Austin’s Great Streets: Success and Failure on Second Street

Great streets make great cities. This holds especially true in the United States, where public space and life in American cities are typically relegated to the streets in the relative absence of plazas, squares, and parks. As cities began to acknowledge how car-centric life and low-density sprawl dismantled the life of its downtowns, they sought to employ urban planning and design values for revitalization. Austin, Texas is a notably rapid-growing American city which also began to reimagine its downtown through the lens of urban planning and design, especially at the turn of the millennium. Decades of visionary planning led to the adoption of the city’s first modern, comprehensive street design initiative—the Great Streets Program. Along with a renewed focus on street vitality, Austin engaged in several redevelopment efforts across the city. Of these, the Second Street Retail District was a flagship downtown revitalization project which sought to embody the city’s new urban planning and design values. Now, a decade after the completion of the Retail District redevelopment project, this thesis examines the historic circumstance of Austin’s urban environment and the evaluates the ways Second Street succeeded and failed in its goals regarding economic revitalization, pedestrian prioritization, and urban character. The thesis begins with a recounting of key urban planning decisions in Austin’s history, describes the Great Streets program and Retail District project in detail, then analyzes the project and concludes with key findings.Architectur