Texas Skyline Ratings: Austin (Houston, San Antonio: live in, residential, office)

[AlGreen]

Originally Posted by LeoZ

Blasphemy! Frost Bank Tower is easily my favorite downtown building right now! LOL I just wish they built it about 100 or so feet higher than they did; a building that cool deserves to be more imposing..

i just don't like the crown. it's too oversimplified. the rest of the building looks so inspired, but then it appears that they just got lazy when they got to the top lol. and i don't like the frost bank symbol being on there either.....but yes, it would look better if it was taller

[AlGreen]

the TMC is definitely huge (its own mini-city), but i certainly wouldn't put it above downtown austin. it's a pretty urbane looking district, but much of the architecture actually bores me a little

[LeoZ]

Originally Posted by AlGreen

i just don't like the crown. it's too oversimplified. the rest of the building looks so inspired, but then it appears that they just got lazy when they got to the top lol. and i don't like the frost bank symbol being on there either.....but yes, it would look better if it was taller

Fair enough. I'm sure you've heard of that crown being likened to "a giant pair of nose hair trimmers." XD But you know I kinda like it, actually. The triangular crown points for me almost make it look postmodernist or futuristic. And of course the silvery blue glass on the rest of it not only looks neat, but also reflects clouds and such. As for the Frost Bank logo...I agree, but what can ya do? Corporation's gonna want their signage prominent.

[TelecasterBlues]

Austin wins for style points...plain and simple. I agree that it needs more buildings to build up it's density, but the buildings that are already in place look perfect and everything seems to match and seem unique. I'd give it a 4.5 myself, it's probably my favorite skyline in Texas and might be able to out-style Dallas in another 10 years or so at the rate it's going. I think it's already a lot easier on the eyes than Houston, it's just a really nice and clean looking city.

Here's a cool slide show that gives you a year by year vantage point of just how crazy the skyscraper boom is/was. That's amazing considering it only took 4 years: "Austin's changing skyline during ACL" Austin Texas Photo Gallery | Austin360

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by LeoZ

Well of course not; Austin's a medium-sized city at best. Houston's a legit big city.

...

Texas already has big cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, etc. Austin can't hope to compete with any of those places (except maybe SA, whose skyline kinda blows) in terms of size

I don't know what universe you've been living in, but perhaps you should take a look at each major city's metropolitan area/division populations (2009 Estimates):

Dallas/Fort Worth metro: 6.4 million
Houston metro: 5.8 million
Dallas division: 4.3 million
--------------------------
Fort Worth division: 2.1 million
San Antonio metro: 2.0 million
Austin metro: 1.7 million
--------------------------
El Paso metro: .7 million
McAllen metro: .7 million

Easily divided into three tiers. San Antonio and Austin are extremely comparable in size. Texas only truly has two big cities: Houston and Dallas. Three mid-size cities: Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin. Two small mid-size cities: El Paso and McAllen... and then an assortment of small cities.

[DANNYY]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I don't know what universe you've been living in, but perhaps you should take a look at each major city's metropolitan area/division populations (2009 Estimates):

Dallas/Fort Worth metro: 6.4 million
Houston metro: 5.8 million
Dallas division: 4.3 million
--------------------------
Fort Worth division: 2.1 million
San Antonio metro: 2.0 million
Austin metro: 1.7 million
--------------------------
El Paso metro: .7 million
McAllen metro: .7 million

Easily divided into three tiers. San Antonio and Austin are extremely comparable in size. Texas only truly has two big cities: Houston and Dallas. Three mid-size cities: Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin. Two small mid-size cities: El Paso and McAllen... and then an assortment of small cities.

I agree with your post but I want to update the figures to as recent as possible:

Major Metropolitan Areas & Cities:
Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (MSA): 6,663,224
Houston Metropolitan Area (MSA): 6,063,453
------------------------------------------------------
Large Metropolitan Areas & Cities:
Dallas Metropolitan Division: 4,325,997
------------------------------------------------------
Upper Medium Sized Metropolitan Areas & Cities:
San Antonio Metropolitan Area (MSA): 2,136,326
Fort Worth Metropolitan Division: 2,121,231
Austin Metropolitan Area (MSA):1,787,097
------------------------------------------------------
Lower Medium Sized Metropolitan Areas & Cities:
McAllen Metropolitan Area (MSA): 769,894
El Paso Metropolitan Area (MSA): 765,546
------------------------------------------------------
Small Sized Metropolitan Areas & Cities:
Corpus Christi Metropolitan Area (MSA): 418,753
Brownsville-Harlingen Metropolitan Area (MSA): 406,063

Source: Metro populations (Nov. 15, 2010) | Business First

As for this thread: I really love the buildings in Austin. They are very appealing buildings, and I just wish that Austin starts infilling more. By pictures Austin's skyline looks uniform in a linear way but in person its very spread out and there's massive swaths of surface lots between buildings.

Look at an aerial of Austin's skyline to get an idea of what I am saying. As far as comparing it to Texas Medical center it works out two ways, many people just think Texas Medical Center is a collection of hospitals but its not, its located in an area with lots of schools, A&M Medical College, Baylor Medical College, UT-Houston Medical College, Rice University, Texas Womens University, & Others are all concentrated within Texas Medical Center or right next to it (Thus the case with Rice University). That's a lot of students, and that's why in Texas medical center you do have things for entertainment, bars, restaurants, street retail, hotels (this is actually for out of town visitors though), housing, and the likes. I find it strange when people say that its just a bunch of hospitals, anyone who has spent any real time there during the day will see its got almost as much pedestrian traffic than Downtown Houston, but it has a younger population (students) that utilize the amenities within Texas Medical Center.

Comparing Downtown Austin to Texas Medical Center is a bit off the edge, Austin is taller, and probably has a bit more buildings but one thing Texas Medical Center schools Austin in is density. Look at the pictures of Texas Medical Center in this thread, its neatly and uniformly dense.

With Austin, in pictures it looks like one continuous skyline but in reality to anyone whose been to Downtown Austin, its really spread out. Large swaths of area between some of the buildings, however keep in mind that Austin is still a booming city. they have lots of infill plans, and I hope to see those surface lots disappear and become tall buildings.

Austin is heading in the right direction and its skyline is no where near complete yet. It's only going to get better with all the projects they have in store for their skyline.

Austin's Skyline:


^ As you can see, it looks beautiful but it lacks density. The buildings in Austin are very spread out from one another, but its starting to get a whole lot better as there's tons of development and infill connecting the buildings to one another with some other tall buildings.

[HtownLove]

lol, Danny you forgot the Centroplex. They have almost 400K people.
And the Golden Triangle which was near 400k but had a dropping population.

[FastFerrari]

The last couple of years has been good to the Austin skyline. Wish some of that would trickle down 35 towards San Antonio. Anyway I would give it a 6.5 out of 10

[Spade]

Originally Posted by HtownLove

lol, Danny you forgot the Centroplex. They have almost 400K people.

Over 600k actually.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Spade

Over 600k actually.

379,000 according to the 2009 census estimate...