Downtown Development: Comparing Austin and San Antonio

Austin and San Antonio have taught each other some downtown development tricks over the years. Both cities are involved in public-private partnerships to redevelop their downtowns, and each has followed the other's path in some way — San Antonio adopted a developers' incentive scorecard and Austin is looking at building its own River Walk.

According to a recent San Antonio news story, in the long run, however, a crucial difference between the cities may be that San Antonio's leadership today doesn't have a vision to build on what set the city apart in the first place.

Lack of long-term planning, observers say, has hurt San Antonio's economic growth and helped it lag behind other Texas cities in investment status. And officials have not encouraged the incentive scorecard designed to reward developers who do good design.

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