Better Know An Indicator

One of the many horrible phrases that Imagine Austin is going toss at You the Public is "sustainability indicator." We're going to start using these indicators during the next round of public input, coming this spring. To help get ready, we're launching a regular feature on the Imagine Austin blog called Better Know An Indicator. *

Indicators are pieces of information that capture something useful about Austin; in this case, our focus is on sustainability, in keeping with one of the overarching themes of Imagine Austin. One common example is the unemployment rate, whose present and past values tell us something useful about the economy--maybe not the whole picture, but a useful part of it.

Our hope is to take these technical little monsters and make them relateable. So, for example, over the next few weeks, you're going to see a lot of indicators related to "adjacency." That's because a lot of planning is about having things that work together physically located next to each other, particularly when it comes to places that people might walk to. The standard measure for "walking distance" is a quarter-mile. Once you look at enough maps with quarter-mile circles on them, you get a feel for what that means. But if you haven't done that, a quarter mile is just a number: maybe it's a block, maybe it's a short drive. Who knows!

So, to give that some perspective, the Congress Avenue Bridge is just shy of a quarter mile:

View 1/4 mile Congress Ave in a larger map

Heading south on the bridge, once you've made it to Barton Springs Road, you've gone a quarter-mile.

Click for more detailed information on where these indicators come from.

What questions do you have about how we'll be using indicators?

* Shamefully stolen from the Colbert Report. (Back to top.)