Better Austin Today PAC

Several local activist groups, including ANC, RG4N and the Sierra Club, have banded together to form a local PAC:

As Austin starts gearing up for municipal elections in May, a new political action committee is hoping to turn discontent into dollars for candidates and issues.

The committee, Better Austin Today, plans to pull support from neighborhood groups, environmental and civil rights activists, social and environmental justice groups, and the small-business and local business communities.

The committee's board consists of members of some of the city's most politically active groups: the Austin Neighborhoods Council, Save Our Springs Alliance, Sierra Club in Austin, and the Central Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

It also includes more recent additions to the city's political scene, including Responsible Growth for Northcross, which was organized in response to plans to convert part of Northcross Mall in North Austin into a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

The committee says City Council members aren't listening enough, that they act in opposition to those who speak before them and who worked on neighborhood plans. The committee says there is a lack of growth management in the city. It is also concerned about the disputes over Northcross Mall and the placement of the animal shelter in East Austin, as well as issues of perceived inequality in how the city deals with East and West Austin.

Group members hope that by banding together, they can effect some change.

"It's just this feeling that everything gets done piecemeal in this city," said board member Hope Morrison of Responsible Growth for Northcross. "There is no vision.

"It's a failure of vision and leadership." 

I'm not sure what the common denominator of this group is, other than an ingrained antipathy to market-based development.  For example, the Sierra Club advocates greater density as an antidote to sprawl.  ANC treats density like a virulent organism that needs its own antidote.

I'd expect the Sierra Club to support projects like Lincoln's redevelopment of Northcross.  Putting big-box on an existing brownfield site is a whole lot better than shunting it off to a greenfield site on a highway.  An urban site is accessible via existing transit, while a highway frontage road site is not, at least not conveniently.  An urban store cuts down on the length of car trips, saving area residents a drive out to the 'burbs.  It arguably cuts down on the number of trips as well, allowing drivers to combine multiple errands in one drive.  And, of course, redeveloping a 1970's-era site like Northcross inevitably reduces its environmental impact because the redevelopment must meet today's more stringent environmental standards. 

Alas, Austin's chapter of the Sierra Club threw its hat in with RG4N.

Perhaps this quote from Mary Arnold reflects an emerging consensus: "If creating density does not diminish sprawl, then where are we?" 

One could also ask, "If 2 + 2 = 5, then where are we?," but I'll leave that for another day.

Comments

[Kedron Jerome Touvell]

If I remember correctly, Sierra Club's Chris Lehman lives a stone's throw from Northcross and was an early opponent of the development. That could explain the Sierra Club position.

[DSK]

Yes, the Austin Sierra Club chapter's position on Northcross has been shameful and a mar on the Sierra Club name, for all the reasons you listed.

I'm also somewhat surprised that the local ACLU would sign on to any organization/PAC that includes RG4N. Have they not been paying attention?

[M1EK]

This needs posting to the austinbloggers.org portal.

I really need to get involved in the local club (I'm a lifetime member but have never been involved here).

[Steve]

You say apropos of Mary Arnold, "One could also ask, "If 2 + 2 = 5, then where are we?," but I'll leave that for another day." Your tautology is that more density, anywhere, necessarily means less "sprawl."

why would you necessarily assume that more density in the urban core means less sprawl on the periphery?

If 10 percent more people locate in the inner city than would have in the absence of City policy encouraging "smart growth," I think what will happen is each suburban lot will get marginally larger. If the concern is land consumption, then sprawl will not be curbed by allowing more density in an inner city location.

The City will spatially sprawl out just as much as it would have otherwise, in the absence of policies that restrain that development. Driving will still be the main way to get around a low density suburban landscape. The positive impact, if any, on resource consumption will be nearly invisible, while there will be a profound change in the historic shape of inner city neighborhoods.

The problem w/ what environmentalists were sold as a compromise in the development wars was that along w/ carrots for development in the inner city, there'd be sticks to curtail it in the outer areas. This has not happened.

So "smart growth" theories are best understood in the current context as developer business as usual, w/ a new rationalizing gloss of planner-speak.

[M1EK]

Steve,

Austin, at least, HAS the stick. The problem is that we've wielded it as much AGAINST smart growth as sprawl - thanks to the people in BATPAC itself, with policies like McMansion, ridiculous neighborhood plans like Hyde Park and CANPAC which call for net decreases in density, etc.

[AC]

Steve:

"I think what will happen is each suburban lot will get marginally larger."

There is no evidence for this. Lot sizes aren't all that sensitive to land prices -- take a look at lot sizes in new subdivisions in Hutto or Manor, where land is relatively cheap. They are small.

Anyway, adding density in central Austin will have a small effect on land prices in the hinterlands. The reduced demand for suburban housing will be diffused over hundreds of square miles of suburban land.

"there will be a profound change in the historic shape of inner city neighborhoods"

Well, that depends on how you define "neighborhood," doesn't it? BATPAC basically includes all of central Austin in the definition, not just the single-family homes in places like Zilker and Hyde Park. BATPAC wants to keep all the single family homes _and_ it wants to obstruct the development of an urban environment on the core transit corridors and downtown. It wants to impose its preferences on everyone else, regardless of cost.

And "historic shape" -- what's so sacred about that? The shape of neighborhoods ought to change over time. Central neighborhoods were platted when land was very cheap, just a few hundred dollars per acre probably. Now central Austin land is going for $1,000,000 or more per acre in many places. Demand has increased by a factor of at least 1000. We should insist that the land use be limited to "historic" intensity? That's great if you own property in central Austin, but bad for the 600,000 or so Austinites who don't.

BATPAC's "Give us stasis or give us death!" platform would do a lot of damage to Austin. It's not all environmental.