The McMansion ordinance is anti-density.
Austin has no real inner city. Once you set foot outside of downtown/UT, you're in suburbia. Bouldin, Zilker, Tarrytown, Hyde Park, Rosedale -- even Clarksville to some degree -- all have a suburban feel. This is not by accident. Each of these neighborhoods has been molded by standard suburban zoning tools like minimum lot sizes, minimum set backs, and height limitations.
Because it lacks a true urban core, Austin is not dense, even compared to Dallas or Houston. (See my original post.) With hundreds of thousands of newcomers expected over the next 20 years, Austin today faces a choice: it can either grow denser or it can sprawl.
Density means bigger buildings closer together. It's what's shown to the right (click to enlarge). While it is not everyone's taste, it is what a lot of people want, even expect, from their city. A whole lot of people, judging from the evidence: some of the most desirable cities in the country -- including San Francisco, pictured here -- are dense.
On June 8, our City Council firmly rejected density. Instead of permitting larger structures bunched closer together on smaller lots, it adopted an ordinance that keeps lots large and houses small, short, and far apart. It is a suburban straightjacket and the antithesis of density.
I'm stumped by these new aesthetic principles, "massing" and "scale," suddenly so dear to the neighborhood activists. The houses to the right flout virtually every one of the McMansion ordinance's philistine restrictions. They're massive; they loom over one another; they're "too big" for their lots. (I'll be they even cast shadows on their neighbors.) But it's these houses, not Austin's comfortably spaced bungalows, that draw millions of jealous tourists each year.
"But we're not San Francisco," the neighborhood activist might say. "Our neighborhoods don't look like this. Houses like these stick out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood full of cottages."
Unless the City resorts to eminent domain, our neighborhoods can evolve only one house at a time. If we want neighborhoods to grow denser, more striking visually and culturally, then we must be willing to tolerate some jarring mismatches during the transition. "Friction," someone called it. Our reward could be the emergence of a distinctly Austin style of density.
The activists and City Council have decided it is better to embalm our neighborhoods than to risk real change. I suppose we're entitled to keep the neighborhoods just the way they are. But it's a shame. And we certainly shouldn't congratulate ourselves as if we've done something special.
