The city limits include a lot of area that I consider suburbs, such as the area around Circle C in the southwest, the areas close to Cedar Park in the northwest, anything west of 360, etc.
> Austin has one of the most pro-urbanist city councils in Texas
Setting aside the fact that "in Texas" is one hell of a qualification to that statement, the voters haven't been helpful in allowing growth to happen. They just haven't been given the opportunity to stop it. CodeNEXT got a majority in the council, but it would have been crushed if it had been put in front of voters.
I think the influx of pro-density residents into central Austin is changing things really fast, though.
To be fair, the city limits in Austin are pretty huge, already encompassing lots of what would qualify as the suburbs. Take, for example, the West Gate/South Manchaca/Stassney/William Cannon area (marked as Emerald Forest above), where there's already heavy build out going on.
Taking Austin for a moment, the real estate market has doubled since 2012, and zillow calls the market 'hot'. While obviously not Bay Area prices, real estate growth is high.
I'm pretty skeptical of 'in the world' claim, but I have heard that the north-south arterial axis of the city build out makes getting around challenging at times.
My overall point is, 'fast growing tech hubs' have growth related problems. Only in an extreme anti-tax state like TX, you may never have any infrastructure build up, except for maybe more interstates.
Ultimately, municipal elections draw only the most engaged voters, and outside of those times, officials have broad authority to control how things are built. Getting re-elected is always a concern, so we end up with a general slow-to-change civic pattern that appears to be repeating all across the US. Even in much-lauded NYC, people complain about (a) underinvestment in subways (b) many manhattan buildings are illegal under current planning code. Building code is a primary challenge to reducing change, and I hardly see anyone, except CA state authorities, attacking overly restrictive planning code.
I'm a few weeks now into relocating to the midwest (which is why I still say "we" when I talk about Austin), and I've said the same thing.
Austin is a marvelous place to spend a weekend or a couple of days if you want to see a festival (I still think Nashville is the better "live music" city), but I will never live there again unless it transforms dramatically so much of their transit issues, housing issues and traffic issues, not to mention finding a city council with a backbone.
I don't think I can put it to words and have it sink in any better to someone who hasn't lived there how livid I was to see the news that council abandoned CodeNEXT. That was the move that got me packing up and forced my hand to get the hell out.
FTA: Since the first draft of the revised land-use rules was released in early 2017, CodeNext has laid bare the ideological differences between pro-density urbanists and neighborhood preservationists, who have sniped at one another for months in public meetings and through social media.
Yep. That's pretty much describes my near 20 years living in Austin to the letter. About the only thing those two groups can agree on is "build another toll road so far out of the city it takes a 20 minute drive to the eastern edge of the city limits just so you can go north to Pflugerville and not sit on I-35 for an hour and a half"
There are no real geographic barriers stopping Austin's growth. I am not in Austin but if I have to guess, the public transport sucks balls. You have to have Car unless you live in the urban core. The bigger problem in Austin is, their nimbyism manifested in such a way that City and County constrain the growth by not expanding the infrastructure.
But the land is there - the city can grow into a bigger metro.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the Austin region's notable decline in quality of life hasn't already begun to act as a feedback mechanism limiting investment and population growth.
Austin was plagued by decades of nimbyism and poor urban planning that prevented sufficient infrastructure development before it was a tech hotspot. ~10 years ago, things like traffic and public transport had already become borderline unbearable relative to comparable cities. It has only become much, much worse in recent years. I imagine that it might still seem livable to tech folks arriving from west/east coast megacities, but to us locals...not so much.
Nearby San Antonio has done a much, much better job in terms of infrastructure development, but of course nobody wants to set up shop there because it doesn't have the (fading, imo) cultural cachet that Austin has.
I can understand some of the fears of her constituents who purchased houses on large lots and have seen houses in those neighborhoods torn down for multi-family dwellings.
More density is something Austin requires but that of course involves transforming the nature of neighborhoods and whether that's gentrification of the East Side with yuppie condos replacing traditional black and hispanic neighborhoods or tasteful (imo) multi-family residences in traditionally genteel white suburban neighborhoods, it's something out of everyone's hands.
People in Austin and other cities are resistant to change for a host of reasons both legitimate and not. Change is inevitable though. Fortunately I'm not a native and I don't have strong ties to the area so I'm preparing to move back home before the next 1.5 million people move here in the next decade. I'm planning to hold onto my relatively large lot and house and rent it for entirely selfish reasons, though.
It's the pace of change that locals can't handle, and part of it is all the outside money transforming the city for its own profit, the city and its neighborhoods and people be-damned.
I'm not familiar with Austin, but if it's anything like most other cities, the growth is not happening at the peripheries of the city limits. It's happening in the inner urban core or well outside city limits at the edges of the metro, where there's nobody to object.
In SF proper most development is happening in the South of Market Neighborhood, an old industrial/warehouse district walking distance from downtown. The other areas seeing substantial growth are in far eastern Contra Costa County (Antioch, Brentwood, etc) which is a 90 minute commute from downtown SF. In the Bay Area nearly all the land between downtown SF and the exurbs is either protected park/watershed land or is filled with existing low-density suburban communities who object vociferously to any new development. In San Francisco much of the city was downzoned in the 70s and 80s so that even the existing structures would be too dense, tall, or otherwise non-compliant for today's codes.
That 3500 homes per year is setting a record since the mid-60s just shows how little development there has been. San Francisco has about 350000 existing homes, so that's a growth rate of 1% a year. That's only slightly above the rate of population growth nationwide, and doesn't account for the neighboring communities that have zero growth (Palo Alto, all of Marin County) or migration that would like to join the enormous economic boom going on here.
It's true there is some new housing availability in the form of condos in central Austin, but my experience was that the majority of new Austinites moved into houses in the suburbs -- Round Rock, Pflugerville, Cedar Park, Buda, Kyle, etc. Suburban Austin is starting to look a lot like suburban Houston, and all that sprawl comes with its attendant problems. It's also not clear what Austin is going to do in the long term about it's water problems.
Austin is a great town, but you can't just sit there and say "Hey SF, why can't you be more like Austin?"
Austin is still fighting the updates to the building code after many many years which would have helped growth within the city itself. If Austin can keep building housing, then it might be ok.
Hi rainier - but what about my comment above? Austin City Region is 271.8 square miles. SF is 47. My question is, how much of that growth in austin occurred in the regions of Austin, TX that were at or above SF's average density of 18,000 per square mile for the last 75 years. Or even half that?
If we're going to say SF is uniquely against growth, wouldn't you need to compare it to something comparable? There's a big difference between expanding into "empty" space and tearing down a neighborhood that has had a medium to high stable density for the last 75-100 years.
One thing Austin has going for it vs more developed coastal cities is the capacity for additional sprawl, if that's the kind of arrangement you're looking for.
> Austin has one of the most pro-urbanist city councils in Texas
Setting aside the fact that "in Texas" is one hell of a qualification to that statement, the voters haven't been helpful in allowing growth to happen. They just haven't been given the opportunity to stop it. CodeNEXT got a majority in the council, but it would have been crushed if it had been put in front of voters.
I think the influx of pro-density residents into central Austin is changing things really fast, though.
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