Chronicle: The Deeper Civic Issues

Katherine Gregor makes an astute point in the Austin Chronicle this week:

A fight against the nation's most powerful retailer [...] makes for snappy bumper stickers, T-shirts [...] and sound-bite media coverage. But to see only that aspect of the Northcross uprising is to miss the deeper civic issues at stake.

Wal-Mart is a flashpoint in the Northcross development debate—an area where people hold passionate beliefs. That discussion often overshadows a critical—but decidedly unsexy—element in this issue.

RG4N believes that the 90's era suburban sprawl of the Lincoln Properties development plan will be harmful to our growing and robust neighborhood. Moreover, the Lincoln plan is completely counter to the City's growth objectives. If Lincoln had to file their plan today, it would not be accepted under current development regulations. (RG4N holds that the plan is not permissible under old regulations either, but snuck through on an administrative approval.)

As Gregor notes:

What these Austinites want and believe they deserve—from the private developer, from the city, and from their elected representatives—is enlightened urban redevelopment. When a major moribund mall in their neighborhood is at last to be redeveloped, they want that redevelopment to occur in accord with the best practices nationally and the city's own new design standards.

One difficulty, according to Gregor, is that Lincoln hasn't done the sort of enlightened, dense, mixed-use development that RG4N desires:

Unfortunately Lincoln Property Co.—a huge, nationwide real estate firm—exhibits a level of urban design and planning sophistication several notches lower than that of the average Crestview or Allandale resident. The projects and properties posted on the company's Web site reflect that, as a company, Lincoln has yet to embrace the public-responsibility aspect of the New Urbanist spirit.

Thus, part of the challenge for RG4N is to help the developer understand how an alternate plan could be even more wildly successful than an obsolescent sprawl design.

Read the full article here.