This vintage Austin home splices old and new with a modern addition, a striking example of ad hoc urbanism.
8:00pm | I recently had the occasion to visit Austin for an extended weekend, with little responsibility beyond checking out the sights. This was my first time in Texas save for airport layovers en route elsewhere. My first impression of this unexplored country was of a place familiar yet oddly different, in terms of everything from restaurant chains to urban infrastructure. Despite these distinctions, significant similarities in terms of development patterns and climate make Austin a relevant case study to compare with Long Beach.
Austin forms the core of a metropolitan region of 1.65 million. The state capitol, it is home to the University of Texas at Austin, with 50,000 students and 16,500 faculty and staff. Austin is also a cultural capitol with dozens of museums, hundreds of performance venues and major arts festivals including South by Southwest.
However, while these incredible attractions draw people to the city, Austin’s urban core does not support
the vibrancy that results. The downtown bears witness to many of the worst urban development patterns
from the second half of the 20th century. Large parking lots pockmark the city grid; faceless parking
garages loom over sidewalks and multi-lane thoroughfares cut through urban center, cementing the
dominance of the automobile.
A massive complex of faceless, forbidding state administrative buildings severs the university campus
from the downtown core. Other single-use districts like East Sixth Street (an entertainment district),
the Performing Arts Center and the massive Texas School for the Deaf further disconnect the various
neighborhoods. City leaders are attempting to correct these errors of urban renewal (and bring new
residents and visitors downtown) by introducing new mixed-use developments on the north bank of Lady
Bird Lake (a focal point of the city) and along Shoal Creek. A series of new office buildings and hotels
surrounding the new City Hall now create an expanded walkable urban core.
While these infill developments provide built-in foot traffic and heal some of the wounds left by
suburban-like accommodations to the automobile, more striking in Austin is the positive impact left
by years of ad-hoc urbanism on street corners, in old buildings and on vacant lots. For instance,
refunctioned clusters of historic structures provide some of the most active commercial districts
downtown. One of the best known examples of this is the four-block-long stretch of East Sixth Street
featuring over two dozen masonry buildings. Some of these buildings were originally performance venues; others have been converted from a different purpose. Collectively, these buildings have now been transformed into music clubs, restaurants and bars; the area now represents one of the most significant live music destinations in the nation. To the west, another collection of nineteenth-century warehouses form another entertainment district filled with high-end restaurants, cigar bars and nightclubs.
Just south of the Austin History Center (the city’s original public library) is a block of old mansions that
most have been converted into offices for professional service providers and non-profit organizations.
The buildings have largely remained intact, and because of their historic landmark designation and
shared architectural style, there is the possibility of joint marketing and identity. While often there is
policy infrastructure in place to support these kinds of adaptive reuse efforts (for instance, preservation
assistance or leniency in parking regulations), oftentimes it is the business owners and community
stakeholders who make economic development based on historic properties successful.
Notably, however, is that unlike some other cities, in Austin historic structures are typically not treated as
sacred objects; they are altered or expanded as necessary. For instance, in Austin’s South Congress
neighborhood (“SoCo”), expansive patios and roof terraces crop out of brick buildings; new bedrooms
clad in metal panels jut out artistically from small, vintage cottages. New modern homes dot the old
residential neighborhood, neither dwarfing the context or detracting from the overall aesthetic. Instead
of seeming out of place, these new homes complement the historic homes in their midst, demonstrating
an energy and creativity that respects the past while looking to the future.
The ad-hoc character of much development in Austin extends to the use of “empty” space, be it
undeveloped parcels, unused corners of parking lots, or the interstices between buildings. Trucks,
trailers, prefabricated structures and other forms of simple construction host restaurants and retailers
on such valuable pieces of land. In some cases a single BBQ shack will occupy the corner of a downtown
parking lot, with benches and tables littered about. In other cases, plots of land might have a dozen
different trucks forming an ad-hoc food court, with everything from Thai food to pizza by the slice. In
some cases these “temporary” restaurants become semi-permanent, with shade structures, fences and
signage to identify the culinary destination.
It is unclear why Austin should be so rich with these ad-hoc developments (and the urban vitality
accompanying them) in comparison with Southern California and specifically Long Beach. Is it the
regulatory environment of our municipality versus the “frontier culture” of Texas? Is it differing tax
structures? Or something else?
What makes this discrepancy particularly frustrating is that the kinds of ad-hoc urbanism taking place in
Austin requires far fewer resources than most new developments currently planned for Long Beach.
Do we only see possibilities in urban transformation when there is a bulldozing party or ribbon-cutting?
Long Beach has many underused and vacant structures, as well as dozens of acres of parking lots, empty properties and underused public rights-of-way. Only a few visionary activists and entrepreneurs are currently attempting to take advantage of these opportunities in Long Beach, but they often express
frustration over bureaucratic obstacles and limited resources. How do we encourage them? Or might the
better question be: How do we get out of the way?
Haddingtons, a popular English/Irish eatery in Austin, is housed in a refunctioned warehouse.
An improvised food court in Austin utilizes old trailers to vend fare.