viz.

(Image Credit: dfwfoodtrucks.com)

There’s no doubting that Austin’s a great example of urban sprawl. Anyone who’s driven up Burnet Road on a shopping expedition, or down South Lamar looking for a romantic Saturday night dinner, has probably wondered at some point: Why can’t these things just be closer to where I live? Fortunately, I don’t think this question is born out of narcissism. Things are far apart in Austin. And given the town’s expanding population, they feel as though they’re getting farther and farther apart, with all the increased traffic and whatnot. Over the decades, this city has grown and expanded without any apparent civic regard for urban planning. Which makes the Capital Building a really interesting monument. The roads leading to the Texas State Capital are reminiscent of Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s planning of Washington, D.C., and they convey a confidence in American governance that would make Governor Rick Perry blush. Either that or the eyes of Texas are upon us.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

The park that stretches along Austin’s Shoal Creek is pretty amazing when you think about it. Starting near Lady Bird Lake downtown, the trails and bikeways wind all the way up towards 38^th street. By my approximated Google Maps calculation, that’s nearly three and a half miles of gravel path, all of which feeds into the much longer Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail (discussed in my last post). Like the trails around Lady Bird Lake, in good weather the parkland around Shoal Creek is routinely flooded with Austinites seeking exercise and a break from concrete and metal. Joggers, walkers, and “mountain” bikers all frequent the trail. Around about 25^th Street there is a leash free area for pets. At Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard there are three beach volleyball courts. Just north of 15^th Street there’s an extensive playground and more volleyball courts. On the surface of things, there’s nothing exceptional about these recreation areas. Most communities throughout the United States provide their residents with public recreation. Indeed, community owned recreation areas have probably been a part of human settlements for longer than we can imagine. What I think is unique about Austin’s Shoal Creek and the surrounding environs is the extent to which the park consciously embodies a natural environment that challenges the skyscrapers in the distance.

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

If we’re to think about landscapes in Austin, it only makes sense to start with something in the very heart of the city. What immediately comes to mind, of course, is the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail. This jogging path encompasses over 10 miles of mostly flat jogging track that weaves its way around and over Lady Bird Lake. It has proved to be an enormously popular place for Austinites to escape their concrete jungle. Go down to the area for an evening workout in the warmer months, and the trail will be so packed with joggers and walkers you’d wish you’d braved the midday heat. I’ve long thought all this activity around the lake to be one of the more inspiring aspects of living in Austin. There aren’t really any other cities that I can think of that offer up swaths of seemingly undeveloped land for outdoor recreation. Sure, there’s that stretch along Lake Michigan in Chicago, or along the quays in Paris, but nothing quite compares. The architectural thinking behind the Austin trail is completely focused on getting Austinites out and about, and given that the city is otherwise obsessed with finding all sorts of comfort via technological progress, I think the hike and bike trail is really admirable.

(Image Credit: KXAN Austin)

It’s great to be back on viz. after a semester away. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the most noticeable thing in Austin upon my return is the city’s insane rate of expansion. When one moves about town and looks at buildings, every few blocks or so there’s a new set of high rise apartments (or whatever) going in. Nowhere are the roads being widened to account for the new residents. Rush hour is literally a bunch of metallic, CO2-emitting rivers, and all this negates (at least for me) most pretences Austin makes towards modernity. I heard somewhere that 20,000 people are moving to Austin each month, although I have no idea if that’s really the case – the statistic can make one feel like they live cattle market. But to be fair, most up-and-coming cities can have that feel. Traffic rant aside, if Austin’s powers at be aren’t adjusting roadways to account for new residents, I wonder how smaller entities (such as neighborhoods, private residents, and institutions) are altering their own urban environments to account for the change. In some cases, perhaps, maybe a few brilliant environments that were designed 20 years ago are still healthy, despite all the change. In other cases, perhaps the city is designing new parks and gardens to address future public needs. I am going to try and dedicate all my viz. posts for the coming semester to landscape design in Austin. It might prove valuable, as I’m not sure these things are being catalogued anywhere else.

Image Credit: The Harry Ransom Center

Norman Bel Geddes, Airliner #4 rendering, ca. 1929-1932

Touring the Harry Ransom Center's Norman Bel Geddes exhibit a few weeks ago, my fellow viz. staffers and I were struck by how many of the designer's projects never made it past the drawing board. Bel Geddes' sketches of giant, amphibious aircrafts (see "Airliner #4" above) are prime examples of the far-fetched schemes his studio was hatching in the 30s alongside commercially viable designs, like this handsome pair of seltzer bottles featured in an earlier post. But, as other viz. contributers this week have remarked, articulating what is not and will never be seems like an inevitable part of a theorizing and designing the future. It certainly makes strolling through the Ransom Center's "I Have Seen the Future" exhibit feel like a trip into a delightful, hybrid world of fiction and history.

Geddes' plans for airborne commercial and recreational spaces (the 451 passengers aboard the flying machine, above, would have access to a gymnasium and a full orchestra) interest me because they present a counterpoint to the "auto-centric America" with which Geddes' work is usually associated.  It's likely that Geddes' designs influenced both American aviation and automotive systems, but for an untrained industrial designer like Geddes, the first of these frontiers must have seemed significantly more difficult to modernize, if only from an engineering standpoint.  The challenge of hoisting into the air a full spectrum of modern amenities makes Geddes' airplanes look almost cartoonish. Yet, when we recall that the horizon of space travel was not so far off, Geddes' airliners look less dream-like than before.

Jerome Krase at BrooklynSoc.org passed along a photo gallery comparing an artist’s rendering of the Fulton Street Mall in Brooklyn versus the mall itself.