Folks from the National Trust for Historic Preservation are in town for their annual conference, but before they retreat to their board rooms, they’re out and about – video cameras in hand – hoping to learn what Austin can teach other cities about growing old gracefully.
The project, called Austin Unscripted, will document answers to such questions as: What places define Austin, and what should Austin’s future look like? If those questions sound familiar, that’s because the city has spent a lot of time lately posing similar questions as it drafts the Austin Comprehensive Plan, an attempt to strategize how the city accommodates development and population growth over the next 30 years (see “Comp Plan Combo Platter,” News, Oct. 1).
All Austin Unscripted participants are filmed giving their answers, with results posted on YouTube, kind of like this guy here:
Participants also get a free NTHP membership and a comp plan survey to fill out, says NTHP’s Jason Clement, “with the hope that some of the stuff we talk about in loving places and recognizing what Austin needs to save will make its way into the process.”
Clement, a former Austinite himself, says that Austin is the perfect place to launch such a project. “This is the first time in this way that we’re really going out there and trying to engage an entire city about the state of preservation in that city and how people feel about it,” he says. “I knew that if we were going to try a fun and cool digital project, Austin was the place to launch it. It’s one of the most wired cities in the country, it’s one of the most creative, and it’s also, I think, one of the most passionate about itself. … People move there and are very protective of it. I’m protective of it, and I’m thousands of miles away.”
The NTHP videographers are interviewing people at scheduled meet-ups all over town (see below), with the project continuing through Monday. Then, the National Preservation Conference begins on Tuesday. “Once the conference starts, the goal is to engage the preservation leaders – the movers and shakers who are from all over the country, who represent everything from historic neighborhood districts to people who work in transportation and sustainable growth – to look at the Austin content and react to it and kind of say, in a way, how Austin could be a role mode for other cities that are growing.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a city growing as dramatically as Austin right now,” says Clement. “I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned there about how you can both be cosmopolitan, grow, and essentially grow up, but stay weird – kind of stay true to yourself. So the goal is to make this a digital case study … and to show how there’s a lot the nation can learn from Austin.”
Got something to say about what other cities can learn from Austin? Stop by one of the following meet-ups:
Sunday
PODER, 2604 E. Cesar Chavez, 2-4pm
Monday
Renaissance Market, Guadalupe (across from UT campus), 11:30am-1:30pm
Quack’s 43rd Street Bakery, 411 E. 43rd, 4-6pm
This article appears in October 22 • 2010.