In 1978, journalists Bruce Hight and David Frink collaborated on seven stories in the Austin American-Statesman, published every day for seven days between May 8 - 14. The title of the series was "Downtown: On the Brink," and this week of warnings told the story of a declining downtown Austin -- highlighting both the early signs of its decay, and the more dire possibilities the city might face in the future if those signs were ignored.
The problems Hight and Frink identified were many -- traffic, crumbling buildings, bad sidewalks, declining downtown retail, and so on -- but perhaps the biggest . . .
