Have you noticed that Austin’s street grid appears to exist outside the standard bounds of geometry? 12th Street jogs out at an angle once it crosses I-35, 28th Street is parallel to 27th Street — but not to 29th Street — and First Street intersects with Seventh Street (just past its intersection with Fifth Street). The man at fault for this jumble is William Sandusky, whose ...
urban planning
What Can We Learn From East Austin’s Chestnut Plaza Development?
Last year, TOWERS profiled the ongoing growth of Chestnut Plaza and the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) at MLK Jr. Boulevard and Alexander Avenue, located in East Austin at the MLK Jr. Station of Capital Metro's Red Line. Nearly 10 years after the rail station first opened, the area around it still has plenty of empty space waiting for growth, but some of those gaps should ...
Don’t You Dare Park Here
After six-ish years working in urban planning and design, I can confidently say that nothing gets people more riled up than parking -- not even traffic compares. This is especially true in Austin, as we frequently hash out the merits of parking-centric topics like parking minimums, parking podiums, event parking, and residential parking permits. The city's Residential Permit ...
The Future’s Bright for Downtown Austin’s Historic Brush Square
This month, the City of Austin's Parks and Recreation Department released its draft master plan for improvements to Brush Square, one of the three remaining historic public squares laid out in the original plan for downtown Austin. We've previously taken a look at the various design concepts PARD's presented during the master plan's public engagement process ...
What Does a Branded City Look Like?
It's both ironic and instructional that South By Southwest 2018 presented a panel on "Branded Cities" as part of its growing Cities Summit programming. After all, during the nine days in mid-March when the hydra-headed conference takes over our central city, the branding iron of commerce is hot in downtown Austin and beyond. Empty lots sprout into promotional tent cities ...
