The Triumph of Suburbia: Despite Downtown Hype, Americans Choose Sprawl (Houston: condos, crime)

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

I was curious about the walk score thing, so I ran the beta version (that looks at actual route, not distance) and found it somewhat interesting. My house scored a 53 (out of 100). After I started, this got a little long and was more for my edification than anything else....feel free to ignore ...

Yeah, walk score for my house is 49. That's a joke. The Trianon coffee shop and other stuff at Bee Cave/Westbank is about 0.65 miles. Hardly a prohibitive 12-18 minute walk, sidewalks the entire way. Also I'm a 6 minute walk to the Cap Metro bus that goes straight through Zilker park and into downtown.

We're also situated in between three Eanes ISD schools spanning K-12. (Cedar Creek Elemetary, Hill Country Middle, Westlake High). Being able to walk to all 3 schools is a huge reason people like our neighborhood, and it's why we moved here as well (though just for the high school years). I guess walk-score is oblivious to the demand for walk-ability to 3 exemplary rated schools.

Steve

[scm53]

Ran across this today. Does a better job than I did with Kohmet, making the point that:

People move back and forth between cities and suburbs in search of the most congenial modes of living for their various stages in life.

In my book Who’s Your City?, I identified five overlapping but distinct life stages that are associated with relocation decisions. The first is recent graduates (ages 20 through 29); the second is young professionals (30 through 34), who may be coupled but are still childless. Then there are families with children (parents aged 64 or younger, with children in the household), empty nesters (45 through 64), and retirees, who are 65-plus.

Some mayors, city leaders, and urban planners think they are in a zero-sum competition for these different groups. Some target young people, others families, yet others retirees. But it is much more complicated than that. It’s not as if you can stake your city’s success on just one demographic type.

Those life stages produce different sets of priorities, and different choices. The right solution for the Austin area, writ large, is to compromise between the choices. To make decisions that permit all of the lifestyle choices and not to favor one or two over the others. To equally share the disappointment and frustration across all interest groups.

[tildahat]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

Yeah, walk score for my house is 49. That's a joke. The Trianon coffee shop and other stuff at Bee Cave/Westbank is about 0.65 miles. Hardly a prohibitive 12-18 minute walk, sidewalks the entire way. Also I'm a 6 minute walk to the Cap Metro bus that goes straight through Zilker park and into downtown.

We're also situated in between three Eanes ISD schools spanning K-12. (Cedar Creek Elemetary, Hill Country Middle, Westlake High). Being able to walk to all 3 schools is a huge reason people like our neighborhood, and it's why we moved here as well (though just for the high school years). I guess walk-score is oblivious to the demand for walk-ability to 3 exemplary rated schools.

Steve

Walk score is pretty good in the aggregate for giving a starting point, I think, but as with any analytic tool, you need to drill down into the data to see if fits your particular needs. Also works better for differentiating between different more urban neighborhoods than in assessing what I'd call "strategically walkable suburbia". We just bought a house near Beckett and Convict Hill and its score was 30ish, but we'll be able to walk/bike to the library and Dick Nicholls park and pool literally by crossing the street in front of the house to get on the trail, we'll be able to walk to Kerbey Lane, Freddies. Three car trips to the gym each week will be replaced by walk or bike trips, etc. My 8 year old asked me the other day "Daddy, why are you getting in the car to go for a run? Aren't you just wasting gas and polluting the air just to go running?" Didn't really have a good answer for that. : ) Now I'll be able hop on the trail across the street.

Point being, walk score couldn't take into account my specific life right now, but I think in generally is a good starting point.

[Speaking more generally now, not specifically responding to Steve's post.]

Having said all that, I'm not defending car-centric development. I'd say 90+% of the houses within a mile of the one we bought would offer little or any of what I just listed, which is the problem with suburban development - sure, I was able to strategically place myself to avoid pure car dependence, but most houses that came up in the area we didn't even bother looking at due to not offering these options.

There's a tremendous amount of talking past each other in this thread. One thing that hampers these discussions is people meaning different things by urban/suburban. I tend to mean the grid and *form* of the area. Other people hear urban and think 'high rises' or alternatively 'lots of annoying hipsters'. Ultimately what I care about is non-car dependence. A house where I have to drive to do anything is not a home, it is a prison. And this becomes quite literally true for kids and the elderly. (And leads to the insanity of letting 16 year olds drive or people who should have their licenses taken away still driving because their kids can't bear the thought of basically making Mom a prisoner in her own home.)

But the thing is, you can have development that meets most of what people here are claiming only suburbia offers and STILL have it be walkable and transit supportive. We just don't do it in America. I used to live and work in England, and there are neighborhoods there that are derided as boring suburbia by English hipsters, but which are actually more walkable and transit friendly than the 'urban' neighborhoods most Austin hipsters live in. AND they have the stuff people here are claiming ONLY car-centric suburbs can provide. For example - we didn't own a car. But we didn't live in a big city, it was a town of about 70k. Take a right out of our house and you could be in the town centre in 5-10 minutes and have an 'urban' experience. But take a left and in 5 minutes you were in a park on the edge of town with a gym, pool, rec center, family friendly pub, 9 hole golf course, horse trail, etc. Another 5 minutes and you were in the countryside. And I mean countryside, not less-frequent strip malls and pod developments. Farmland; livestock wondering around. And these are walking times, not driving.

Point being you can have non-car-dependent development at a variety of levels of density and for various lifestyles. There is NO reason to make our neighborhoods car-dependent. That doesn't mean everything has to be a high rise. Even if you NEVER go anywhere on foot or by bike, if we make it easier for your neighbors to make that choice, you still benefit by cleaner air and less traffic. It's a win/win. I'll never understand why people in this country have such hostility not only to the idea of they themselves getting from A to B without a car, but the idea of OTHER people getting from A to B without a car as well, even when it would make THEIR car trip easier!

Anyway, I still have more to say on this, believe it or not, but am out of time for now. : )

[Austin97]

My neighborhood has a walk score of 9.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

Really?

Then why all the multitudes of $million McMansions & estates spreading all over the Hill Country & Lake areas?

"huge premium" over the 'burbs?

If you're talking about entertainment/arts/dining, then yeah...more of it is concentrated in the city core.

But many, if not most, suburbanites probably don't care to patronize noisy clubs to hear bad garage bands, drink in overpriced hipster bars, rub shoulders with hordes of drunken twentysomethings & gangbangers, or dine in overrated funky restaurants.
Some do, but driving an extra 30 minutes isn't a big deal if they want to bad enough.

To each his own, but leave mine alone.

But I agree it's a shame the working class families & individuals have been forced out of the central city by high taxes & real estate prices.

I think if you compare like to like you'll find that even all those lake Travis estates are bargain basement compared to what a similar place (similar build date and quality of construction and finish) would cost on Lake Austin close to central Austin.

Your image of what people can do in central Austin is entertaining, limited and incorrect, but entertaining. Thanks for the image.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

One thing that I can't justify in living in a high-rise type situation downtown is the idea of paying property tax for air. In a SF home, you're paying taxes on land.

In either a condo or a home your property tax is a calculation of land+improvements.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by Eastcoasting

Not in Austin but is 70 enough of a score to qualify?

08103 Camden | Walk Score

Here is an example of how fallible something like walkscore can be, Camden is consistently on of the most dangerous, murderous cities in the US. In this instance it should be a runscore.

That said, it's certainly cheap enough for the region!

Congrats on finding an exception.

Now go back and read my post.

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by Komeht

I think if you compare like to like you'll find that even all those lake Travis estates are bargain basement compared to what a similar place (similar build date and quality of construction and finish) would cost on Lake Austin close to central Austin.

Your image of what people can do in central Austin is entertaining, limited and incorrect, but entertaining. Thanks for the image.

Well, I've lived in an old duplex next to the fraternity house by Caswell Tennis Courts, in the old Ambassador Apartment house on 18th St. next to Guadalupe, in the apartment complex on South.5th one block south of Barton Springs Road, and in a house on Elmhurst near I-35 south of Riverside, plus an apartment on Manor Circle in East Austin.....so am pretty familiar with living around the "central core".

No thanks.

[mimimomx3]

Originally Posted by Komeht

In either a condo or a home your property tax is a calculation of land+improvements.

Yes, a condo has no land, at least not the high rise version. It's a shell game for bigger, more wasteful government. Cram more people (tax payers) on a piece of land...UPWARDS. It doesn't take a genius to see that you can wring more taxes out of a parcel of land by increasing the number of people living on it.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

Well, I've lived in an old duplex next to the fraternity house by Caswell Tennis Courts, in the old Ambassador Apartment house on 18th St. next to Guadalupe, in the apartment complex on South.5th one block south of Barton Springs Road, and in a house on Elmhurst near I-35 south of Riverside, plus an apartment on Manor Circle in East Austin.....so am pretty familiar with living around the "central core".

No thanks.

No one is recruiting you...y'all need to stop watching infowars...there's no conspiracy to make you be something you don't want to be.