Chris Riley, former Austin City Council member and urbanist, dies at 60

Chris Riley, who served as a City Council member from 2009 to 2015, died Sunday after a battle with cancer.

A native Austinite, Riley was known as a fierce advocate for bike infrastructure and denser housing at a time when the political balance at City Hall tilted away from such priorities.

“Chris loved Austin so much. He wanted to dedicate his whole life to making it the kind of city he felt like it could be,” Riley’s wife, Denise Brady, said.

Riley fought head and neck cancer in 2021. He underwent chemo and radiation and believed the cancer was gone. But scans following a bike crash in June 2023 that broke his ribs and punctured his lungs revealed lesions on his liver. He had been in treatment since August 2023. Six weeks ago, he stopped treatments.

“He just has been living his best life for the past couple months, trying to squeeze in every activity and bucket list item he had,” Brady said. “He went out with a bang.”

A couple of weeks ago, Riley – known for biking to City Hall when he was on Council – went on a bicycle tour with his college friends. Riley couldn’t ride a bike, but his friends took him in a pedicab and toured Austin, visiting the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue, eating barbecue and ending the day with a jump in Barton Springs Pool.

“He wasn’t ready to go. He didn’t want to die,” Brady said. “But he was at peace with the life he led.”

Born in Austin in 1964, Riley was the third of four children. He studied economics at Harvard University and law at UT Austin. He worked at the Texas Supreme Court and then later as an attorney in private practice.

Riley was first elected to the Austin City Council in 2009 and won reelection in 2012. Michael Riley said his older brother was drawn much more to local issues than state or federal politics.

“This was Austin. This was home,” Michael said. “This is what he wanted to make a difference in.”

Riley pushed for policies that were controversial for their time under the at-large City Council, in which all members were elected citywide. Since then, the city has been divided into 10 Council districts that each elect their own representative, shifting the political balance toward the type of urbanist policies Riley favored.

“Chris had a vision for what he thought every community could be like and should be like,” Mike Martinez, a former City Council member who sat next to Riley on the dais, said. Martinez was supposed to meet Riley for coffee Tuesday.

“He felt so strongly about Austin and the policy premises that he supported: the density, the walkable cities, the bikeable cities,” Martinez said.

Riley introduced the idea of street patios in downtown Austin. He was a general supporter of denser housing options, especially near bus routes. In 2013, his fight to abolish rules that required developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces was “long and arduous and controversial,” his former policy aide Leah Bojo said.

Last year, Austin became one of the largest cities in the country to eliminate parking requirements citywide.

“It seems hard to imagine that we could be where we are now without some of those early adopters taking those first steps,” Bojo said. “People said he was ahead of his time, but I really think he had to make those steps early so that the trajectory and momentum could continue, and then we could get the real changes we’re getting now.”

In recognition of Riley’s efforts to push for better bike infrastructure, the Austin City Council renamed a small section of the Shoal Creek Trail after him in May. Chris Riley Bend, between Fifth Street and West Avenue, had been a missing gap in the trail he fought to fix. Immediately after the vote, Riley told KUT he was honored.

“To anyone not really familiar with that stretch, it might seem strange that this one little turn in the creek would have its own name,” Riley said. “But for those of us who remember its absence and realize what it is to have that in place, it does mean a lot.”

Regardless of what policy issue Riley was pushing, Martinez said, he was an ardent listener. He didn’t write off people who disagreed with him.

“What I learned from Chris Riley … is that it costs you nothing to be kind,” the former Council member and mayoral candidate said. “But it makes such a difference to the people who you’re kind to. And he was always, always kind.”

Riley is survived by his wife Denise Brady, two parents, two brothers and one sister.

This story was produced as part of the Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT.

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.