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When you think about it in isolation, our culture of commuting seems crazy. Imagine designing a system in which people live far from their workplaces, wake up e

When you think about it in isolation, our culture of commuting seems crazy. Imagine designing a system in which people live far from their workplaces, wake up every morning and drive en masse to their destinations, and then do the reverse in the evening, devouring huge amounts of natural resources in the form of energy and time in the process. You'd be laughed out of the room. And yet, here we are... Austin is currently developing a number of mixed use communities roughly of the New Urbanist school, usually a mix of 3-4 story condos/apartments and restaurants/shops. I'm hoping the trend continues. Here's more info on New Urbanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism

dkarl 17y ago
Where are they? I'm aware of developments like the Triangle and the Domain, but they feel like a love affair between plasticky high-end retailers and a captive audience of consumers. The yuppie d-bag quotient at the Flying Saucer was ridiculous last time I was there. I think the problem is that the Domain and the Triangle seem to be planned by the same MBA types who plan malls, so they feel like malls with housing attached for people who really, really like the mall. By contrast, I like the pedestrian culture on South Congress and even South 1st, even though those areas were designed for cars. I'm more optimistic about old neighborhoods evolving in dense, pedestrian-friendly ways than I am about synthetic neighborhoods having any significant effect. (Maybe it's just because I don't trust real estate developers.) On another note, living far from workplaces is a given if you want people to have reasonable job mobility and reasonable home stability. You need a public transit system so people can live ten years in the same place without being tied to a single, possibly crappy job for that long.

dkarl 17y ago

Where are they? I'm aware of developments like the Triangle and the Domain, but they feel like a love affair between plasticky high-end retailers and a captive audience of consumers. The yuppie d-bag quotient at the Flying Saucer was ridiculous last time I was there. I think the problem is that the Domain and the Triangle seem to be planned by the same MBA types who plan malls, so they feel like malls with housing attached for people who really, really like the mall. By contrast, I like the pedestrian culture on South Congress and even South 1st, even though those areas were designed for cars. I'm more optimistic about old neighborhoods evolving in dense, pedestrian-friendly ways than I am about synthetic neighborhoods having any significant effect. (Maybe it's just because I don't trust real estate developers.) On another note, living far from workplaces is a given if you want people to have reasonable job mobility and reasonable home stability. You need a public transit system so people can live ten years in the same place without being tied to a single, possibly crappy job for that long.