Imagine Austin series looks at prospects for equitable development amid rapid growth

Austin’s combination of intense population and income growth and state laws that limit inclusionary zoning might make it difficult to institute equitable housing policies, but a national land use leader advises there are still ways for the city to adapt to the demands of being a growth center.

At the recent Imagine Austin Speaker Series talk on equitable and sustainable zoning, Cornell University law professor Sara Bronin said Austin’s recent moves to remove parking minimums and increase density on residential properties are needed steps to keep up with the demand for housing. As a Houston native and former University of Texas student, Bronin shared her perspective and experience, including working on the failed 2000 mass transit initiative that she said would have totally transformed the city for the better.

As a current resident of Hartford, Connecticut, Bronin helped pass a total overhaul of that small city’s building code, a process that failed in Austin and has been completed in only about two dozen cities nationally. Instead, Austin is moving forward with piecemeal building code changes, which she said tend to take more work and time than wholesale new plans.

Bronin supports policies that reduce the amount of public hearings needed for residential projects for more than one family, since hearings take longer and increase building costs that get passed on to owners or renters and increase the cost of living. In her own city, Bronin noted that in primarily residential areas, projects for three or more families required hearings more than 90 percent of the time. In mixed areas including residential use, the number dropped to just over 60 percent for projects suited for three families or more, which was still seen as a cost barrier for eventual occupants.

Looking at the movement toward equitable transit-oriented developments (ETODs) built near Austin’s eventual transit corridors, Bronin said the city should eliminate as many approval steps as possible since other ETODs around the country have floundered when they’ve been too difficult to plan and build efficiently.

“Don’t require complicated formulas for affordable housing but do include, where it is appropriate, mandates for affordable housing. Others around the country have seen that overcomplicating transit-oriented development actually means that it does not get built,” she said. “Eliminating public hearings, eliminating minimum lot sizes, eliminating minimum parking requirements … all of those things to smooth the process to make development easy will result in development.”

Bronin said while it’s often fairly easy for state and federal officials to make sweeping laws covering land use, zoning changes at the local level tend to be more combative and harder to enact because of the tendency for neighbors and neighborhood groups to mobilize quickly.

“It’s because individuals care what their neighbors think about them, and so the people who are making a lot of decisions at the local level hear from their neighbors directly and people that they know,” she said. “It’s maybe more abstract and removed if you’re a state legislator representing far more people than you might on a city council or a town planning commission.”

In those cases, she said she’s seen success in Hartford and other cities that a community activist or leaders outside of the governing political body get behind a land use policy the public wants to see approved.

“There has to be a leader at the local level, and they just have to decide that they’re gonna do it, come hell or high water. … They’re just gonna be committed to do it,” she said. “That’s what something like a planning department needs: an external champion and a political champion.”

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.