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AIA Austin weighs in on CodeNEXT

The results aren’t pretty

By Cindy Widner
Illustration of big buildings and people walking around below them
A city’s got to have a code
Illustration by  Rachel Sender

In the wake of an initial "design charrette" and preliminary report released in June, AIA Austin has issued its final verdict on the current CodeNEXT draft, the Austin Business Journal’s Michael Theis reported Wednesday.

In what sounds like a bit of a doorstopper of a report (106 pages), the group delved into the minutiae of the long-in-the-making overhaul of Austin’s development codes and found quite a bit lacking, Theis added.

A few of the problems the AIA report points to are “confusing mapping, overly prescriptive regulations and barriers to building ‘missing middle housing’,” according to Theis.

The reporter added that the AIA report came out of a design simulation displayed at St. Edward's University in May, which included regional architects, designers, land-use attorneys, and real estate development financiers in a sort of CodeNEXT focus group.

You can read and download the full AIA Austin report here.

• Architects detail serious issues with CodeNEXT draft [ABJ]