As a few others already have, I'll make a pitch for
San Antonio, Texas, which I have long thought has the potential for a great urban center similar to the old urbanism of northern cities.
Yes, Austin currently has greater economic momentum, a slightly higher growth rate, and is sprouting skyscrapers in an impressive skyline building boom, but consider these scenes as contrasts in urbanism:
San Antonio, corner of Broadway St. and E. Travis St.:
(Imagery from Google Earth)
https://goo.gl/maps/4RQQF7WTQav
Older, decrepit buildings, narrow sidewalks, and no dedicated bicycle lanes in what is one of the more neglected corners of downtown. In a bygone era, streetcars ran down here. If anyone wants to put in a new downtown skyscraper, I know a nice available open parking lot right at this corner.
Austin, 3rd St. at Guadalupe St.:
(Imagery from Google Earth)
https://goo.gl/maps/Z8KtWsAhFt22
Clearly a taller building boom at the heart of the new skyscraper zone with wider sidewalks, new tree lines, and progressive bicycle lanes. It even gets the sunnier Google Earth street view. Yet, which is the more walkable urbanism that looks like a traditional walkable city? San Antonio has streets and corners like that in spades, but they are largely inactivated as the city admittedly does not have the economy of Dallas, Houston, or now even Austin. However, 20 years ago, tiny Austin did not have that economic potential or outlook either, and visionaries had hoped Austin's warehouse district might be densified in a way more resembling Barcelona than sunbelt Houston. Actually, I would argue downtown Austin is going off track, for its historical grid design used hierarchical streets and a system of service alleys to avoid breaks in frontage on major streets, but many of the newer developments have, due to their scale, abandoned that consideration and made blank wall service frontages and dead zones along major streets.
Ironically, Austin's more successful 2nd St., which makes a better urbanism than its dismal 3rd St., shares elements with what already long made downtown San Antonio idealistically appealing:
Austin, 2nd St. at San Antonio St.:
(Imagery from Google Earth)
https://goo.gl/maps/BrWBh2DB5482
San Antonio, Houston St. at St. Mary's St.:
(Imagery from Google Earth)
https://goo.gl/maps/QZ4Q3DHLtNm
Can we spot the similarities? More important for this thread, which has more of the urbanism of the north? Amusingly, what these two scenes both share in common are comparatively narrow streets especially given the heights of the buildings...there was a lot of consternation in Austin decades ago when the proposal was for actually narrowing the center city's street for more bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or dedicated mass transit lanes. San Antonians are now facing the same prospects as proposals are made to further close streets and redevelop others into proper boulevards.
Speaking of a narrow San Antonio street that could easily be more urbanistically than that it is, here is College St:
https://goo.gl/maps/E6LZBp1kNtm
Interestingly, San Antonio's peers are not Austin, Dallas, or Houston, but New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston. There are many obvious explanations for why the other Texas cities are ahead, but San Antonio needs to ask itself why it has for so long lagged behind those other colonial Southern cities.
Nevertheless, potential and current activation are not the same thing. Austin is currently active, while San Antonio is woefully behind. However, Austin does not have that much historically in place to work with--its downtown growth has already outgrown its original CBD and now lost warehouse district and is reaching into the inner suburbs. That is great as growth, but it also means the pattern more easily trends as newer, sterile design more often seen in the suburbs transplanted into downtown with podiums and a tower top.
San Antonio has a downtown largely frozen in time, with a few glaring demolitions made over the decades in aborted attempts at urban renewal. Surrounding this downtown core is a sea of low industrial zones and surface lots. Projected growth is for a million new residents within the next few decades, and while most of them may end up in the ever expanding suburbs, a better plan would be to direct much of that growth into this surrounding low density ring directly connected to downtown. Already large apartment blocks are appearing in this area and riverwalks have been extended into them while planners draw up master plans for the new urbanism of this zone. Sadly, a key part of proactively preparing for this near downtown redevelopment, a downtown streetcar system, was abandoned by cowardly city leaders after its primary cheerleader, mayor Julian Castro, was poached to become HUD Secretary in Washington.
The previously shown above scene of San Antonio's Broadway in a bygone era:
(Photo by
John Knight, #MS 26, John Knight Transportation Collection, UTSA Special Collections)
A greater mistake will be if these upcoming developments also abandon downtown urbanism for a transplanted, auto-centric suburbanism. Behind the low industrial ring are the inner suburbs, all uniformly gridded for 4-5 miles in every direction. In a previous century these were streetcar suburbs, though now they are today poorer inner city suburbs petrified of gentrification. More so than the economics holding downtown back are these fears of change, for protecting the status quo means to fall behind to inflation, depreciation, and deferred maintenance, thus further perpetuating blight and poverty. The economics will eventually play out given time as the overly subsidized suburban sprawl chokes on its own diffusiveness, but the protective class culture attitudes may not.
All the more pity, because this view of St. Mary's St. would definitely sell today, regardless of the automobile models:
(Photo by
Albert Schaal, #110-0D161, General Photograph Collection, UTSA Special Collections)
Oh well, a last urbanism vs. urbanism:
Austin, corner of 5th St. and Nueces St.:
(Imagery from Google Earth)
https://goo.gl/maps/ktHr3RWAcmF2
San Antonio, Dwyer Ave.:
(Imagery from Google Earth)
https://goo.gl/maps/EZFqsbJmhx52
The technology and construction techniques are neither novel nor complicated, so why is infill so freaking hard?