A lot of time people trot out the canard that more dense cities are more expensive. A short (but not exhaustive) list of cities that are cheaper and more dense than Austin.
Buffalo
Pittsburgh
Cleveland
Milwaukee
Detroit
St.Louis
Akron
Toledo
Cincinnati
And here in Texas:
Houston
Dallas
San Antonio
Density does not equal expensive.
TXDot released a map of the most congested roadways in Texas. There is only one East/West road in Austin on the list – Slaughter lane. I know when I lived at Dittmar and Mancaha there was quite a lot of concern about another neighborhood going in around the corner and what it would do to traffic. A lot of these projects were not pursued due to neighborhood opposition. You can see that there’s a lot of undeveloped space between Mancaha and South Congress.
This picture illustrates perfectly how pushing development away from you can still clog up the streets near you.
Looking at the map you can see that Slaughter connects to IH-35 and MoPac shortly after that they become congested heading Northbound. We can assume that very few people living North of Slaughter are driving south to catch more of the congestion as they head into the city.
So the majority of this congestion is coming from the amazing curlicues of culdesacs and sprawl south of Slaughter Lane. The sprawl got pushed away, but it ensured that Slaughter was congested. It ensured that IH-35 and MoPac congestion started further south. In short the neighborhoods that pushed these residents away ended up getting all the traffic downsides, without any of the upsides of more people – better buses, more walkable stores, parks and amenities.
So, new Texas governor Dan Patrick is making noise about passing school vouchers in this legislature. And I see no reason why it won’t happen. It might not get implemented because this ledge frequently writes bills in such a way that ensures a court case, but ultimately I think it will pass.
If I were a large scale home builder I’d be scared witless.
If you ask anyone why they move to the suburbs I almost guarantee they’ll say “good schools”. But what if the suburbs didn’t guarantee good schools? I would expect to see exactly what we’re seeing in Austin. School choice has led to huge numbers of students going to private and charter schools. It also has led to huge numbers of students transfers. It has completely destroyed the notion (or value proposition) of neighborhood schools.
Parents seemed to have learned from Monty Hall and always choose to open another door. I’m frequently at parties with two different sets of parents who’ve decided to transfer their child. Into each other’s schools. This is common. The grass is always greener in someone else’s neighborhood school.
The other side of school choice is congestion. School choice ensures additional trips during rush hour. This could double commutes for those exclusive exurbs.
I think ultimately this is going to increase the speed of gentrification and the decline of outer-ring suburbs. It’s going to be an interesting change to say the least.
Currently Austin is governed by a set of standards. We have base zoning which says where you can build single-family homes and where you can build businesses. Then we have overlays such as the waterfront overlay, that says that your building has to be short near the waterfront. Then we have FLUMs and Neighborhood Plans on top of that.
FLUMs (Future Land Use Maps) and Neighborhood Plans were created by neighborhoods in a lengthy neighborhood process about a decade ago. From all accounts it was a horrible process. No one was happy with the results, and it was horribly unrepresentative. In my neighborhood with 40,000 residents the meetings didn’t yield more than 100 participants. Many of those participants no longer live in the neighborhood and the intent of large pieces of the plan is no longer understood. Yet you still see people defending adhering to them.
A great example of why we need to chuck them is the East Riverside Corridor. One of our priorities that was set at the time was to get the Lady Bird Lake Boardwalk implemented. Mission accomplished! We did it. High fives. When I went to ask the city to remove it from our plan requirements they said they couldn’t do so without going through a massive neighborhood amendment process (multiple stakeholder meetings, etc). Things that are complete cannot be removed.
Currently the East Riverside plan has target increased density along East Riverside near the planned rail transit stations. These are the areas in peach below.
Now whether you agree with that or not, you may be asking yourself – “What if the Rail Bond fails at the polls?”
That’s exactly the problem. The neighborhood plan doesn’t change. We still have these weird density pockets around non-existent train stations. And what about maybe filling in the white spaces in between so that they match the tall buildings that are built? Nope. No change. That will require a neighborhood plan amendment process with multiple stakeholder meetings. So without rail Riverside just gets left with a weird neighborhood plan they can’t change.
We have roads and buildings that don’t appear on our maps and can’t be trivially added.
That doesn’t even get into the Future Land Use Maps (FLUMs). FLUMs are basically fantasy maps. Dreams of a small group of shareholders a decade ago. In many cases they include less affordable and multifamily housing than currently is in the base zoning. So FLUMs are already making Austin more expensive.
It’s time to chuck neighborhood plans and FLUMs. Let’s get a better system where it’s easy to build affordable housing. Where we can easily adapt to allow nice things in our neighborhood, and where people who haven’t lived in a neighborhood for decades have a seat at the table.
For those of you who haven’t been following our schools, AISD has problems. We have too many school buildings in the wrong places. We have massive costs repairing, heating and cooling under-enrolled schools. The facilities master plan has not taken school closures off the table. The new plan will give under-enrolled schools 3 years to fill back up. Many of our central neighborhood schools are on the under-enrolled list, and if trends continue many of the schools that are not on that list currently will be in danger.
If you look at AISD’s demographic report one thing that will jump out at you is that we need more kids. Even areas like Circle C that had seen explosive growth in families are not growing as fast. So what can we do about that?
Right now in Austin you can build single-family homes, duplexes or apartment complexes. Those are pretty much the only housing types that can be built. You know those awesome Mueller row homes and garden homes? Did you know that the only reason those can be built is because Mueller is exempt from Austin’s zoning restrictions?
You can’t build the homes in the picture above. The one that creates a dense neighborhood with tons of kids. You can’t build these homes in Austin.
The CodeNEXT process is looking into changing that. They call this the “missing middle”. Everything in between traditional sprawl-style single family homes on large lots and apartment complexes. But we need voters to vote for candidates who support this or convince their candidate to support the process. Tell them that they want this kind of housing in Austin.
Without more kids we’re going to have to close schools. It’s as simple as that. And we need more kid friendly housing in our neighborhoods to get more kids. Find out where your candidates stand on Code NEXT.
If you spend much time looking at demographics in Austin you’ll notice a strong correlation between the schools people call “good” and the percentage of students who are white. I’ve been called out for being overly sensitive about race. So I took a list of “good” schools that someone had posted on Reddit and looked up the portion of students who were white. 25.8% of AISD students are white. I think the numbers speak for themselves:
Open to Transfers
Becker – 29% white
Barton Hills – 69% white *
oak hill – 46% white
matthews – 43% white
mills – 56% white
boone – 42% white
St Elmo – 10% white
Pease – 41% white
Dawson – 7% white
Closed to Transfers
kiker – 66% white
casis – 79% white
clayton – 67% white
lee – 63% white
highland park – 77% white
baranoff – 52% white
baldwin – 63% white
doss – 66% white
hill – 67% white
brykerwoods – 69% white
zilker – 57% white
davis – 51% white
graham – 5% white **
Casey – 20% white **
Gullet – 76% white
Patton – 54% white
Summit – 36% white **
* Barton Hills is a very small attendance zone and the majority of children are transfers.
** Casey, Graham, and Summit are areas with large numbers of children living in apartments and are full not because of transfers, but due to students zoned to the school.
Recently there have been several Austin posts suggesting taking back the word NIMBY as a point of pride. That’s a horrible idea. Please don’t be a NIMBY.
Sure, being a NIMBY can seem great. You are assured that no matter what happens, you didn’t suggest the wrong answer. And you can always blame other people if something goes wrong. What a great moral position to take.
With the recent kerfuffle over the off-leash area at Auditorium Shores. The NIMBYs took great pride in standing tall and insisting the park was fine and nothing needed to be done. But only the most disingenuous person could say nothing needed to be done. Clearly there were erosion control problems that needed to be dealt with.
There are many middle ground positions you could take. Come into meetings with ideas. Steer the conversation towards solutions you find palatable. Accept compromise to get what you want.
It is important to identify suggestions that are meant to kill a project. We waste a lot of time in Austin trying to accommodate points of view that are meant to be poison pills, and are not offered seriously.
Ask point blank what is required for support of a project. If a person in your conversation suggests that they will not support a project you can safely exclude them from further discussions.
Together I think those of us who are not NIMBYs can make Austin a better place. We can get the kind of development we want rather than taking an all or nothing approach. We can maintain our parks without bulldozing the way people currently use them.
Let’s say no to NIMBY-ism and come together as a community!
So I just filled out a survey to vote on priorities for our neighborhood plan. It was really difficult to find the priorities I wanted because there was a ton of cruft. We have dozens of plan items related to completing the Butler Trail (DONE), and adding Dillo (?!?) Service to East Riverside. There are also tons of items you can vote for like “stop street X from connecting to street Y”, which seems like a completely pointless thing to prioritize. Prioritizing doing nothing seems like a waste of priorities to me.
At the end of the survey they had an email address to which I could direct any questions. So I sent them an email asking how to get all this cruft out of the plan. They replied that removing things from the neighborhood plan is too hard and costs the city too much money. So we’re just stuck with these irrelevant items. And can look forward to more irrelant items being added to the list.
Although probably not. Because it’s too hard to add items to the list as well. So East Riverside shall henceforth be stuck in 2006-2008.
I realize that Neighborhood Plans only exist for NIMBY purposes. I realize that improving and fixing them is completely against the point of the Neighborhood Planning Process.
But allowing the continuation of horrible systems is not in my nature!
I did a new spreadsheet with what happens to your City of Austin tax rate with the two homestead exemptions currently on the table if your home continues to increase in value at 10%/year (as mine is currently doing). Note that your City of Austin taxes are only about 1/5 of your tax rate, so that’s why the numbers below may look low to you.
Currently Steve Adler is proposing a full 20% exemption at a cost of over $36,000,000 to taxpayers. That’s the entire City of Austin library budget to put things in perspective.
Kathy Tovo is proposing a flat rate $5,000 (it can only be $5,000 due to the trick being used to get the flat rate which are technically not allowed in Texas).
I have to say I don’t see much value in punching a hole in the budget for either of these cuts. What do you think?
| Year | Taxable Value | Tax with Current Rate | Tax with 20% Homestead Exemption | Tax with $5000 Homestead Exemption |
| 2013 | $168,385.00 | $846.47 | $677.18 | $821.34 |
| 2014 | $185,223.50 | $931.12 | $744.89 | $905.98 |
| 2015 | $203,745.85 | $1,024.23 | $819.38 | $999.10 |
| 2016 | $224,120.44 | $1,126.65 | $901.32 | $1,101.52 |
| 2017 | $246,532.48 | $1,239.32 | $991.46 | $1,214.18 |
| 2018 | $271,185.73 | $1,363.25 | $1,090.60 | $1,338.12 |
| 2019 | $298,304.30 | $1,499.58 | $1,199.66 | $1,474.44 |
| 2020 | $328,134.73 | $1,649.53 | $1,319.63 | $1,624.40 |
| 2021 | $360,948.20 | $1,814.49 | $1,451.59 | $1,789.35 |
| 2022 | $397,043.02 | $1,995.94 | $1,596.75 | $1,970.80 |
| 2023 | $436,747.32 | $2,195.53 | $1,756.42 | $2,170.39 |
| 2024 | $480,422.06 | $2,415.08 | $1,932.07 | $2,389.95 |
| 2025 | $528,464.26 | $2,656.59 | $2,125.27 | $2,631.45 |
| 2026 | $581,310.69 | $2,922.25 | $2,337.80 | $2,897.11 |
| 2027 | $639,441.76 | $3,214.47 | $2,571.58 | $3,189.34 |
| 2028 | $703,385.93 | $3,535.92 | $2,828.74 | $3,510.79 |
| 2029 | $773,724.53 | $3,889.51 | $3,111.61 | $3,864.38 |
| 2030 | $851,096.98 | $4,278.46 | $3,422.77 | $4,253.33 |
| 2031 | $936,206.68 | $4,706.31 | $3,765.05 | $4,681.18 |
| 2032 | $1,029,827.34 | $5,176.94 | $4,141.55 | $5,151.81 |
Like the rest of the US I’ve been thinking a lot about race and racism in the past few days. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the Bechdel Test. We just finished writing a play that revolves around six women, technology, and heavy metal. I think it’s awesome.
But I’m going to let you in on a secret. It was also hard to write. It wasn’t hard to write because writing for women is hard. Writing good female characters is easy. It was hard to write because the default kept coming back “men”. Every time we needed a new character for some reason a man showed up. Plot lines twisted around to being about men. Boyfriends were called in to kneecap bad guys. And this was in a show that we had intentionally set out be women focused. It’s no wonder that when not thinking about writing for women, men dominate our stages. Changing this requires intentional action. It can’t just be a magical, mysterical, more just world that shows up because we’ve better educated our children that everyone is equal and has value. It requires intentional work.
So what does this have to do with race?
Same thing. We wring our hands and hope that we can create a more just world, but how exactly is that going to happen when a black man has become shorthand code in our media and literature? I don’t even need to fill you in. If you see a black man on the screen with no dialog you know why he’s there. He’s a default. A placeholder. Is it any wonder that our society just pulls up that same default, and walks away quickly, pulls him over, shoots him thinking he has a gun?
So here’s my challenge. I’m not saying don’t write any more bad guys who are black. I’m saying be intentional. Is there a reason for your bad guy to be a person of color (or a man for that matter)? Then change it. Shake things up. Be intentional.
You’re being a lazy writer. And propping up a racist society at the same time. So this is my challenge to you. Writers – let’s stop this shit.