[NYC2ATX]

I know a lot of you don't care for the proliferation of parking podiums in so many of these new developments, but if the tower-on-stilts-at-transition-floor-platform vibe is becoming a new common design vernacular in Austin, I wouldn't be mad at all. A lot of these buildings have a feel of floating on their podiums and I think it's unique. We still get new retail space and reconstruction of the street level to great streets standards in all of these new projects.

Of course, at some point, Austin may be faced with a challenge of having to retrofit these podiums for different uses if transit improvements and cultural shifts deem them excessive one day, but until then this is far from the worst solution to parking requirements. I always say, it's fortunate that Austin boomed now when smarter urban growth strategies are the modus operandi, instead of the '70s and '80s like Dallas and Houston, when bulldozing whole blocks for seas of parking was viewed as perfectly fine.