The Scarbrough Building at Sixth Street and Congress Avenue is downtown's first skyscraper, completed back in 1910 when its eight floors were more than enough to earn that title. Despite being built in a era of astonishingly low car ownership per capita compared to current rates, the tower doesn't do much for the pedestrian at street level besides look pretty. Back then, ...
streets
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 the bush leagues, the players aren’t so wrapped ...
One Way Out: 5th and Colorado Streets Converting for Two-Way Traffic Downtown
It's not something many of us have to think about very often, but you might still be interested to learn that there's a growing movement against one-way streets in major cities all over the country. Originally built in dense urban centers as a method of ostensibly speeding up traffic flow by consolidating it in a single direction per road, traffic engineers and urban planning ...
After More Than a Century, What’s Changed on Congress Avenue?
Austin's main street might finally get some attention in 2017. Improvements for Congress Avenue have been in the pipeline since the passing of a city bond package in 2012, but we're only recently seeing some movement on the issue. The Congress Avenue Urban Design Initiative, which is currently conducting surveys for community outreach, should eventually bring some positive ...