Earlier this month, we highlighted the need for community consensus as City Hall’s process for updating our land development code begins to come together. Austin’s public officials failed to involve the community in a meaningful way with CodeNEXT—the previous attempt to rewrite our land code—and the results were catastrophic.

Fortunately, Mayor Steve Adler now appears to understand the importance of community involvement. According to the Austin Monitor, he recently told a roomful of real estate professionals that “the most important thing is not to get a new code done right away, but to get it done right.”

We couldn’t agree more—and we’re eager to see how City Manager Spencer Cronk will put this advice to use when he and his office design the process for rewriting the code. Cronk is due to announce the personnel who will lead the effort soon.

We offer Cronk and his team the following recommendations for the code rewrite, once it gets off the ground:

  • Restore community trust through public transparency and deliberative, consensus-based decision-making. Thoughtfully explain all premises and major code provisions. Research and disclose the code’s impacts on flooding, traffic, water-related infrastructure, equity, displacement, and the environment.
  • The city manager’s office should ask our city demographer to forecast the city’s housing needs by income cohorts for both the next 10 and 20 years, along with a regional forecast of greenfield and brownfield redevelopment. The housing forecast in the city’s Strategic Housing Blueprint is inaccurate: It was based on projections for the wider five-county region, not Austin itself.
  • The city manager’s office should then consider revising the Strategic Housing Blueprint by separating proposed solutions for market-rate housing and truly affordable housing (housing that is affordable to Austin residents making 60% or less of the city’s median family income (MFI)).
  • Prioritize the preservation of lower- and modest-income housing to prevent displacement instead of repeating CodeNEXT’s approach, which incentivized redevelopment and gentrification by maximizing profit potential.
  • Implement and fund the People’s Plan, which received overwhelming support (12 to 1) by the city’s Anti-Displacement Task Force.
  • Utilize Austin’s historic community planning process to address community needs and build on the $13 million already invested in community planning. Fix the problems with existing neighborhood and small area plans. Establish and respect new neighborhood plans, historic districts and neighborhood conservation combining districts. Work with neighborhood associations and community-based groups to distribute reasonable density fairly among growth corridors and activity centers, as envisioned by Imagine Austin’s Growth Concept Map.

The Austin Monitor made note of another, more chilling line from Adler’s speech. “Right now, Austin is the coolest place in the country,” Adler said, “however, there is nothing sadder than the city that used to be the coolest.”

Let’s preserve the community we all know and love for the next generation. Let’s prevent another CodeNEXT. Let’s work together and build an Austin for everyone!