For 33 years, the City of Austin's Art in Public Places program has worked with artists -- some local, others national -- to create eye-catching works of public art around the city. Along with permanent installations like the variety of art pieces planned or already in place at our new Central Library (check out those glowing-eyed owl statues at the bottom of the page), ...
streetscapes
At RiverSouth, Austin’s South Central Waterfront Plan Takes One Small Step
By all accounts, Austin's only Hooters restaurant is pretty bad -- and that's even by Hooters standards, which means something's somehow falling through the cracks between the Sysco truck and the microwave. If nothing else, the joint is a fun reminder of the good ol' days of Austin when a restaurant about 2,000 feet from downtown got to have a parking lot roughly six ...
A Modest Proposal for Connecting Four Blocks in Downtown Austin
Remember when there weren't any major Austin condo or office towers west of Guadalupe Street in downtown? It's kind of quaint to look back on now -- I'm not old, but I'm old enough to remember the opposition to the 7Rio condo tower proposal at Seventh and Rio Grande Streets back around 2007, which eventually lost about half its height and became the SEVEN Apartments. Back ...
Congress Avenue’s Pocket Patio Transformation, Mapped
The annual PARK(ing) Day event creates public space in downtown Austin by converting, for a day, many of Congress Avenue's street parking spaces into temporary parklets. It's a fun time, but perhaps more importantly, the event serves as a reminder of how much space we've sacrificed to parking in the public realm of our most famous street -- space that, in many cases, can be ...
Colorado Street Goes Two-Way This Month in Downtown Austin
Have you enjoyed driving both directions on Fifth Street lately? Then you'll probably be stoked to learn that after some serious delays, the planned two-way conversion of Colorado Street in downtown Austin is nearly upon us. On July 18, the stretch of Colorado Street running north-to-south between Ninth and Cesar Chavez Streets will be adapted to accommodate traffic ...