Just listened to “A Neighborly Conversation” on KOOP. A discussion between Jeff Jacks and Chris Bradford (Austin Contrarian). Not a lot of new ground. Jeff Jacks does appear to be absolutely against new development in neighborhoods which is interesting. I wouldn’t have thought he’d put it quite that strongly. But he did bring up that we’re not pushing for density in the new development in Austin that’s not in existing neighborhoods. South Park Meadows is suburban sprawl. West Austin is nothing but sprawl. 969 is sprawl. That’s a real failure. While we can’t change what Round Rock, Cedar Park, or Buda are doing, we can change what we’re doing as a city. We really need to view the entire City of Austin as being “downtown”. Because it will be shortly. The fact that all of our new construction within the city limits isn’t at least as dense as Mueller (which isn’t very dense) is a real failing on our part.

What do you think the solution is to getting more people into Austin without sprawl?

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Comments

M1EK (http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/)

2009-09-04T22:33:32.000Z

1. Jeff Jack is lying. Circle C is more dense by any reasonable metric than are the single-family portions of his neighborhood (Zilker/Barton Hills). The only difference is that somebody a long time ago built some MF mostly on the fringes of his neighborhood (against his will, no doubt, if he was there at the time). This is like the idiots in my neighborhood trying to claim credit for existing density (as in, “look at us! aren’t we nice urbanists?”) while failing to mention that it only exists there because they *lost*. 2. The density of the new subdivisions is actually not the issue - it’s the design. Their moderate density is completely car-dependent because of the layout of the roads and the strict separation of uses. The city IS affecting the design of new subdivisions within its jurisdiction - not enough, in my opinion, but certainly more than they did when the relatively suburban Barton Hills area was developed.