Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Eh, I'm partial to the sort of haphazard mashup you see in my home city of Houston, especially inside 610 :)

As for my comment, the second image that you are greeted with by the link is a nice little diorama of the suggested plan, and sure enough there are neat little row of unique-but-not-really houses. Here, see for yourself: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/02/12/mueller-26_wide-e...

It's very Austin. It's cute, it's quirky, it's artificial, it's done to attract people looking to move into a "hip" and "liberal" city, all without that troubling bit about socioeconomic or cultural dynamic range.

It'll make a lot of money for the developers, a lot of homes for happy white upper-middle-class folks, and probably be bulldozed in thirty years. Let's just not kid ourselves that it's anything more.

Actually, this is one new neighborhood in Austin with a strong affordable housing component, integrated directly into the neighborhood.

Certain homes in Mueller are income-limited (according to varying levels of affordability), while others are market rate. You can't necessarily tell from the outside which are which, so it's actually a little better than another programs for affordability.

You'd have a stronger argument with most other master-planned communities in Austin, but Mueller's property was owned by the city of Austin (the former airport), and the city council at the time set very stringent standards on the master developer.

That's not to argue that this form of interventionist urban planning is good or bad, but Mueller simply isn't a market-rate, upper middle class development.

Comparing a neighborhood to the entire 610 loop is unfair.

http://mapfrappe.com/?show=27191

Also, I'm not going to bite on the the Austin jab. It just strikes me as strange that every person from Houston is so insecure about their city they are constantly bashing Austin/DFW/San Antonio.

Haphazard mashups are not how we're going to fix the many problems that face a rapidly expanding city like Austin.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com