The city of Austin has released a new 197 page planning document to manage its population growth and inform planning decisions for the next three decades.
It is uniquely blunt about past failure and future opportunity and encompasses economic and tax policy alongside traditional zoning features. It excoriates the city's rapid suburban growth, stating that the pattern of the past 60 years came "at a troubling price in terms of social segregation and isolation, (diminished) public health, air and water quality, loss of natural open space and agricultural lands, and climate change (while) driving up the public costs for roads, water lines and other infrastructure that must be continually extended to far-flung new development."
The document forecasts that Austin's population will grow by at least 700,000 in the next thirty years and these people will need to be accommodated in denser mixed used developments. The plan also includes strategies for reducing inequality, and especially child poverty which has reached 20% as the economy has become increasingly reliant on low wage jobs which have not kept pace with the cost of living.
FULL STORY: New Austin Blueprint Envisions New Direction For Growth
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