The most important question facing Austin is where and how it will grow. This affects all other
issues, including basic city services, education, traffic, transportation, and
growth. The question is neither na�ve nor environmental — it is
practical. Most of the problems facing the city have to do with its being
overwhelmed by growth. These patterns of growth, rather than slowing, are
accelerating.
In the Seventies, the issue was pitched as the pro-growthers versus the
no-growthers. This argument was moot by the early Eighties, as enormous amounts
of development were being undertaken in every direction, regardless of talk.
The focus of the debate shifted to just what kinds of limits should be placed
on development. As part of this discussion, many proponents — including the
Chronicle — pushed for the compact city concept rather than suburban
sprawl.
As the articles by Mike Clark-Madison and Lee Nichols this issue clearly
illustrate, the very boundaries of the debate have shifted. We are seeing
unprecedented inner-city growth (Clark-Madison’s piece this issue puts four of
these infill projects on trial, and who knows just how many other developments
are in some planning stage for downtown Austin), but in no way does this seem
to be stunting the sprawl as Austin and the greater developed area around
Austin grows north towards Waco and south towards San Antonio. What we have to
face now is how we direct that growth and simultaneously preserve the integrity
and vitality of the inner city.
When casually asked by Daryl Slusher what I thought about his stance on
closing half the Southwest Parkway, I told him to go for it. This was bad
advice. Our collaborative efforts over the years have had more to do with
journalism than with politics, and the Southwest Parkway vote was an important
symbolic gesture. Politically, it turned out to be na�ve.
The Southwest Parkway is absolutely the most appropriate kind of issue on
which to take a stand. The city has to have a vision of itself and its future.
At present, it offers no such vision. We need a master plan, one that
encourages development in certain areas, and that complements the restrictions
that already exist in other areas. By encourage, I mean the city must
streamline its development policies, it must reorganize and rewrite the hideous
maze of regulations, and it should consistently and efficiently apply policy
when it comes to the development/building process. The city also needs to
strategically build roads and provide public transportation.
The paths of transportation, from roads to light rail, affect development
patterns. Transportation issues within the city are just as serious. Austin
needs to aggressively explore alternative forms of transportation — it needs
some kind of light rail/public transportation system that encourages
development in the least environmentally sensitive directions (this kind of
growth begins to really evidence itself 20 years after the rail is built). The
city has to look seriously at MoKan and it must deal with the issue of
cross-town and cross-city traffic.
The Southwest Parkway is a road designed to promote development in some of the
more environmentally sensitive areas around Austin. This was — and is — a bad
idea and a bad example of public policy. The people who live out there are not
bad, and their concerns are valid, and an important point to make is that no
matter how long our families have been here, we all moved here at one point or
another. To assail our neighbors as though they are enemies is moronic. It is
even stupider to toss around S.O.S. as an impenetrable electoral victory.
Instead, the point should be made that careful development and planned growth
is in the best interest of everyone. Environmental and urban planning are not
lunatic gestures but strategies for the health and well-being not only of this
city but this area and all its citizens.
The mistake here might have been that although closing the Southwest Parkway
is reasonable as a symbolic gesture, in reality it is not practical. The idea
was never to pit inner city residents against residents in developing areas.
The debate became the tree-huggers against the average citizen when it should
have been about where, how, and why we should build roads — roads that we all
pay for and roads which provide a service for us all.
(Austin should also have more elaborate bicycle paths. The last two decades
have seen precious little done to make Austin a more bike-friendly city. Having
paid for the Circle C Veloway does not strike me as achievement enough in this
direction.)
Another crucial mistake was that neighborhoods, from the very beginning,
should be involved in planning on issues that affect them. This is true if it
is a neighborhood connected by a parkway or an inner city neighborhood where
new development is going on. When the community is involved, as Nichols’
article this week on the 45th Street Triangle development illustrates, it is to
everyone’s advantage.
The articles in this issue amply illustrate the changes and growth within the
city of Austin as well as the growth that continues unabated around it. Over
the next decades the council and the community are going to have to show real
leadership and maturity involving imaginative answers to difficult questions
and complex issues. Resorting to the old rhetoric, name-calling, and
self-righteous strutting is just going to make the situation worse. Together,
as a community, we must decide what kind of inner city we want and what kind of
growth we will encourage within our city and around it. Austin is changing, and
with wise leadership and an alert citizenry we will not lose the personality we
so treasure as our city goes through this clothes-ripping, voice-changing
growth spurt.
Our city grew by at least
one additional citizen this week, as the Chronicle is just pleased as
punch to announce the birth of Wyatt Heard Corder, son of Chronicle
senior account executive Jerald Corder and occasional Chronicle artist (and fulltime Texas Monthly staffer) Lisa Kirkpatrick. The future
Chron staffer was born at 7:17pm, Tuesday, February 11 at South Austin
Medical Center, and weighed in at 9 pounds; mother, baby, and father are all
doing well. With much love and fanfare, we welcome this latest addition to our
family.
Next week: the Musicians Register, tons on SXSW, and the Austin Music Awards,
and lots of other neat stuff.
This article appears in February 14 • 1997 and February 14 • 1997 (Cover).