Setback Requirements Unneccesary

In last week’s article "A Tree Dies in Travis Heights," Leslie Belt states that "We just didn’t think [Barkley] should be given an unnecessary variance ... without a fight." Thanks to Belt’s and other neighbors’ enthusiastic efforts, a 100- to 200-year-old oak has been destroyed. Since Ms. Belt appears to feel so strongly about enforcing the 25-foot setback required by city code, perhaps she wouldn’t mind explaining to us precisely what civic purpose this ridiculous rule serves? As far as I can tell, the answer is none. City of Austin building codes can roughly be divided into two categories: those having to do with safety and energy conservation (all good) and those which seek to enforce some kind of twisted suburban design sensibilities (all bad). The 25-foot setback requirement falls squarely into the latter category. Not only does this codify a waste of urban land, but it actually inhibits community. Building closer to the street creates more engagement between the structure and the street, allowing, for example, for the opportunity of dialog between people sitting on their front porches and pedestrians on the street. In his excellent book City Comforts, planner David Sucher cites building to the sidewalk as the single most important pattern in creating an urban village. And a smaller front yard almost always results in more focused and intensely visual landscaping, allowing for a better streetscape. There’s everything wrong and nothing right about the 25-foot setback requirement. I suspect that Ms. Belt didn’t really think about any of this before playing her part in the death of the tree. There’s a word for being opposed to something just for the sake of opposition: It’s called being unneighborly. It doesn’t matter that Ms. Barkley doesn’t live in the neighborhood, we’re all members of the same community, and the community is now short one more big old tree.