Bonus Blog (this is too cool not to share)

So today I've been doing some more research/digging for my policy paper...yes, I know that I'm a little behind...the point it, that I came across the website with tons of videos about different aspects of Austin that I did not know existed. The website is a partnership between KLRU-TV, The Downtown Austin Alliance, and Action Figure. These have aired on KLRU at some point over the years, so some of you may have seen a few of these before. I hadn't seen any of these before today, and it gives a great inside perspective to many aspects of the city. Check it out when you need something besides Facebook to procrastinate studio. You're welcome.

http://www.downtownaustintv.org/

Inspiring Change

The lecture we had on Monday discussed the revitalization going on in Mart, Texas, and the techniques for change that have been employed. Previously, we watched a video with Jason Roberts about some of the Better Block activities going on in Oak Cliff. 

What struck me most about the discussion we had in class on Monday was the simple and blunt question that Paula herself answered..."What makes Mart special?....Nothing." 

There is this level of disintegration and decay in numerous small towns across the country, and nothing specifically identifies Mart as a target except for the people who initiate the change. It got me thinking, and if you've read any of my previous blog posts about my home town of Vernon, you'd know that I've been thinking about how to revitalize the once booming now ghost town that I grew up in, and talking about it with some hometown friends. 

Theres a lot to do in making these places that hold so much value and meaning to generations of people that is overlooked by the current generation. From my observations growing up in Vernon, there is a desire for change, and a constant buzz of complaint about how things are, but there is little spark for these desired changes to come to fruition. It's almost as if the improvements that are initiated are dismissed by many people because they think that they will not work or will not last. Take the movie theater in Vernon for example. 

Back in the old days (or so my previous coffee shop customers would tell me) there were 3 or 4 movie theaters all in and around downtown, and going to the movies was THE event of the weekend for everyone. The Vernon Plaza Theater is the only remaining theater in town, and it has been opened and closed and reopened and closed more times than I can count. Most of the time that I was growing up in Vernon, my friends and I had to drive to either Wichita Falls, TX (55 miles) or Altus, OK (35 miles) to go to the movies. Yes, I said I went to Oklahoma voluntarily. That was before I was enlightened. 

Vernon in the 1910s

 

With the most recent reopening of the theater though, the people that reopened it really committed to improving the existing conditions and turning it into somewhere people actually wanted to be. This has probably been the biggest community improvement for Vernon in my lifetime. People are increasingly supportive as they see that the theater management is committed to lasting, but I imagine that the only reason it remains open is the financial backing of the management and their determination not to give up on the project. In a town like Vernon, there is no possible way that the theater is packed every night, so I'm skeptical of the monetary profit gained. However, the social profit and the ability to offer the kids of the community something PG (haha) to do is priceless for a lot of people.  

Vernon Plaza Theater

Not that this is the Better Block Vernon getting started, or the Vernon Community Project imitating Mart, but it's the people like this that instigate change, however small or large it is, that inspire more change to follow. 

Planning Discussions with a Non-Archie

The backstory:

• In a previous post I talked about some of the proposed community improvements of my hometown. They touched on a lot of important issues affecting the vitality of the community. 

• I have this friend named Brooke. She is also from Vernon, and went away to college and now works in Vienna. She eventually will move back to Vernon to take over her family's ranching business. Her musings of late are about how to make Vernon a more attractive and revitalized place for young people so that moving back will not be so unbearable. 

Her questions to me: How do we start? How can we change it? How do we jolt a sleepy small town into the current millennium and improve upon the town without disrespecting the embedded history of the area? It is very interesting to discuss these topics with someone disengaged from my architecture bubble, and actually apply the things we've talked about in class to a place that is close to my heart. Figuratively, of course. It was such a treat to have an thought out planning conversation about such an improvement project for our old stomping grounds. Our Skype catchup session quickly turned into a discussion about the order of things. Say, hypothetically, that we have the funding to initiate a huge community makeover. What happens first? 

Well, we thought about what draws people to small towns like Vernon: schools and jobs. 

SCHOOLS

First, we'd improve the school system so that academically the district was very well respected, the athletic program would draw a lot of rising athletes, and the best teachers would be attracted to being a part of such an exemplary school system. With a mother and two aunts in the school system, I'm very much aware that this is no easy feat. There's a lot of work to be done in that field to bring Vernon up to a level that people would move there for the excellence of education and extracurriculars. Then, we'd need something for the parents to do while their kids were in our exceptional schools. 

JOBS

 How do we bring in new industry to Vernon? Currently, agriculture is the leading industry, with many people also employed at the state hospital, the power plant, the Tyson food plant, and the guar processing plant. How do we bring in a new type of industry, or something more to create jobs for this influx of people? Technological companies. Manufacturing facilities. Factories. Mass production to create maximum jobs. That's what were were thinking. There's plenty of space in and around Vernon for large-scale plants or businesses....but what draws businesses to a small town like that? 

• price of acquiring land ----- super cheap, it's a small town in northwest Texas, not downtown Austin
• connectivity for transportation of goods ---- we're at the intersection of several highways, in the middle of the pentagon invisibly drawn between Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Lubbock, and Abilene. 
• employees ----- there are currently many people unemployed in Vernon, plus the tons of people that will come there to put their kids in a top notch public education program
• customer base-----hmm, well not so great unless it's a product or service targeted at people in the Texhoma region or agriculture of the area

So, in theory, Vernon's not a bad place for a big business like Apple or Kraft or General Electric or Ford...or ♥J.Crew♥ ...and if we devised an incentive for the company to make such a big move, it could kickstart a whole wave of improvements. 

AND THEN BOOM

Once the large corporation moves in, it provides a demand for smaller support businesses for those people, more housing, and a wider range of amenities like restaurants, bars, gyms, coffee shops, retail, entertainment, etc. And once these people start pumping their money into the community, that's when we can make the beautification improvements and design communities spaces to integrate the new with the old... Renovate the schools to implement new technologies in the classrooms. Build a new football stadium for the stellar athletic program and to attract playoff games and events to be held in Vernon. Reenergize the old downtown area and renew the connection to the old western trails...Spark more interest in the Summer's Last Blast event held there every year to showcase classic and custom cars and motorcycles...emphasize Vernon's awesome automotive mechanic skills and shops...

Other suggestions from Brooke include city-sponsered activities for kids after school or on weekends. Horseback riding, a new drive in theater, bowling alley, art center, yoga studio, dance studio, improved parklands, skate park, etc. Basically anything to keep them busy with something besides sex, drugs, and alcohol---reducing the teen pregnancy rate and drug-related crime rate. 

It was really interesting to discuss with a non-architecture or planning major about the planning development of our existing hometown. 

A Drop in the Bucket

An article in the newspaper Community Impact talks this month about the challenges Texas faces with water. With an anticipated population double in the next 50 years, it's time to start making changes to ensure that generations to come will have access to enough water to sustain the population.

Austin gets its water from Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan- both at their lowest points since 1940. With the population ever expanding it seems that more and more people are depending on less and less.

Lake Travis

Texas has a plan outlining how water should be used over the coming years, including new regulations on agricultural water and surface water rights. The ideas are in place, however the funding is not. The state not funding the water plan sends mixed-messages to residents about the severity of the problem. Travis County Commissioner Karen Huber says, "We do not have a culture of conservation, and the public needs education to embrace it. . . It takes time to make culture changes, and we need to get started." Her statement rings true not only in relation to this issue, but also several other public issues of today. Our society in general is a selfish and change-resistant people, taking what resources we need now and leaving our mess for future generations to clean up.

As architects and planners I think we have an invaluable opportunity to affect change like this at a micro level. Not only can be be proponents of the conservation policies set for by the State's new water plans, but we can educate our clients and friends about the severity of the problem, and propose collection and reuse systems that can improve the problem at a individual level. Every drop counts!

Gentrification: A Rap

Watching the PODER documentary in class this week inspired me to do some digging on what else was out there about the gentrification going on in Austin and elsewhere. I stumbled upon this "docu-music-video" about Detroit by Invincible and Finale that actually inspired the videos we saw in class. Take a listen and a look.

samples of the lyrics: 

Condos remodel my old turf
For what it's worth, soul got left in the earth

...

Locusts and buzzards circle and hover above the
Abandoned houses shattered windows with the crooked shutters
Cross the street construct a cookie cutter condominium
Lining Woodward, it's the prime meridian
You divide the city and
In the hood, wonder why you pay two times the premiums?

...

Predatory planning
Eminent domain
Mowed down Motown

...

It's interesting to hear the voice of the displaced in Detroit that inspired the PODER East Austin videos that we saw in class. Later between rap verses, there are interviewed residents of Detroit that give a testament to different circumstances. The "prime meridian" of Woodward that is mentioned could be likened to I35, and the harsh dividing line it creates between the city and the hood. 

One woman says, "If the people are involved and they feel that they are respected and their ideas and their input is respected, you have quality development."

A girl in the video (7:30ish) talks about if she had access to all of the abandoned facilities in Detroit, she'd want it to be a community space, somewhere where the kids around can be involved in something positive and interactive.

The officials in the video talk about how they were able to reshape the projects, and how they can develop new economy that is "related to and connected to the communities in which they exist." 

This is something that I think the gentrifying efforts of East Austin could learn from. The new construction going on in East Austin is mostly condos, or offices and bars that are in not welcoming to the existing residents. It's like the new construction is internalized within a greater community bubble. I think that if we could make an effort to engage the existing community with the new projects, the East Austin area could lessen the severity of the changes and displacement going on. 

http://www.thesouthernshift.com/news/2010/01/gentrification-east-austin-16-year-old-young-scholar-gabriel-padilla-does-3-part-docume 

Small town kid

Talking about suburban vs. urban childhoods in class this week got me thinking about how my childhood in a small town compares to these other two typologies. I grew up in Vernon, a small town in north west Texas. I'd consider it a bubble of sorts, but not so much a homogenous bubble like I imagine the suburbs are. While my friends and I were rather sheltered from what went on beyond our town, there were a lot of different things going on within it. All 8.1 square miles of it.

Where the hell is Vernon, Texas? Yeah, that's what everyone says.

Here. Yeah, that's it.

I kind of imagine it as a miniature, less intense version of a city: there were the older, nicer blocks, the projects/slums where most of the minority population lived, the elderly housing neighborhood, the middle class neighborhoods, and the recently emerging McMansion-esque cul-de-sac all within walking distance of each other. I think while there were these differentiations, they were not the extremes of each type that I think of at the city scale.

I know what you're thinking. There's nothing to do here. You're right. The nearest movie theater was 45 minutes away in Oklahoma. Ew. No bowling alley, no mall, not even a Walmart until my sophomore year of high school. (It was a big deal people!) But there was a TON of open space. There are three intentional parks in Vernon scattered with antique playground equipment, plus a seemingly unlimited amount of open fields and lots and backroads on which to trespass and entertain ourselves. Let's be honest. Since there weren't a lot of legal kid-friendly activities to keep us in line, a lot of kids found alternative entertainment early in life. Perhaps the lack of development is partially responsible for a high teen pregnancy rate, constant drug busts, and lots of MIPs.

Interestingly enough, upon some googling of my home sweet home and if there even exists any planning documentation, I found that since I've been away at school, Vernon has introduced a Community and Economic Devlopment Initiative. This plan outlines some objective and priorities for the town, and the lack of youth activities is addressed as the 7th highest priority. Bout time. Other areas of priority include improvements for the water quality, the interaction between the community and local governments, bringing in more companies to create jobs, highlighting the western heritage as an effort for tourist attraction, and beautification. I'm really interested to see how this goes.

Vernon was occupied as early as the middle of the 19th century by Tonkawa Indians, and soon became a trading center along the Great Western Cattle Trail and Chisholm Trail. The origin of “Vernon” is still debated; it either came from George Washington’s Mount Vernon, or from a traveling whiskey salesman named Vernon Brown. Either way, Vernon was soon appointed county seat of Wilbarger County and the Forth Worth- Denver City Railroad came to the area in the late 1880s.

The town developed linearly along Wilbarger Street, with two nodes of activity at the two highway intersections along Wilbarger. One of these nodes is the Wilbarger County Courthouse and the now ghost-town like downtown, which is another priority of the development initiative. Most of the commercial spaces, retail and cultural facilities are scattered along the Wilbarger, and both north and south of this corridor are various residential areas. The eastern and earliest part of the town’s streets are in a neatly gridded pattern, based on the cardinal directions with Main Street running north-south, while the western part of the town makes a disorganized shift to a northwest-southeast orientation. The shift might have happened because of different routes from the town to the nearby Pease River, or perhaps it happened after the highways were put in, since the northwest-southeast orientation follow the curve of state Highway 287.

Ok if you've made it this far, I'm impressed. I've spent way to much time looking into this. That's all for now.

www.vernontx.gov/index.aspx?nid=160

Mo' bility

Yo'.

Check this out:

Public transportation has a huge impact on how a city is experienced by visitors and locals alike. The ease of mobility is important, and many cities lack an effective system for people to use to traverse the urban and suburban environments. Austin has made a couple of admirable attempts at providing transportation to the public, although there is still a long way to go before the dominance of the car is diminished. 

Austin traffic (youngmanblog.com)

As for the rail system, I personally don't know anyone who utilizes the light rail yet. The rail is still new, and still expanding, but there are obvious complications to putting a rail system in place when a city is already at an established density. Here's a map of the stations active now. 

http://www.capmetro.org/metrorail/stations.asp

There's also the Car-2-Go system that allows people to pick up and drop off cars only as needed. These nifty little cars are tiny enough to park anywhere, good on gas mileage, and come free of all of the responsibilities of car ownership. Apparently Bevo likes them too. 

Bevo likes these little guys too. Apparently. (theirearth.com)

Less obvious but still present is the Yellow Bike Project of Austin. YBP offers free bike repair and even free bikes to people who volunteer their time for the cause. A few points of their mission are to get more people to use bikes for getting around rather than cars, to increase safety for cyclists, and to provide accessible service for cyclists.

Austin YBP service HQ (atxbikeshowposters.com)

So back to that video up top that I wanted you to watch...

My studio professor sent us this clip of a new public transportation system in Germany. A similar but more widely explored concept, Mo' Mobility in Munich, offers a variety of options for the Mo' users to get around wherever, whenever via bike, car, bus, or rail. The ease of switching between modes of transportation makes this system really convenient and attractive.  And the best part? There's an app for that. :)

http://www.capmetro.org/

http://www.car2go.com/austin/en/concept/

http://austinyellowbike.org/

http://mo-bility.com/mo/home_.html

Capitol View Corridors

For anyone who visits or lives in Austin for any length of time, the "character" of Austin is an enigmatic quality that is so widely admired but so difficult to define. It's hard to put a finger on what makes Austin so special, so cool, so exciting, so addicting. Among the many qualities of the city that compose its character, one of the important elements is the Texas State Capitol building as the symbolic center of the city and state.

The Capitol View Corridor Overlay is a planning map overlap that defines protected views of the capitol building from several places around the city. I have been researching the Capitol View Corridor overlay for my design project, which is sited within one of the corridors. It's interesting to see which views are protected to the capitol, and think about what makes the view of the capitol so important that it controls future growth and development.

City and State View Corridors

a closer look

What are the view corridors like experientially? Why do they matter?

I think it’s great that Austin takes such pride in the building that it preserves the visual connection to the capitol from all over the city. Several of the views are glimpses of the capitol from far away, and may only be noticeable to those who know it is there. These are more like happy accidents. Arguably, these may or may not be THAT important to protect…when it comes up to bat against issues like improving density in downtown Austin. Perhaps these minor views will disappear from the preserved corridors as Austin moves into the future, but for now they can still be enjoyed.

from the Barton Springs pedestrian bridge

from the Mueller airport area

Then there are the dramatic views of the capitol like the South Congress corridor or the view from I35 or the view from the Mopac bridge that are sustained views. These really allow the viewer to relish in the majesty of this architectural symbol within the context of the greater downtown area. These views really make the viewer feel like a part of the city. 

from I-35

Think about the visual connection between the UT tower and the Capitol dome on the South Mall...it made me stop in my tracks the first time I was there, and it is still one of my favorite spots on campus. 

from Inner Campus Drive on the South Mall

The capitol serves as a way-finding device too, and as the dome is visible throughout the city, it’s easier to navigate and give people directions with the anchor of that view. There are many parts and attitudes of Austin, and its wonderful to make that visual connection to the heart of the city whether driving in from a long trip on the congested upper deck of I-35, or strolling along the pedestrian bridge over Barton Springs, or climbing up Mount Bonnell to take in the entire city from the top.

from Mount Bonnell

Although there are several views that may not be deemed as important to protect and may not be necessarily as sacred as others, I think that the fundamental idea of protecting the view of the capitol building is something that Austin planners have done right. 

For more information and pictures of the Capitol View Corridors, check out the city's PDF "Downtown Development and Capitol View Corridors":

icma.org/Documents/Document/Document/301744