This evening, the City of Austin hosted a town hall meeting to review the Downtown Austin Plan — the draft master plan for downtown Austin.
The purpose of the plan is to create a vision — and policy framework — for a vibrant downtown that becomes the region’s core for work, play, shopping, and living. The 90-page plan and 93-slide summary presentation (they are fascinating — get them here) include hundreds of ideas to improve downtown Austin. The ideas range from zoning and historical protections to transit solutions to requirements for store glass transparency.
To provide a quick overview of the very rich content, we have assembled a visual walk through of some of the most interesting content:
(1) The core and waterfront district is red — this is the area analyzed in the Downtown Austin Plan.
(2) Even without active regulation, emerging land use patterns have effectively segmented downtown activity. In this diagram, pink represents the core employment zone; blue is commercial, entertainment and convention; and orange is residential. The dotted areas are pedestrian priority zones and the diagonal hatches represent sites with development opportunities.
(3) This heat map shows likelihood of redevelopment. Pink means that the site is pending redevelopment, green means near-term development is possible, yellow means long-term redevelopment is possible. Red means that development is unlikely. There are 62 properties > 1/4 block that can be redeveloped. These sites total 48 acres.
The Visual Tour Continues Here:
