Goodnight Development Aims to Transform Southeast Austin

Goodnight Development Aims to Transform Southeast Austin

Plan aims for high-quality neighborhood with character of central Austin culture and environs

A mixed-use development of 700 acres of Southeast Austin that's been in the works for a decade is finally set to go forward. A master plan for the Goodnight neighborhood, named after the family that has owned the former ranchland since the 1960s, has been approved, and the project is moving forward with permitting for up to 3,500 homes, 120 acres of in-district park space, 500 acres of out-of-district park space, and roughly a 250,000 square feet of commercial space.

Goodnight will extend along Slaughter Lane on the east side of I-35 next to Onion Creek Metropolitan Park.

New Urbanism's family values

New Urbanism's family values

In The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us, Joel Kotkin makes the case that urbanists are behind the drop in birth rates around the world. Urbanists are implementing policies that discourage child-rearing—with potentially dire consequences, he says in this 200-plus-page polemic.

It’s pretty serious charge, but is there anything to back to up? It rests on a correlation: Two of the key worldwide trends in the last 40 years are declining birth rates and people moving to megacities. Density is to blame, Kotkin says.

CNU group seeks to Build a Better Burb

The Build a Better Burb Sprawl Retrofit Council met in Miami to explore opportunities for promoting land-use diversity and transportation choice in the suburbs—with particular focus on the needs of smaller suburbs with less robust markets. A follow–up meeting will be held at CNU 24 in Detroit on June 11.

The Council is gathering like-minded people and generating a toolkit on suburban retrofit to be distributed on CNU’s Build a Better Burb website. The first products are brief reports on specific challenges and solutions—such as this one on affordable housing tax credits.

In Detroit, the Council will discuss peer-to-peer idea sharing and problem-solving, and other topics related to this project.

Sprawl Is Not the Problem

CNU-CTX is proud to promote Public Square, a blog presented by CNU National. Charles Marohn of Strong Town begins "Recently, I made a few people upset with me by asking that I not be called a smart growth advocate. Actually, I received a lot of email and messages on that one and the ratio of positive to negative feedback was, in my rough estimation, about 8:1. Still, some of you were upset because you identify as a smart growth advocate and wish that I did likewise."

An Ambitious Plan to Rebuild a Neighborhood

CNU-CTX is proud to promote Public Square, a blog presented by CNU National. Robert Steuteville begins "A publicly funded development program to revitalize a neighborhood plagued by crime and vacancies is underway in the Sharswood area of Philadelphia, beginning with the demolition of failed public housing towers called Blumberg homes.

Although poverty is high—unemployment tops 80 percent—and many blocks are completely abandoned, Sharswood possesses a history of jazz culture and buildings with nice brick architectural details."