stores in certain neighborhood zones. (ie Walmarts, Starbucks, etc.)
City in question? Berkeley, CA. Yes, it is ridiculously unaffordable now...but there are still some cool lessons to be learned from how they handled issues of urban density.
Course some of those lessons are negative too.
I tried to post a link of a discussion of these very issues, but I don't have a TypeKey ID.
Berkeley (and surrounding suburbs) are putting up (and talking about putting up) high-density residences around transit corridors and especially transit commuter-rail stations to encourage rail-use and discourage spawl.
I really wish Austin Cap Metro would push stronger for developing commuter rail, instead of toll roads and building bigger freeways.
I was so pissed 7 years ago when Light Rail got defeated.
Apologies for the pretentious nerd-speak in my last comment. I'm sure you all wanted to dump my CA-ass in Lake Austin.
There is a reason why there is no VMU planned for West Austin. They plan to put it all in East and Central Austin. Come to the Planning Commission tonight at City Hall and find out what they are planning to do in Windsor Park. They want VMU on the most unstable soils in Austin. They want to raise the property taxes so much that the current owners and residents (as opposed to landlords) will have to sell their homes.
ROCKS OF THE AUSTIN AREA
Keith Young
www.lib.utexas.edu/geo/ggtc/ch2.html
"The Sprinkle is one of the most unstable formations in the Austin area; it has caused many construction failures, and construction upon this formation should be done only under the watchful eye of an engineer or geological engineer."
Bedrock in Windsor Park is 60 to 200 feet below the surface. There is a reason Windsor Park was not developed before other areas. It is the Sprinkle Clay, also known as Taylor Clay. Building multi-story buildings on it is like building on top of San Andreas fault line.