Quote:
Originally Posted by M1EK
Most of these retrofit-the-suburbs ideas are naive, and some are just scams. Spend some time driving around Avery Ranch, like I just did (had to run to Target to buy a camp chair to sit in the cafeteria at this suburban elementary school while my kid's in a chess tournament). There's just no way this can ever be retrofitted - we could dump billions here and not end up much better off.
Far better to slowly retreat from these areas and invest in areas that actually have good bones. But, of course, that'll never happen here - with us doubling down on the Red Line and sticking the urban core with nothing but buses.
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I don't know exactly what Dunham-Jones would say in response, but fleshing out the presentation a bit: some of it actually had little to do with retro-fitting and was about 'reinhabiting' old strip malls, which has some benefits, but is not at all about 'urbanizing'.
There was some discussion of tearing up developments and returning it to greenspace/wetlands, etc.
The retrofitting seemed focused on older inner-ring suburbs - I don't think she was arguing we could fix Avery Ranch. The presentation was tied to the South Austin Combined planning process, which I think does have some (perhaps limited) potential for retrofitting, along with the east side of 78745.
The other focus was on redeveloping old malls, of which there are some successful examples:
http://www.downtownbelmarapts.com/4/...wood-Colorado/
On the downside, most of the successful retrofits seemed to be TODs of one sort or another around light rail lines. In many ways it was a depressing presentation because it showed how far "progressive and green" Austin lags behind...