The Austin Development Plan

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (18 download)

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Download or read book A Handbook for Complete Communities in Austin written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is no secret that the City of Austin, Texas is poised to grow. Just between 2016 and 2017, the Austin grew by an average of 151 people per day. By 2020, the City will be home to just under one million people, but only if its housing stock can keep up. The demand for housing in Austin is at an all-time-high, yet the housing inventory is falling behind. In other words, Austin is on the brink of an affordable housing crisis. In response, the American Institute of Architects' Austin Chapter engaged the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning to help develop a framework for "missing middle" housing options. The studio practicum, composed of 15 Master in City Planning students and two faculty members, completed a semester-long inquiry into how to incorporate the missing middle concept in Austin. In January of 2018, the class began their work with a visit to Austin to speak with local policymakers, neighborhood leaders, and community members. The field work was conducted at the tail-end of Austin's CodeNEXT process, a historic overhaul to the citywide zoning code. CodeNEXT was undertaken to provide relief for the City's housing issues, but it has been met with significant push back. Proponents of increased housing supply argue that CodeNEXT does not do enough. Opponents assert that these zoning changes could lead to unwanted changes within the existing neighborhoods. Research and analysis revealed that there was an opportunity to refocus the conversation about Austin's housing shortage around community values as opposed to zoning alone. The goal became to create an implementable framework for the City's overall goals for "complete communities." The concept of complete communities was developed as part of the City's comprehensive master plan, Imagine Austin, completed in 2012. In order to effectively plan for complete communities, the City of Austin cannot just look to citywide initiatives such as Imagine Austin or CodeNEXT and single-development projects. While both processes are necessary, there is a missing scale to planning--the district-scale. District-scale planning takes place in geographies that are large enough to contribute meaningful housing inventory, but small enough to retain a sense of identity. This handbook focuses on strategies at the district-scale, with the hope that they will serve as a framework for how the City undertakes future "small area planning" initiatives moving forward" --