Palmer Events Center
A Tale of Two Austins
RECEIVED Tue., Jan. 9, 2024
Dear Editor,
Now that Austin is doing away with commercial and residential parking minimums, what can we expect? To the extent useful mass transit is available, this is a solid approach. But in most of Austin, people need a car to live their lives. So without increased emphasis on mass transit (including numerous park-and-ride oases in the transit deserts) the trend will be toward two different Austins: one suburban, car-centric, often less well-off and with lower investment, seen as less important to the City; the other a higher-investment Downtown with several densified, redeveloping satellite neighborhood cores, better-off, where most the economic and political focus will be. This second Austin will tend to become a no-go area for people who need their cars to move around, just as the carless high-risers Downtown and in the nearby cores won't easily visit or work in the transit deserts. Extrapolation is always a guessing game, but who needs yet another axis of us versus them, when it can so easily be avoided? In new (or re-) development without parking, the developers save big. They should at least be required to help fund useful mass transit which will, after all, bring people to them.
Now that Austin is doing away with commercial and residential parking minimums, what can we expect? To the extent useful mass transit is available, this is a solid approach. But in most of Austin, people need a car to live their lives. So without increased emphasis on mass transit (including numerous park-and-ride oases in the transit deserts) the trend will be toward two different Austins: one suburban, car-centric, often less well-off and with lower investment, seen as less important to the City; the other a higher-investment Downtown with several densified, redeveloping satellite neighborhood cores, better-off, where most the economic and political focus will be. This second Austin will tend to become a no-go area for people who need their cars to move around, just as the carless high-risers Downtown and in the nearby cores won't easily visit or work in the transit deserts. Extrapolation is always a guessing game, but who needs yet another axis of us versus them, when it can so easily be avoided? In new (or re-) development without parking, the developers save big. They should at least be required to help fund useful mass transit which will, after all, bring people to them.
Dwight Martin