| Current music: | jake thackray - the little black foal |
austin blues (pt 97)
This is what I don't get. I'm a big fan of urban renewal, walkable cities, the revitalization of downtown and all that, but Austin seems to have gone apeshit over condos. Mayor Will Wynn has said something about wanting 20,000 new residents downtown and the new condo blocks (and for some reason, hideous, giant, generic chain hotels) are appears on every bit of empty and non-empty space. But what I haven't seen addressed is where these people will work and how they'll get there. I'm not sure about Austin but I read someone recently that 2/3rds of all new jobs in America are in the suburbs. It's probably worse here -- new employers of any size tend to be based out at wretched post-Ballardian nightmares like Tech Ridge, places where you need a Tahoe to get from one end of the SuperTarget to the other.... Are people are going to be living downtown and driving out to these places, a gallon of gas each way, stuck in gridlock on I-35 and grizzling about how this isn't the Austin they read about? Or maybe the 20,000 people who are going to be living downtown are going to be working in the hotels, bars and swanky furniture stores opening downtown, although some of those condos are a bit rich for minimum wages....
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ortho_bob) wrote,
