Economic Development
Best Cities 2010: Austin, Texas
By Bob Frick, Senior Editor
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, July 2010
Our number-one Best City for the Next Decade is a hotbed for small business -- and music.
Everything may be bigger in Texas, but Austin's genius is nurturing the power of small. Just ask Rob Neville, who wants to develop his biotech firm, Savara Pharmaceuticals, into a major player in the field of inhaled-drug therapy. The firm started in Kansas, but Neville transplanted it to Austin because the city is arguably the country's best crucible for small business.
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Music and business creativity riff off one another. The city's famous South by Southwest festival, where concerts, independent film screenings and emerging technology overlap, is a prime example. And performers infuse local businesses with bright ideas inspired by their music. Alex Victoria is a director of software engineering at HomeAway, an online business that matches owners of vacation homes with renters. But on nights and weekends, you can find him practicing and performing in a punk-rock band, The MidgetMen. Especially in Internet businesses, says Victoria, "you're moving fast, taking lots of things and mashing them together -- a lot like musicians playing off each other."
As important as music is to Austin, the area's atmosphere -- its lakes and parks, plus its unique and funky businesses -- also defines the vibe. The epicenter of "Keep Austin Weird," a slogan adopted to promote small, local businesses, is South Congress Avenue. If you don't enjoy SoCo spots -- such as the massive Allens Boots shop, Lucy in Disguise With Diamonds costume store or breaded, deep-fried avocado served from the Mighty Cone taco truck -- you can always live in nearby Round Rock, which is more strait-laced. But that wouldn't be weird, now would it?
Austin 2010-11 Budget Forecasts
Density of Smart People
By Richard Florida
Clusters of smart people of the highly educated sort that economists refer to as "human capital" are the key engine of economic growth and development. The standard way economists measure this is to take the percentage of people in a country, state, or metropolitan area with a bachelor's degree or higher. Jane Jacobs argued that the clustering of talented and energetic in cities is the fundamental driving force of economic development. In a classic essay, "On the Mechanics of Economic Development," the Nobel prize-winning, University of Chicago economist Robert Lucas formalized Jacobs' insights and argued that human capital, or what can be called Jane Jacobs externalities, are indeed the key factor in economic growth and development. Still most scholars measure human capital in terms of population, not in terms of its geographic concentration.
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He raises an important question about the distribution of human capital within a metro region, calling attention to the issue of "human capital sprawl." As he defines, this occurs when human capital density is lower in the central city than its surrounding county. He finds preliminary evidence of this type of human capital sprawl in five places - Louisville, Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, Nashville, and Indianapolis - and notes that: "This preliminary result is particularly worrisome if you believe that metro areas need strong central cities and strong central cities need a lot of smart people."
ACC acquires Dillard's property at Highland Mall for expansion
Community Impact News
By Kelsey Wilkinson
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
NORTHWEST AUSTIN — The Austin Community College District announced today its purchase of 18 acres of Dillard's Inc. property at Highland Mall, 5901 Airport Blvd., for the purpose of expanding its college programs and facilities.
ACC President Dr. Stephen Kinslow said the purchase is part of a long-range strategy to increase class space and consolidate administrative services. The Highland Business Center campus, 5930 Middle Fiskville Road, is in close proximity to the recently acquired property, as is a stop on Capital Metro's Redline.
"Investing in the property now is good for the college's future," Kinslow said in a written statement. "It will help us expand operations, student services and learning opportunities to meet high demand throughout the service area, and it has the potential to revitalize a local landmark."
Sustainable Transport and Livable Community Planning
Planetizen
By Todd Litman
Mon, 05/31/2010
In recent years some often-overlooked cost categories have started to receive increasing recognition by other transportation professionals, under the concepts of sustainability and livability. For example, the USDOT has joined with the departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support a Livability Initiative. This means that transport policy and planning decisions should incorporate the following objectives:
- Improve transportation options (i.e., help create more diversified, less automobile-dependent transport systems)
- Expand access to affordable-accessible housing.
- Enhance economic competitiveness- improve workers' access to jobs, education and services, and businesses' access to markets.
- Support community revitalization and rural landscape protection.
- Improve cooperation among federal, state, and local governments to improve transport planning and investment practices.
- Value the unique qualities of all communities.
Most transportation professionals are unprepared to deal with these objectives. Conventional transport project evaluation models only consider a small set of impacts: travel time savings, vehicle operating cost savings, and sometimes reductions in accident and emission rates per vehicle-mile. Other economic, social and environmental impacts tend to be ignored and undervalued, including the incremental costs that result from roadway expansions and fuel efficiency standards that induce additional vehicle travel. More comprehensive analysis is needed to incorporate sustainability and livability objectives into transport planning.
Conventional transport project evaluation generally considers roadway costs, travel time, vehicle operating costs, and some accident and air pollution costs. Other impacts are often overlooked.
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The next century will require new approaches to transport planning in order to respond to changing consumer demands; it will require planning that considers a broader set of objectives, impacts and options. Planners interested in these issues will find plenty of opportunities for research and policy innovations which respond to demands for more sustainable transport systems and more livable communities.
Working toward a walkable Airport Boulevard
Community Impact
By Mary Tuma
CENTRAL AUSTIN — Airport Boulevard is the target of a new city initiative aiming to transform what many have described as a bleak auto-centric corridor into a high-density, walkable stretch of retail and residential development. Unlike many projects proposed in the past few years, this one has the support of area neighborhood groups.
[Form-based code] gives greater flexibility to developers and a unified vision for the corridor, in contrast to typical single-use zoning laid out in the city's land-use map. Meant to deter urban sprawl, the code emphasizes the form of buildings rather than use, but would still include provisions regulating against businesses that could have a negative impact.
"The real problem is the glaring disparity between the community vision for growth that we've been talking about for years and the reality of what we see on the ground," Riley said during a presentation to the Real Estate Council of Austin in April.
Why Airport Boulevard?
Airport Boulevard is marked by heavy traffic, service stations, car dealerships and Travis County buildings. Interspersed is a mix of local businesses, such as House Pizzeria, McGuire's Clocks, Lammes Candies, Quality Seafood Market and I Luv Video.
Stakeholders argue the area could live up to a greater potential with improved infrastructure, new trails and linear parks.
Business perspective
In business for more than seven decades, Quality Seafood Market owner Carol Huntsberger described the initiative as "long overdue." Potential property tax increases, she said, would be offset by area growth and improved quality of life.
Neighborhood associations
"Highland Mall has been in demise for years now, and we are all just waiting for it to close down," Howze said. [Highland Neighborhood Association president Damon] Howze and residents would like to see four- to five-story mixed-use office, business and residential buildings, a grocery store, tree-lined medians, sidewalks and bike lanes along the corridor.
"If you are on the west side of Airport all the way up to Lamar Boulevard, it's kind of a nightmare," [Vice president of the Northfield Neighborhood Association, Will] Bown said. "We need to get something in there that facilitates local people walking from place to place."