AIA Austin was proud to partner with the City of Austin to make a successful application to be one of seven communities chosen in 2012 by the AIA’s Sustainable Design Assistance Team (SDAT) program. This program brought a team of sustainable design experts to Austin to work with our local community last June to image a sustainable future for the South Shore Central area of our waterfront. Many AIA Austin members volunteered their expertise in helping with the design charrette.
The AIA’s Center for Communities by Design issued the final SDAT report in October. This report provides independent recommendations on how the “South Shore Central area can redevelop to provide for more pedestrian connectivity, better public access to the waterfront, sustainable infrastructure, and a high quality urban realm. The SDAT report is providing an important component to inform another exciting urban planning initiative – the Sustainable Places Project. This project is developing a custom computer analytic tool to model a battery of sustainable impacts of urban design scenarios. The SDAT report will be used to help calibrate the development of this tool for analyzing future scenarios for the South Shore Central.