As part of the process to update the Land Development Code (LDC), the City’s CodeNEXT team is releasing a series of "prescription papers" to provide a general idea about the direction the new code is taking. A total of four prescription papers will cover the following: the natural and built environment, affordability, mobility and fiscal health.

Something new and different is in the works for Austin’s evolving skyline.

The mayor’s office outlined seven things the city is doing to address transportation. The ride-hailing companies are still operating in the suburbs around Austin, but are not picking up fares inside the city limits.

Selling clear-water lakes to real estate developers is just a ripple on the surface of Fischmann's ambitions. He said he's working with students at MIT’s Sloan School of Management on a business model for building lagoons in public parks and is hatching plans to build "floating lagoons" on top of bodies of water that are currently unsuitable for swimming. His most audacious proposal is a system to cool an electric power plant and use the excess heat to power a desalination facility.

Sometimes a project truly deserves the often used adjective disruptive. The pop-up ShopWithMe is one of them. With it, Giorgio Borruso Design and the technology company WithMe are turning retail inside out and upside down. Unlike the concept stores flooding the market, ShopWithMe goes far beyond the "change" represented by seasonal collections and snazzy promotional events to present an entirely new paradigm in terms of technology, fluidity, and mobility. This is a prefabricated retail environment neither fixed in a geograph­ical location nor dedicated to a particular brand. Both off-line and online shopping are offered there, too. Call ShopWithMe the ultimate smart store.

Transwestern is building Indie Apartments, a 139-microunit community that will include 350-square-foot studio apartments and 520-square-foot units with two bedrooms.

Austin’s hotel market has been operating at a very high rate the last six to eight years. Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau director of market analysis Christine Cramer told the crowd at Bisnow’s Austin hospitality event that the CBD has had double-digit RevPAR growth for the past five years.

The populations of Dallas and Houston are projected to roughly double by 2035. Auto traffic between the cities will increase by 100%, pushing the four-hour journey close to six hours, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. Texas Central wants to get you there in less than 90 minutes.

Gregg Abbott recommitted himself to directing public funds towards attracting and retaining top scientific talent, pointing to grants as a major key to recruiting top researchers from other states.

An educational program will be the first of its kind in the nation that allows students to track development of a master-planned community as it happens–from groundbreaking to opening. Arizona-based real estate investment and development company, Harvard Investments, and East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT), are launching a 12-month program beginning in the fall that provides EVIT high school students unprecedented exposure to and understanding of the entire process for building a large scale, master-planned community, Cadence at Gateway.

Restaurants are more than just places to eat. They are comprising town centers and playing into the future of brick-and-mortar retail.

The great retailer shakeup of 2016 continues, as recognizable brands such as Sports Authority, Sports Chalet and Aeropostale have filed for Chapter 11. But despite these shutterings and others that have marred the last 18 months, the sector continues to be a very significant part of the economy