TA24-J F-Pages - Flipbook - Page 54
T
52 Texas Architect
1/2 2024
So Let’s Walk Instead
In the Southtown neighborhood of San Antonio, at the recently completed
Clay Street residential development, the developer StoryBuilt took a risk supported by its belief that new buyers would value their living experience more
than their cars. They took advantage of the incentive to build more densely
and designed a development that would support 16 single-family units on
a single acre. Buyers were o昀昀ered the option of a unit with front driveways
and private side and rear yards or a communal garden unit with access to a
remote parking area, meaning those residents would have to walk from their
cars through a shared garden space to get to their homes. “The risk paid o昀昀,
and the garden units sold 昀椀rst!” says Kristen Padavic, AIA, managing principal
of Padevic Design and former senior vice president of design with StoryBuilt.
In Austin, the highly successful Mueller and Domain developments were
designed with a mix of home types and a variety of nearby amenities, including shared park space and small to medium commercial retail and o昀케ce enterprises, resulting in a dynamic urban form. The activation of the neighborhood
puts eyes on the street, making it feel safe enough for the kids who will grow
up there to have some independence to roam unsupervised — something that
perhaps those over age 45 might remember from their childhoods but that the
majority of those under 15 know nothing about.
The innovative approaches to contemporary urban design adopted by
these projects require a major deviation from the current land development
code, often calling for entirely alternative and unique land-use designations.
A zoning change application can be a lengthy and costly process that is out
of reach for small businesses simply looking to set up shop and get going, the
impacts of which have far-reaching economic rami昀椀cations.
“As a young practice we struggled to 昀椀nd a small o昀케ce space in the neighborhood,” says Lucy Begg, AIA, co-director of Thoughtbarn. “We wanted
to live close by to where we worked but could not 昀椀nd any available commercially zoned spaces nearby.” Begg and her partner searched for a number
of years before an existing 6,000-sf space became available in a pocket of
commercially zoned buildings that were “grandfathered in” to their historic
East Austin neighborhood.
Opening spread Zoning
map of Austin
within the Clay Street development walk through a shared garden,
disconnected from vehicular storage, to arrive at their front doors.
Below Neighbors
OPENING IMAGE BY URBAN FORM, INCOLLABORATION WITH FOUNDER QUONG TRUANG, AIA; PHOTOS THIS SPREAD BY
ANDREA CALO
exas cities are facing a paradigm shift. Despite an impasse over the rewriting
of outdated land development codes, the glacial movement toward enacting resiliency action plans, and continued con昀氀icts of interest between arborists,
stormwater management, and transportation engineers over sustainable street
design, incremental, positive changes are taking place in our urban fabric, representing a glimmer of progress toward a brighter, more humane future.
Perhaps it took living through the isolation brought on by pandemic lockdowns
or witnessing the lack of a uni昀椀ed voice to express shared common interests and
coherent reasoning during recent leadership debates, or maybe it was the rolling
blackouts during the historic winter storms that have — excuse the pun — shed
light on the importance of social connection as a key component of resilient and
connected cities. Most of the urban forms of Texas cities are fundamentally 昀氀awed
and in need of a course correction. But how did we get so far o昀昀 track?
The sites of public social interaction and exchange we inhabit in the city
can be described as “third places” — a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg — as distinct from home and work (our 昀椀rst and second places, respectively). Third places are shared spaces within the built environment where
people of varying demographics, income levels, backgrounds, and perspectives
cross paths with little or no barrier to entry, including cost.
At one time, the presence of locally owned third places like diners, ice
cream parlors, and barber shops (so-called “mom-and-pop” stores) were a
defining characteristic of most Texas neighborhoods. However, since the
inception of divisive zoning ordinances in Texas, residential, commercial, and
industrial land uses have largely been segregated into distinct urban zones,
destroying many mixed-use neighborhoods in the process.
Land designated for residential use comprises the largest occupied area of a city
and greatly de昀椀nes a city’s urban form. Fueled by economic and population growth,
combined with a rise in individual car ownership and the establishment of the
Interstate Highway System, residential subdivisions have been platted further and
further from city centers in a succession of suburbs and exurbs. The place “where
everybody knows your name” is anecdotally familiar; however, relentless centrifugal
sprawl is the predominant urban form that has been realized in Texas cities. Topdown regulatory tools, along with often-archaic and discriminatory deed restrictions de昀椀ning urban form, have had the long-term e昀昀ect of eroding the vitality of
authentic third places and degrading the character of civic life in neighborhoods.
A resident of New Territory, P昀氀ugerville, or Frisco on a singular foray into
the nearby public realm may traverse a truncated cul-de-sac, schlepp alongside
the edge of a deserted neighborhood collector street with no sidewalk, navigate
across lanes of heavy vehicular tra昀케c, and endure the olfactory hostility of an
arterial commercial strip, weaving through acres of impervious asphalt — all
to pick up a bottle of milk. Let’s face it; it’s a less-than-ideal urban experience.
In the seminal book “Ladders,” Albert Pope, founding director of the Present Future think tank at the Rice University School of Architecture, refers to
these drosscapes as the unseen city, a low-density “cordon sanitaire” of voids,
designed to isolate and disconnect, and tenuously tethered together by the idea
of the central big-city shape.
Ironically, this decades-old urban development model was supposed to protect the health and welfare of citizens by improving access to clean, unpolluted
air; however, the legacy of its urban form is the single biggest contributor to car
usage and, subsequently, air-polluting carbon emissions, with 72 percent of all
car trips being taken to run quick errands or meet friends. Transformational
change often requires a market force, and thankfully an emerging generation
of homebuyers is expressing its preference for denser, walkable communities
where residents can live in a more environmentally sensitive way and feel connected to their neighbors — and they are willing to pay more for it.
