AFS Cinema
Good Call by Council on Villa Muse
RECEIVED Mon., March 17, 2008
To the editor,
In the matter of Villa Muse vs. the Austin City Council, I congratulate the council for refusing to release the Webberville land from its extraterritorial jurisdiction two weeks ago, enraging the developers and provoking a couple of suspicious letters to the editor in support of Muse [“Postmarks,” March 14]. I likewise congratulate Michael King for his column last week, in which he slices and dices the Muse proposal to perfection ["Point Austin," News, March 14].
I've just returned to Austin after five years in Italy and Hungary. I'm stunned and depressed by the ferocity of commercial development I see has occurred in the city and continues apace. Much of it, despite efforts by the city and others to redirect growth more compactly toward the center, is taking the form of more – and more reckless – suburban sprawl. Said sprawl is a sickness unto death that most European cities wouldn’t tolerate. It’s especially a sickness in the context of global climate change, or GLOCCH, as I call it, which demands of us now that we redesign and retrofit our cities to respond to the crisis as quickly as we can.
This will require an ever-increasing degree of coordination between urban planners and land-use planners in what is left of the countryside. Those dwindling acres must be saved not only as open space but as farmland, thus enabling cities like Austin to move toward self-sufficiency in food and other resources – a goal inherent in the long-term response to climate change and oil depletion.
It follows that the city must jealously protect what powers it has to control the use of land on its periphery. If the dubious Villa Muse development is to be permitted at all, it must, at a minimum, accept and abide by the city’s need to retain its authority in the ETJ.
In the matter of Villa Muse vs. the Austin City Council, I congratulate the council for refusing to release the Webberville land from its extraterritorial jurisdiction two weeks ago, enraging the developers and provoking a couple of suspicious letters to the editor in support of Muse [“Postmarks,” March 14]. I likewise congratulate Michael King for his column last week, in which he slices and dices the Muse proposal to perfection ["Point Austin," News, March 14].
I've just returned to Austin after five years in Italy and Hungary. I'm stunned and depressed by the ferocity of commercial development I see has occurred in the city and continues apace. Much of it, despite efforts by the city and others to redirect growth more compactly toward the center, is taking the form of more – and more reckless – suburban sprawl. Said sprawl is a sickness unto death that most European cities wouldn’t tolerate. It’s especially a sickness in the context of global climate change, or GLOCCH, as I call it, which demands of us now that we redesign and retrofit our cities to respond to the crisis as quickly as we can.
This will require an ever-increasing degree of coordination between urban planners and land-use planners in what is left of the countryside. Those dwindling acres must be saved not only as open space but as farmland, thus enabling cities like Austin to move toward self-sufficiency in food and other resources – a goal inherent in the long-term response to climate change and oil depletion.
It follows that the city must jealously protect what powers it has to control the use of land on its periphery. If the dubious Villa Muse development is to be permitted at all, it must, at a minimum, accept and abide by the city’s need to retain its authority in the ETJ.
Ray Reece