Quote:
Originally Posted by wwmiv
After all of that, I still think Austin will “feel” like a medium sized “city.”
Austin’s skyline may be tall and getting taller relative to its peers, but where Austin really falls short is mid-scale density in the neighborhoods around downtown. Only one can really be called densely urban (West Campus), but it is also largely transient. The rest are largely single-family in character and the density boosts are confined to corridors and capped in density between 3-5 floors and effectively even less due to compatibility standards. Austin won’t, to me, truly feel like a large city until some of these larger periphery urban developments take place (the stuff at Lamar and 290, the mega-developments along E. Riverside, and Broadmoor) and are fully connected via corridor development. Oh, and after the east side starts to reach urban escape velocity with taller multi-family buildings. A skyline itself doesn’t make a city feel large while walking the streets and driving around. It just leaves the impression of a large city in a photo from a far off vantage.
|
I agree with this. The only city in Texas that has anything like a big city feel for me is Houston, and that's because it has clusters of high-rises in almost every direction. Even then though, when you get off the highway and down to street level Houston doesn't feel like some kind of urban big city environment.
Even Dallas, which has a pretty big skyline, feels pretty small town immediately outside of downtown.
Suburban sprawl cities just never feel that big to me even though they can stretch on forever. It's not just the small scale of the buildings either, it's the visual monotony. Driving across Dallas can feel like you're repeating through the same loop of chain restaurants, car dealerships, and cookie cutter neighborhoods over and over again, and it just kind of becomes a blur. Compare to somewhere like Philly, which is dense even miles from the CBD. There's so much more visual interest and differentiation there.