by Louisa C. Brinsmade
Twenty-two people can change the world. Or at least the small world of Austin.
That’s the goal of the Citizens’ Planning Committee, a group put together by
the city council to look at Austin’s urban planning process, or lack thereof.
Since their mandate began a year and three months ago at Councilmember Jackie
Goodman’s urging, the CPC, a dangerous mix of environmentalists, developers,
urban planning hacks, neighborhood leaders, and city commission leaders,
emerged, limbs intact, with the beginnings of a plan of action. It’s a 12-point
program (see sidebar) that seems to make sense of the messy confrontation we
call development in Austin. With that beginning, the CPC members — all
volunteers by the way — went out into the community to develop actual changes
in policy and process, which are scheduled for presentation to the council by
January 31. The name of the game is “implementation,” CPC members say, and if
that is accomplished, theirs will outdo every other “master plan” created for
Austin. Maybe you weren’t aware this was even going on — but you can bet your
neighborhood association does. The 22 CPC members are divided into six
subcommittees, in the areas of:
* development process;
* linkage of land use and transportation;
* urban core;
* neighborhoods;
* intra-government cooperation;
* parks and environment
These subcommittees are working on specific recommendations for the city
council. To help them with ideas, they’ve recently asked the council to form
several task forces with interested citizens and city staff. Things are moving
apace, and the council seems willing, almost thankful, that someone’s taking
charge of this mess.
The CPC made their first progress report to the council at a work session on
November 29. Committee member Darwin McKee, who is also chair of the city’s
Water & Wastewater Commission, outlined the city’s problems with the
development process. Pointing to a chart, McKee noted that in its current
state, the process is: 1) the result of decades of evolution; 2) fragmented,
with geography separated and information isolated; 3) unpredictable; 4)
repetitive, since all projects involve rework; 5) lacking in communication; 6)
confrontational; 7) rooted in distrust.
“The history [of the development process] is based on a case-by-case basis.
It’s unconnected and leads to a cumbersome and complex process,” says McKee. He
adds, “For example, a person starting out would need to get 63 permits or
authorizations to get through the process. Overall, there are 49 sections of
city and 12 departments that impact the development process. Our goal is to
reduce that to a point where persons involved in development can have a
reasonable way to get through that process.”
When McKee and the other CPC members talk about smoothing out the development
process, however, they’re not just talking about meeting developers’ needs. The
picture is a lot bigger than that. Their goal is also to have an overall
comprehensive plan for land use in Austin. That will require an overhaul of
several city codes and regulations, including the land development code, the
development process, and permits and fees. A plan as big as the one the CPC
envisions will also include building a model for land use in each sector of the
city, with mixed-use development, transit, pedestrian and
non-motorized-friendly designs, and preservation of Austin’s inner-city core
and historical neighborhoods all a part. The CPC is even advocating fee and tax
abatements for downtown and East Austin, and wants more leniency in the code
for redevelopment projects in those areas. Transit planning just by itself is a
huge part of the move toward a “sustainable compact city,” says Heimsath.
Although he won’t commit his whole-hearted support to Capital Metro’s light
rail proposal as is, he says he sees it as “a tool we need to look at closely.”
As for other transit methods, Heimsath takes the modern urban planners view:
that highway overbuilding has to stop, and our focus as a community must shift
to accommodate public transit and non-motorized pathways. (See story on the
state of Austin transportation on page 26.)
Many of the CPC’s recommendations in their 12-point (that’s point, not
step) program are understandable in light of Austin’s sprawling growth
patterns, and much of it is palatable to even the most jaded of our community.
But none of the CPC recommendations will be quite as fraught with controversy,
gnashing of teeth, and infighting as the one dealing with neighborhood power.
Along with streamlining the development process, the CPC wants to, as they
say, “empower” the neighborhoods. Part of their recommendations, and the focus
of the subcommittee, is to create a better neighborhood representation
structure, and to give legitimate neighborhood associations the authority to
make the call on development in their community. Right now, anyone can register
their group with the city and become a neighborhood association, despite
overlapping territorial boundaries. This causes confusion when opposing groups
claiming the same neighborhood come before the Planning Commission and the city
council. In January, the CPC will recommend that a neighborhood association
data base be created, and that city staff sort out all of the current
registered groups to determine which ones really represent the majority of
residents in their area. At that point, the CPC will recommend the creation,
within each neighborhood, of an overall land-use plan supported by the
designated neighborhood association, with city staff liaisons, to be ratified
by the city council.
The neighborhood plans would have to be adhered to by developers with
proposals for projects and by the associations alike. Changes in the plan,
supported by the developers or the associations, would be hard to come by,
especially if a development fits into a plan’s land-use patterns. The CPC wants
a process that’s inclusive, where all the “stakeholders” — i.e. neighborhoods
and developers both — “share accountability” for what happens in a given
area.
Such plans will be built from what Heimsath calls a “community design
charrette process,” which he defines as an “intense collaborative design
session, used to evaluate different alternatives and development design and
plans to capture the shared vision.” The charrette “visioning” program, which
will come up with ideas for how to design a land-use plan for a neighborhood,
is being led by Kent Butler, the director of the University of Texas’ regional
and community planning department. Butler is currently running a design
charrette program through mid-January. (For all you urban planning and
neighborhood association junkies, see the end of this article for a number to
call for info.)
The structure for such an empowerment of neighborhood groups is enormous, much
larger than the one we now have, and will require city staff support and the
eventual creation of a “community council” to oversee and approve the
neighborhood plans as part of a larger regional plan. The regional plan, since
it will require the cooperation of several organizations and governmental
bodies outside the city limits, will likely take years to develop. At this
time, however, and into the near future, says Goodman, the Planning Commission
will have to serve that function until such a regional plan can be worked out.
Reception to the CPC’s plan has been somewhat cool for at least one regional
organization — the Austin Transportation Study committee chose not to get
behind the CPC’s 12-point program — but Goodman, who is on ATS, says she’s not
giving up. “We need to talk regionally. I wanted to get the ATS to adopt the
[CPC’s] plan, because they’re an existing regional body. In their next meeting
(February 12), I’m going to ask them to adopt just points 11 and 12.” Those two
points deal with the City of Austin helping outer communities coordinate
growth, and having taxing jurisdictions and governmental entities coordinate
planning.
That’s a lot of public hearings — to get the neighborhood input, and the
regional input necessary to build this structure — and that’s exactly the
point, says Goodman. “We want neighborhoods to have power. The developers have
a legitimate gripe, but we don’t make that better by taking public review out
of the process. Otherwise, we’re going to ferment confrontation.” As Heimsath
told the mayor at the work session when Todd raised the issue of some
neighborhood leadership excluding developers from presenting projects at
association meetings: “As the current Hyde Park president, I can assure you,
there is another frustration equal to the one you described, and that is, all
the work and time that’s gone into an organization like ours, in planning and
having good standards and reasonable solutions, and unfortunately no chance to
say anything about it to anybody until the very end of the process. So,
sometimes, perhaps we sound like we’re complaining, but that’s because we had
essentially a system that never allowed us to interface, in any way, until it’s
too late.”
The group is basing this model of neighborhood representation and power on the
one used in Portland, so highly touted by urban planners. (For details, see
The Austin Chronicle Vol. 15, No. 16, Dec. 15 cover story on the
Portland model by Mike Clark-Madison.) Although the CPC’s plan appears to have
the full support of the city council, a highly developed neighborhood system
here, with the authority to call the shots, is not looked upon favorably by
all. “There are some rumblings among developers who are doing fine under the
current system,” says Heimsath, “but they’ll have to explain to the public why
staying where we are is better.”
Developers who like the status quo are not the only source of opposition to
neighborhood empowerment — our local daily has problems with the idea, too. In
an October 29 editorial, the Austin American-Statesman decried the
bureaucracy that will likely be created by a highly intricate neighborhood
system, and the cost incurred from city staff hours working on neighborhood
issues. Goodman commented that the editorial stance taken by the Statesman
does not please her, but that she understands their concerns. “There’s been
opposition from neighborhoods to some of the language in the draft of the CPC.
Cecil Pennington [chair of the CPC’s neighborhood subcommittee], did a trial
run on how a neighborhood association would be organized, and got into
overkill. But we’re confident some of that can be easily changed.” Over the
next few weeks, Pennington told the council that his subcommittee and the
entire CPC membership will continue to hear comments from neighborhoods,
community leaders, and organizations about what they’d like to see in the CPC’s
recommendations to the council in January.
Staying where we are is not an option to members of the CPC. As Heimsath told
the council, “Austin needs practical and pragmatic solutions. The only interest
we have is in getting these things implemented so that the real world makes use
of them. The consequences of not having these implemented, to heck with my
volunteer hours, is we have decisions being made now and in the near future
which are going to be either good decisions based on choices that we benefit
from, or else we miss the boat. And Austin will go down the path of many, many
American cities where the inside city is flat or craters, and the outside
perimeter rings have more growth than they know what to do with. That pattern
is already here, and we must take active change now to work on it.” n
This article appears in December 22 • 1995 and December 22 • 1995 (Cover).