A brief introduction to Austin’s Land Development Code rewrite.
What is it?
Our land development code is the city’s rules for what we’re allowed to build – apartments, duplexes, restaurants, and offices – where we’re allowed to build them, and how much we’re allowed to build.
The current land development code, ie the rules we’re operating under today, was written in 1984. Alot has changed about Austin since then so the city is rewriting the code to do a better job guiding growth and development.
Second, the types of homes we build and where we build them determine where and how people in Austin live. For example, if we can build more apartments in central Austin, then more people can live in central Austin with fast and affordable access to job centers like downtown.
When is it happening?
City staff will release a draft of the code on October 4th. This is only a draft and will not take effect until City Council votes to approve the code, which will likely happen between January and March of 2020.
West Campus. Wampus. Hell on Earth. Heaven on Earth.
Whatever you choose to call it, West Campus is a predominant feature of the University of Texas.
On any given day, one can see an abundance of students bustling around the area; walking home from class, mingling with their friends while grabbing a bite of well-deserved fried chicken, or racing to their study session on a scooter.
It is an area full of life, activity, and community. It is also an area that has one of the highest densities in Austin.
This is unsurprising to those who have visited West Campus recently. Towering, luxurious apartment buildings dominate the landscape and the many construction sites promise more to come. However, this was not always the case.
Prior to 2004, West Campus was filled with small-scale buildings and homes converted into rental properties for students. While this supported the student population during the University’s formative years, iit was not sufficient enough to accommodate the growing population of students. Due to the lack of availability of housing and the increasing price of rooms as demand increased, students were forced to occupy other areas of Austin such as Riverside and commute to school.
Though some students prefer to commute to school, studies have shown that location is central to a student’s experience at college. Commuting students are less likely to feel that their school wants them to thrive, to identify with the school, or to report a ‘sense of belonging to or feeling wanted by the institution.’ Students also report lower levels of involvement in extracurricular activities (59% of commuting students vs. 75% of residential students) and less social connection to the school. These statistics are intuitive to students; it’s more challenging to attend a last minute study session with your peers at the PCL, stay late working an extracurricular event, or attend a late-night party with your friends when you have to plan your commute and carefully consider time, money, and safety.
University Neighborhood Overlay (UNO) set out to ensure that students could have the choice to live in West Campus, and wouldn’t be forced to live off campus due to availability or affordability. Finalized/Legalized in 2004, it’s expressed purpose was to:
“promote high density redevelopment in the area generally west of the University of Texas campus, provide a mechanism for the creation of a densely populated but livable and pedestrian friendly environment, and protect the character of the predominantly single-family residential neighborhoods adjacent to the district.”
In short, it allowed for more, and higher, development in West Campus. Pictured below is the UNO overlay for the area.
UNO was quite controversial at the time as many wondered how it would affect the area’s character, or if it would increase noise and traffic. Though these concerns are legitimate, UNO has shown to be a net positive for the area. Improving density has:
Increased the number of students who can live near campus
Improved affordable housing for students
Increased diversity of West Campus Residence
Decreased reliance on cars
Increased the number of students who can live near campus
Over the past 15 years, more than a billion dollars has been invested into developing West Campus (which has provided more than 25 million in annual tax revenue) and has added over 10,000 new rooms to the area. At a school where the undergraduate population stands at 40,804 students, this represents adding housing that could support an additional 25% of the undergraduate students.
Improved affordable housing for students
UNO’s zoning laws enable lower-income students to find a home in West Campus. Because of the new laws that stipulate that developers are required to set aside a certain number of units for eligible people, West Campus is now home to one of the largest concentrations of affordable housing developments in Austin.
Increased diversity of West Campus Residences
Improving West Campus’ density has not only increased the availability of housing and affordable housing for students, but it’s also improved diversity in West Campus. Census Tracts 6.03 and 6.04 reported the following numbers from 2000 to 2010:
Census Tract 6.03
Non-hispanic white: declined from 70.3% of the population to 59.1%
Hispanic: increased from 9.4% to 13.1%
Black or African-American: increased from 2.0% to 2.6%
Asian: increased from 17.3% to 25%
Census Tract 6.04
Non-hispanic white: declined from 75.4% of the population to 65.7%
Hispanic: increased from 9.3% to 12.5%
Black or African-American: increased from 1.6% to 2.4%
Asian: increased from 13% to 19.3%
Decreased reliance on cars
UNO has not only helped to improve UT’s community, but has helped the environment and reduced transit issues. The migration of students to West Campus has eliminated the need for students to drive to class, and therefore has reduced the student body’s car dependency. Additionally, parking per person has decreased in West Campus as well. The number of parking spaces per bedroom in West Campus decreased from .9 parking spaces to about .6 parking spaces per bedroom from 2004 to 2016. This is likely due to a number of factors that stem from improved density including the walkability of the area, the addition of nearby grocery stores, and the improvement of public transit.
Looking at the Future
From fighting environmental and transit issues to increasing affordable housing, UNO has helped to improve West Campus and its community.
Community, however, is not just for college students. From a new young professional moving to Austin for the first time, to a family looking to make connections in a new neighborhood, or an Austinite who has been in the city for 20 years, everyone is looking for and needs a community just as much as a student coming to UT from cities or states away. West Campus has shown that density can create this community, and it should be looked towards as an example for the future of Austin.
Yes, they are much better than regular, fossil fuel-burning cars, but even if we replaced every single car in the world with an electric car, it wouldn’t save us. We must drastically reduce car usage in our daily lives.
It is hard to get rid of your car when you live in a single-family house in the suburbs, especially when there isn’t much to walk or bike to. It is hard to get rid of your car when you have to commute an hour each way to work in downtown because you can’t afford a single-family home near downtown. It is hard to get rid of your car when you have a family and you have to drop your kids off at daycare or school, go to work, run errands during lunch, pick up the kids, and go home. Especially if your daycare or school are nowhere near your home or your office.
This is where upzoning and increased density come into play as a solution to help people either reduce their car usage or get rid of their cars entirely. I’m not saying that single-family homes should be banned or that people shouldn’t be allowed to build them. I’m simply saying that we should allow for a variety of uses all across the city – so that you can live, work, and have your kids go to school or daycare, all within a 15 minute walk or bicycle ride in your neighborhood.
Research strongly correlates increased density with decreased carbon emissions. As one example of this research, Paul Hawken created Drawdown, a comprehensive list of specific actions that we can focus on to reduce carbon emissions by 1,034.75 gigatons by 2050.
On that list:
Electric vehicles are #26: “If EV ownership rises to 16 percent of total passenger miles by 2050, 10.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide from fuel combustion could be avoided.”
Walkable cities is #54: “As cities become denser and city planners, commercial enterprises, and residents invest in the “6Ds,” 5 percent of trips currently made by car can be made by foot instead by 2050. That shift could result in 2.9 gigatons of avoided carbon dioxide emissions and reduce costs associated with car ownership by $3.3 trillion.”
If we invest in bike infrastructure (#59) at the same time: “We assume a rise from 5.5 percent to 7.5 percent of urban trips globally by 2050, displacing 2.2 trillion passenger-miles traveled by conventional modes of transportation and avoiding 2.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions. By building bike infrastructure rather than roads, municipal governments, and taxpayers can realize $400 billion in savings over thirty years and $2.1 trillion in lifetime savings.”
Finally, if we also invest in mass transportation at the same time (#37): “Use of mass transit is projected to decline from 37 percent of urban travel to 21 percent as the low-income world gains wealth. If use grows instead to 40 percent of urban travel by 2050, this solution can save 6.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions from cars.”
By investing in these three solutions while also investing in electric vehicles, we could save roughly 11.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions – more than the 10.8 gigatons from electric vehicles alone. By investing in all four solutions at the same time, we could save roughly 22.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions.
How do we go about increasing density within our city? One of the easiest ways to create a more walkable and environmentally friendly city is to legalize fourplex buildings on every single lot- that is, buildings with at least four units. Again, this is not banning single-family homes – just making it possible to build a fourplex anywhere in the city where single-family homes are also allowed.
In one hypothetical, Michael Anderson had three imaginary homes torn down on one block and rebuilt as three new single-family homes; on another block, those same single-family homes were torn down and replaced with a fourplex, a duplex, and a triplex. He found that “the housing-related carbon emissions per household of the Plex Block will be about 20 percent lower” than the block with the three new single-family homes. This is because the units inside the duplex, triplex, and fourplex are smaller than the single-family home units – so the spaces in the unit are being used more efficiently; there aren’t as many empty rooms being heated and cooled even when no one is using them. Another researcher from the Sightline Institute found that “boosting the number of homes on residential blocks by one third (as on the Plex Block) correlates with a drop of about 1,000 miles driven per year per household.” This is because denser blocks will typically attract local shops within walking distance, frequent bus lines, reliable ride-sharing – but would probably attract protected bicycle infrastructure and micro mobility options as well, simply because there would be more people who could take advantage of these benefits.
Increasing density has the added benefit of supporting robust and high-quality mass transportation as well. According to Capital Metro, residential densities of 16 persons per acre within a quarter mile of bus lines are a good minimum baseline for transit-supportive dense neighborhoods. For employment, their guidelines call for densities of eight employees per acre. Remember, we have to invest in mass transportation in addition to walkable neighborhoods if we want to save roughly 22.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions (though more is better!) by 2050.
I imagine a world in which I can choose to live near my office – because the neighborhoods have an abundance of fourplexes or apartment buildings nearby – within a 15 minute walk. I can walk to and from work in 15 minutes every day, which saves me two car trips every day. Because my home and my office are located near a grocery store, I can also choose to shop more often, buying less groceries, and walk to and from the grocery store, saving two car trips. My home and office are also located near a bus line, which I can use to get downtown or to other places to see friends, run errands, or go out on the town, saving me car trips. Even better, because I live on such a dense block, I know several people in my neighborhood who have become my friends and I can walk to their homes to visit them or baby-sit their kids if needed. My neighborhood also has doctors’ offices, shopping, gyms, parks, activities, and other important facets of life – or easy access to those things, whether through robust public transportation or protected bicycle infrastructure.
Electric vehicles are a solution, but cannot be the ONLY solution. We must allow more people to live on smaller areas of land. We need to allow people to reduce their carbon footprint by living in smaller homes and living in walkable and transit-rich neighborhoods. Not everyone wants to live in a single-family home and have a yard they have to maintain; have empty rooms that are being wastefully heated and cooled; or have a car that needs to be maintained in order to commute because there is a lack of high-quality pedestrian, bicycle, and transit infrastructure. We should be doing everything we can to reduce our carbon emissions and slow the effects of climate change. We need to change for a future that will impact us all. Continuing our current culture of sprawling land use, which enables car dominance and carbon emissions, will only accelerate our headlong rush into our terrifying future.
For additional research on why density is so important for fighting climate change, check out this comprehensive report by Environment Texas.
