Austin Icons & Projects
Completed in 2004 as the tallest building in Austin at the time, this downtown skyscraper's jagged glass crown appears to form the face of a bird when viewed at a 45-degree angle from a distance — with its round bank logos forming the eyes and a sharp corner forming the beak.
What is the Frost Bank Tower?
What is the name of Austin’s commuter rail line that runs from downtown to Leander?
The Red Line (or Route 550)
This student organization aims to advocate, educate, and empower UT students to work towards a more walkable, accessible, and livable urban community.
Longhorn Urbanists
Roughly 80% of this city-state's population lives in public housing built by its Housing & Development Board (HDB) — one of the most extensive public housing systems in the world, blending affordability with mixed-income, multi-ethnic neighborhoods by design.
What is Singapore?
What term describes areas where housing, shops, offices, and entertainment are close together or in the same structure?
What is Mixed-use development?
This downtown Austin district on the north shore of Lady Bird Lake is anchored by an Art Moderne-style former power plant, decommissioned in the late 1980s/early '90s and later reborn as a mixed-use hub of offices, retail, and residences after a nearly two-decade redevelopment fight.
What is the Seaholm District (Seaholm Power Plant)?
What are the three-digit route numbers for Austin's two longest "Rapid" lines; one serves the North Lamar/South Congress corridor while the other serves Burnet/South Lamar.
801 and 803
This Y-shaped pedestrian and bicycle bridge over Lady Bird Lake near Longhorn Dam opened to the public on February 7, 2026, finally closing the last gap in the 10-mile Butler Trail loop.
What is the Wishbone Bridge?
This Danish city pioneered the modern "pedestrian street" concept in 1962 when it closed its main shopping street, Strøget, to car traffic — a move now credited as one of the first deliberate car-free retrofits of a European city center.
What is Copenhagen?
This urban planning concept describes a residential area where most daily necessities (like groceries, work, and parks) can be reached by a short walk or bike ride from one's home
15-Minute City (Or Walkability)
Before it was renamed Austin in 1839 in honor of Stephen F. Austin, this small settlement on the banks of the Colorado River — chosen as the new capital site by President Mirabeau B. Lamar — went by this name
What is Waterloo?
Austin's city government uses this professional, council-appointed position to run day-to-day operations — the person who effectively serves as the city's CEO, distinct from the elected mayor and council.
What is the City Manager?
Opened June 6, 2026, this 13-acre second phase of Waterloo Greenway transformed a once flood-prone stretch of Waller Creek between 4th Street and Lady Bird Lake into an urban forest with some 1,600 new trees, three lattice bridges, and an 800-foot boardwalk.
What is The Confluence?
This city operates the world’s busiest railway station (Shinjuku) and is famous for its private railway companies that stay profitable by owning the department stores and housing built directly on top of its massive station hubs.
What is Tokyo?
Who wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a foundational urbanist text?
Jane Jacobs
In 2025, Austin's Planning Commission and City Council debated an update to this two-decade-old West Campus zoning district, considering expanded height allowances and new boundaries — a plan opposed by some neighbors, including the North University Neighborhood Association, over increased density near their homes.
University Neighborhood Overlay (UNO)
This is the name of CapMetro’s on-demand, app-based microtransit service that picks up passengers in specific neighborhood zones (like Mueller or Dove Springs) for the price of a local bus fare.
Pickup
Formed by the bends of the Colorado River, U.S. 183, and State Highway 130, this 2,600-plus-acre former sand-and-gravel mining site in Southeast Austin was approved for a mixed-use development in 2026, with council later unlocking a special tax district that could support up to $5.6 billion in infrastructure.
What is Dog's Head?
Once considered the most dangerous city in the world, this South American "City of Eternal Spring" transformed its poorest hillside slums by installing the world’s first mass-transit cable car system and a massive, 1,200-foot outdoor escalator.
Medellín (Colombia)
This term describes an area — often low-income and disproportionately urban or rural — where residents have limited access to full-service grocery stores, typically defined by the USDA as living more than 1 mile from one in an urban setting, or more than 10 miles in a rural one.
What is a "food desert"?
This UT Austin building, designed by Cass Gilbert — the architect behind New York's Woolworth Building and the U.S. Supreme Court — opened in 1911 as "The University Library" and reopened to students and the public in 2025 after a multi-year restoration
What is Battle Hall?
In 2023, CapMetro's board approved a $754 million, five-year contract handing its fixed-route bus operations to this Paris-based company, sidelining the previous contractor, MV Transportation, despite union warnings about its labor record.
What is Keolis?
This share of Austin's housing stock — a mix of duplexes, cottage courts, and small multi-unit buildings — has collapsed from 23% in 1984 down to just 3% today, the statistic city council cited when directing staff to draft new MR1, MR2, and MR3 zoning districts.
What is "missing middle" housing?
This mountainous Chinese municipality of over 30 million people built its rail network straight through its buildings out of necessity, most famously at Liziba Station, where a monorail runs through floors 6 to 8 of a 19-story apartment tower — a sight that went viral again in 2026 as tourists posed "swallowing" the train.
What is Chongqing?
This term, coined in contrast to top-down "urban planning," describes small-scale, low-cost, community-led interventions — like pop-up parklets or temporary bike lanes — used to test changes before permanent investment.
What is tactical urbanism?