Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Most of those people are now living and will be gone because: 1) they found a larger house in the suburbs, 2) they are retired and want to downsize, or 3) they cannot afford the property taxes on their fixed incomes.
For many middle-aged and senior white homeowners in Central, East, and South Austin, it's option #3. And many of these homeowners are too ashamed to say the truth, no one wants to say that they cannot afford to live in the neighborhood anymore.
I've always thought the US is sort of schizophrenic when it comes to owning property. I mean, we say we "own" it, but really, with property taxes the way they are, and with the mono-culture that you get when you buy into a bedroom community for all of the usual reasons (perceived school quality, but most of all-price), who REALLY owns their house, and for how long and to what end? Why would anyone even WANT to own a house in a neighborhood where everyone is there for much the same reasons, after your membership in that "club" has been revoked?
The reality is that in this country, you move on once you've spawned and your income earning potential is done for. Austin is for the young and the vibrant; vibrant financially (rich) if not actually vibrant creatively or intellectually. This is an ongoing trend remarked about in all large US cities these days.
If you want to live and then die in the same house you were born in, you need to live in an older, traditional society or WAY out in the country, maybe. That's not Austin or even its suburbs and it never has been, nostalgia aside.
PS, I don't get the "white homeowners" part of your comment.
Actually, I sell all over the place, from Crestview to Killeen to rural properties. And own a house in Barton Hills where we lived while raising our kids - it's now when it's not a rental property our "house in town".
Nice try at avoiding what you want to do, which is, as you describe it, to get all zoning removed so you can buy a house in a neighborhood of single family homes and change the neighborhood into what you'd prefer to live in, with no regard for the other people who live there.
My objections, by the way, have nothing to do with Texas. They have to do with the kind of people who move somewhere and then try to change it into where they came from, whether that's California to Texas or Texas to California or city to the country (No sidewalks! No street lights! There's animals and they make noise and smell! The horrors! We must make this just like the city immediately!). It's an attitude that I have a problem with
Anywhere you can make a buck? I get it. But enough about you; apparently I'M trying to change my neighborhood into something I'D like! Oh, the horror: a man actually wanting to see some change that might meet the demands of the moment, which is, as it has been since 1839, Austin's growing population.
One of the great things about Austin is that, except for its stubborn reliance on only the automobile and (almost) only the one-family house, it has been quite accepting of new ideas and more tolerant than most anyplace else in Texas, a notoriously conservative state. THAT'S what makes it AUSTIN, and that's what makes it a great place in which to live. I LIKE it here, in many ways more so than long ago when i moved here. It's more cosmopolitan (NO one EVER moved here for the great jobs, back in the day) and that means there are more different kinds of people bringing all sorts of ideas, some of them workable and some of them totally whacked, to this town. Traffic comes along with that, as well as higher house prices and better groceries. I'll take all of it, even if I do miss The Stallion. That food was killing me anyway.
Nope, just I have friends all over the place and I've been in the area since 1969 so I've watched a good deal of it being built and that knowledge shows when people are looking to buy or sell.
And if you think that Austin is very accepting of new ideas and more tolerant of them than most places (I've got news for you, having lived in various parts of Texas from rural to urban, it's not really that different, all stereotypes notwithstanding), and find that it isn't accepting of those two specific ideas, had you considered the possibility that those two specific ideas are so bad for this area/culture that even Austin can't encourage them?
I'm not against change, I'm just against change for change's sake. It needs to be carefully considered change, not throwing out the old just because the new is so, well, NEW.
Nope, just I have friends all over the place and I've been in the area since 1969 so I've watched a good deal of it being built and that knowledge shows when people are looking to buy or sell.
And if you think that Austin is very accepting of new ideas and more tolerant of them than most places (I've got news for you, having lived in various parts of Texas from rural to urban, it's not really that different, all stereotypes notwithstanding), and find that it isn't accepting of those two specific ideas, had you considered the possibility that those two specific ideas are so bad for this area/culture that even Austin can't encourage them?
I'm not against change, I'm just against change for change's sake. It needs to be carefully considered change, not throwing out the old just because the new is so, well, NEW.
I wish you'd quit talking down to me, as if you have some special insight or experience. If you do, just say so; it ain't because you've been here a few more years than me or because you have a horse.
I think if we look back at Austin BEFORE it started taking it's urban planning cues from Southern California auto culture, you'd see that Austin had a compact downtown, tall buildings and streetcars and their associated suburban districts which now make up Central Austin. Furthermore, I don't think there is anything "organic" or "native" about the heavily zoned one family subdivision. It's a creature of various business interests, especially the homebuilders and auto dealers that dominated Austin politics for so long.
It's a new day and a much larger city with much more diverse interests. Not everyone wants to spend two hours a day cooped up in an expensive, environmentally questionable personal vehicle. Those that do pay a heavy price in lost time and money and isolation. One of these days, I don't know when, Austin's political forces will allow some diversity in types of housing allowed to be built by market forces on private property. I predict that, when this happens, the marketplace will respond most positively and you'll see that these "new" housing types will quickly sell out and at high prices, even as they take up less space than what's there now.
If you or your heirs still own land in Barton Hills then, you'll profit from the change, so there's that.
I wish you'd quit talking down to me, as if you have some special insight or experience. If you do, just say so; it ain't because you've been here a few more years than me or because you have a horse.
I think if we look back at Austin BEFORE it started taking it's urban planning cues from Southern California auto culture, you'd see that Austin had a compact downtown, tall buildings and streetcars and their associated suburban districts which now make up Central Austin. Furthermore, I don't think there is anything "organic" or "native" about the heavily zoned one family subdivision. It's a creature of various business interests, especially the homebuilders and auto dealers that dominated Austin politics for so long.
It's a new day and a much larger city with much more diverse interests. Not everyone wants to spend two hours a day cooped up in an expensive, environmentally questionable personal vehicle. Those that do pay a heavy price in lost time and money and isolation. One of these days, I don't know when, Austin's political forces will allow some diversity in types of housing allowed to be built by market forces on private property. I predict that, when this happens, the marketplace will respond most positively and you'll see that these "new" housing types will quickly sell out and at high prices, even as they take up less space than what's there now. If you or your heirs still own land in Barton Hills then, you'll profit from the change, so there's that.
You know, funny thing, for some of us it's not all about the money.
Good point. I suspect that Austin's tastes have matured a lot more than many want to admit, and many don't want to allow a market for more urban housing arrangements to get a toehold. In fact, many of those who don't are our neighbors; there is a widespread belief that having more neighbors will somehow degrade existing residents' quality of life, a sort of refusal to "move over a bit." We see this attitude in the interminable discussions on this board about "traffic," which is everyone's term for other people. If you want to know what traffic looks like, look in the mirror.
Anyway, I, for one, would love to see a "test lab" of a neighborhood. Allow an EXISTING single family neighborhood to go virtually zoning free, let's see what develops. It could be limited in area, but it would be interesting to see what denser choices could be built. With stores punctuating the residential "test" area to serve the people living there we might even see somewhat less need for car trips for everything; a real neighborhood with children and adults walking more, etc. Note: this would NOT be a la Mueller, which is a sanitary master planned auto-centric shopping center and hospital with some strange looking houses and cookie cutter apartments alongside it in the back 40. The proof of that is that I rarely see anyone walking there nor can I imagine wanting to, myself. It's that nice.
You say 'allow' as if The Man is standing in the way of some great demand for this. The only thing standing between you and what you want is zoning ordinances. If there was great demand to change them, chances are they'd be changed. That residents via their associations absolutely do not want what you want doesn't tell me that what you want is a bad idea, but that it's not what people who already bought here desire, and when you get enough of those people together you do unfortunately have to respect the voters at some point.
Quote:
which is a sanitary master planned
I enjoy your use of the word 'sanitary' here, presumably to mean 'without character' when Mueller is the closest thing Austin has to what you described - though you've apparently never spent much time there, since you don't think it's "a real neighborhood" with "children and adults walking more."
It's quite clear that what you want is a dense, urban environment. That is the only way to get everybody walking everywhere (enough to satisfy you, anyway). You can plan all you want and zone all you want and put in all the apartment buildings you want, but there is no way you can have an entire community in Texas that won't need cars for anything. You can reduce but not eliminate and that's what Mueller does: I'm sorry it's too "auto centric" for you but the entire place was built with a cap on the number of car trips that would permitted in and out of it. If you lower that number too much, nobody will live there because we can't all work down the street. Mueller also has to adapt to the failure of Prop 1.
Mueller may not be perfect but it is at least connected to reality. I spent a long time in NYC and I enjoyed the walkability. To show up in Texas and insist that we emulate the density of a place with a population eight times ours isn't left, right, or radical; it's just fanciful, even for the Internets.
Says the woman whose only connection to current-day Austin is her rental properties and yearly tax bill. Yeah, it has nothing to do with money.
And, as has been pointed out to you before, and not just by me, you have NO idea how much time I spend in Austin or how firm my connection to it is. And if you're reduced to this kind of ad hominem "argument" then you must not have a very good one.
Is this supposed to be a deal killer? Houston is more innovative than Austin is, in certain respects. And it has more walkable districts and neighborhoods than one might expect when we hear that it has "no zoning." Austin's smugness can be tiresome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquitaine
You say 'allow' as if The Man is standing in the way of some great demand for this. The only thing standing between you and what you want is zoning ordinances. If there was great demand to change them, chances are they'd be changed. That residents via their associations absolutely do not want what you want doesn't tell me that what you want is a bad idea, but that it's not what people who already bought here desire, and when you get enough of those people together you do unfortunately have to respect the voters at some point.
I enjoy your use of the word 'sanitary' here, presumably to mean 'without character' when Mueller is the closest thing Austin has to what you described - though you've apparently never spent much time there, since you don't think it's "a real neighborhood" with "children and adults walking more."
It's quite clear that what you want is a dense, urban environment. That is the only way to get everybody walking everywhere (enough to satisfy you, anyway). You can plan all you want and zone all you want and put in all the apartment buildings you want, but there is no way you can have an entire community in Texas that won't need cars for anything. You can reduce but not eliminate and that's what Mueller does: I'm sorry it's too "auto centric" for you but the entire place was built with a cap on the number of car trips that would permitted in and out of it. If you lower that number too much, nobody will live there because we can't all work down the street. Mueller also has to adapt to the failure of Prop 1.
Mueller may not be perfect but it is at least connected to reality. I spent a long time in NYC and I enjoyed the walkability. To show up in Texas and insist that we emulate the density of a place with a population eight times ours isn't left, right, or radical; it's just fanciful, even for the Internets.
"The Man" won't even let the market see if there IS any demand for a "big boy" city. Unless, of course the thing is master planned to death by over educated urban planners and civil engineers. And yes, Mueller is what you get. It's simple; you can plan 'til the cows come home, it still looks like a half-deserted shopping center with some houses stuck off in a corner of the parking lot. I have yet to see the first person walking from the hardware store (Home Depot) to the grocery store (HEB) for lunch when I pass through there in my car once a week. And I know I never will; it's obviously a poor simulacrum of a city by someone who studied about them in college or something.
I'm no libertarian, but Austin could stand to lighten up on this subject.
You say 'allow' as if The Man is standing in the way of some great demand for this. The only thing standing between you and what you want is zoning ordinances. If there was great demand to change them, chances are they'd be changed. That residents via their associations absolutely do not want what you want doesn't tell me that what you want is a bad idea, but that it's not what people who already bought here desire, and when you get enough of those people together you do unfortunately have to respect the voters at some point.
I enjoy your use of the word 'sanitary' here, presumably to mean 'without character' when Mueller is the closest thing Austin has to what you described - though you've apparently never spent much time there, since you don't think it's "a real neighborhood" with "children and adults walking more."
It's quite clear that what you want is a dense, urban environment. That is the only way to get everybody walking everywhere (enough to satisfy you, anyway). You can plan all you want and zone all you want and put in all the apartment buildings you want, but there is no way you can have an entire community in Texas that won't need cars for anything. You can reduce but not eliminate and that's what Mueller does: I'm sorry it's too "auto centric" for you but the entire place was built with a cap on the number of car trips that would permitted in and out of it. If you lower that number too much, nobody will live there because we can't all work down the street. Mueller also has to adapt to the failure of Prop 1.
Mueller may not be perfect but it is at least connected to reality. I spent a long time in NYC and I enjoyed the walkability. To show up in Texas and insist that we emulate the density of a place with a population eight times ours isn't left, right, or radical; it's just fanciful, even for the Internets.
I'd like to add that when living in a neighborhood of single family homes (Barton Hills), somehow I managed to walk to the grocery store (Whole Foods at the time, then Sun Harvest when Whole Foods moved), book store, video store (do those still exist?), restaurants, other shopping, even to Target and the bus stop and the movie theater! I did drive to Whole Foods and Book People when they moved down to 6th Street, but that took me all of five minutes at the time, and it doesn't take a lot longer that now, and there are many more places to walk to that have opened since then. All without destroying the neighborhood of single family homes. There are plenty of apartments in the area, though not in the neighborhood proper, and now condos looming over the Broken Spoke (damn their eyes), but the single family neighborhood that predated all of them including, in some cases, the Spoke (which opened up pretty much at the same time - it opened up 5 years after my house was built) is still there and houses in it are still selling for a pretty penny because the demand for that kind of neighborhood close to downtown is still high, because many people are not interested in living in the kind of controlled urban environment that you would prefer.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
