Hey, who would win in a wrestling match: Capitol View Corridors, or God? Trick question — Capitol View Corridors are God. Okay, maybe I’m kidding just for the sake of an oblique reference to an American classic, but they both do a bang-up job hanging out all invisible up in the sky just waiting to cold-cock any enterprise of man that…
Can Austin’s Bike-Sharing Go Dockless Without the Entire City Losing Its Mind?
Earlier this month, a former mayor of San Luis Obispo, California, wrote a letter to the editor of that town’s newspaper in which he felt it perfectly acceptable and cool to describe a proposed bikeway as a “gigantic urban rape.” “Yes, rape!” Ken Schwartz wrote before graciously elaborating, “No other word would be proper. The rape will not…
Capitol Complex Master Plan’s First Phase Brings State-Sponsored Urbanism to Downtown Austin’s Dead Zone
I’ll start by staking out a risky position for a blog like this: Downtown Austin is a pretty good place. Compared to, say, the moribund central business districts of Dallas or Houston, Austin’s original 179 blocks are, for the most part, a thriving patch of round-the-clock city life. Well, for the most part. But once…
Austin’s Rich History of Getting Mad at Skyscrapers Begins At Norwood Tower
A few months back, downtown Austin’s changing skyline went viral. A photographic comparison from roughly the same vantage point demonstrating the building boom over the past decade bounced around Twitter and Facebook and Reddit for several weeks, often accompanied by sneers and jeers from cats who pined for those sunny slopes of ten years ago. Never mind…
Two-Way Conversion on Colorado Street Hits a Speed Bump
Call me a nutty guy, but for my money, there’s no greater production house for entertainment than local government. Besides being free, which is nice, the spectacle delivers pretty much the same ballgame as national or state politics sans the escalating moral depravity you’ll often find as you scope up to those levels. Just like…
Is Downtown Austin Bike-Friendly? Not Quite, but We’re Getting There
People tend to make a couple of wild assumptions when anyone voices support for public investment in bicycling infrastructure. No, bike advocates do not necessarily want you to completely replace every single car trip in town with one powered by pedals. It’d be nuts to expect all the state workers who live in Buda to opt…
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