This issue of Data Points looks at the Activity Centers identified in the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (CAMPO) 2040 Plan and examines the balance between development that creates new jobs vs. new residents in those Activity Centers.
 
As the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Capital Area, CAMPO is required to produce a long-range plan with a 25-year time horizon. The 2035 plan introduced the concept of Activity Centers for the region, and the 2040 plan refined those Centers somewhat, arriving at the map shown below.

s stated in the CAMPO 2040 Plan, “Activity Centers can increase the overall connectivity of the transportation system, particularly within Centers, and can increase choices among transportation modes and routes.” Put another way, the Centers concept aims to concentrate development in strategic locations in order to facilitate:

• Densities that enhance the efficiency of transit service

 

• Shorter commutes, as jobs are clustered but distributed more completely across the Centers in the region

 

• Minimization of sprawl, which is more costly (in terms of public sector finance) because of longer roadways, longer utility infrastructure connections, and so on.

Implicit in the Activity Centers concept is the idea that centers should feature a combination of development types, creating both jobs and residents and giving the Center as a whole a mixed-use functionality. Again, the argument in support of this idea is that if commuting represents the primary transportation activity for most Capital Area residents, locating more housing and employment in Activity Centers maximizes the efficiency of the transportation network that connects where people live and work.

Communities can support this kind of development through zoning designations. Tax incentives and density bonuses can be  offered to developers in order to encourage the desired development types within the Activity Center Area. The end result should be concentrated mixed-use development that is also aligned with transportation and transit plans, effectively marrying the planning of locations for home and work with the transportation network that connects them.

So, if that’s the theory behind the Activity Centers concept, it is worth examining how the region is putting that theory into practice. The following map shows the 2040 CAMPO Centers overlaid on top of Census Blocks that intersect the Center at some point. So, to examine trends in the CAMPO Center areas, we’re using the census data, with the orange census blocks shown in the map serving as proxies.

You’ll see that these proxy areas are a better fit with the Centers in some cases than in others. However, as the Centers can be assumed to reflect the bulk of development activity within the census block areas we’re using as proxies, there is reason enough to consider these proxy areas as instructive.

To examine development in the Activity Centers, this analysis focuses specifically on Jobs-Worker Balance. Jobs-Worker Balance compares the number of jobs located in a specific area  to the number of employed residents that live in that same area. The mathematical formula for computing the statistic is:

So what Jobs-Worker Balance tells you is, “how closely does the number of jobs in an area compare to the number of workers who live in that area?” Calculating the statistic using the formula above, a Jobs-Worker Balance of 1 indicates that an area is perfectly balanced between jobs and residents. A value of 0 indicates an area is composed entirely of either jobs or residents. This particular statistic does not differentiate between areas that are heavily job-centric or heavily resident-centric, but there are examples of both in the region, such as Downtown Austin or Austin Bergstrom Airport (heavily job-centric) or housing developments in largely rural areas (heavily resident-centric.)

Now, enough with context and methodology. Let’s get to talking about what the data show for our region, specifically, “What does the Jobs-Worker Balance look like for the Centers in the most recent data (2014)?” And, what can the data tell us about the trajectory of Jobs-Worker Balance in these Centers?”

The first of the two maps that follow shows Jobs-Worker Balance as of 2014 for each of the CAMPO Activity Centers. One point that stands out is the considerable variation in Jobs-Worker Balance across Centers. Some centers are near perfect balance, while others are nearly perfectly imbalanced. Many of the more balanced Activity Centers are in downtown areas of communities outside of Austin. For example, the crescent of communities in the eastern part of the 5-County region—ranging from Lockhart to Bastrop to Elgin to Taylor—all show very balanced Activity Centers. Communities along IH-35 to the south of Austin—Buda, Kyle, and San Marcos—also show very balanced Activity Centers.

Those Activity Centers in the region that are very unbalanced (shown in red) tend to be locations with high levels of employment relative to residential development. Downtown Austin, for example, shows to be very unbalanced. The Centers roughly corresponding to The Domain (SH-183 & Mopac) and Jollyville (Mopac & SH-45), are also job heavy locations. The Centers along the SH-130 corridor also appear as unbalanced, though the low levels of development in these Centers relative to some of the others, allows for small changes to have dramatic effects on overall Jobs-Worker Balance in the Center.
 
The next map shows the change in Jobs-Worker Balance over the 2005-2014 time period. Change in Jobs-Housing Balance is shown in absolute terms, rather than percentage terms. So, for a Center showing a change of 0.3, the interpretation of that change is that the Jobs-Worker Balance statistic increased by 0.3 over that time, which is not necessarily the same as a 30% improvement in balance. And, as the formula for Jobs-Worker Balance has a maximum value of 1, all positive changes can be interpreted as moves toward a more balanced Activity Center.

The prominence of Centers that appear in yellow (those showing improvements in Jobs-Worker Balance between 0.41 and 0.6) in the map is encouraging for numerous reasons:

• Large-scale shifts in Jobs-Worker Balance are hard, particularly for Centers that already have a great deal of development. Consider how difficult it would be, given the very low existing Jobs-Worker Balance, to dramatically alter the balance for the Downtown Austin Center. Improvements in balance in the range of 0.41 and 0.6 represent really significant shifts.
  

• Each county can claim Centers that are at least shown in yellow, indicating that this trend toward more balanced Activity Centers is taking place throughout the entire Austin MSA.
  

• Many of Centers that are less balanced than they were in 2005 have experienced massive population growth. If development· Many of Centers that are less balanced than they were in 2005 have experienced massive population growth. If development policies allow, it is reasonable to expect that, given the concentration of population that now exists in places like Hutto and Manor, more employment opportunities will follow the growth in population, eventually resulting in a more balanced Center.
  

On the whole, it would appear that the Austin MSA is doing a fairly good job of creating Jobs-Worker Balance within the CAMPO Activity Centers themselves. There isn’t uniform balance across all of the Centers— and there are Centers that are very unbalanced—but for a relatively young concept introduced in a planning document that doesn’t bind municipalities to any particular development pattern, the balance is encouraging.

Also, however, it’s important to note that these Centers are not necessarily indicative of whole communities. While the Center may represent the immediate vicinity surrounding the primary traffic point in a community, whether the community remains balanced beyond the Center is not shown on these maps. The Centers are an excellent start to smart growth policies in the region, but they are just that—the start of planning in order to effectively connect the region’s workers and employment locations.

As the population of communities surrounding Austin continues to grow, new regional job centers will emerge and grow as well. The best way for the Capital Area to remain on the fast economic growth trajectory it currently enjoys is to ensure that its workforce acts regionally, allowing workers to throughout the region to access their best job opportunities with minimal transportation constraints. Communities can support the development of that effective transportation system by taking a proactive role in managing development, encouraging development that is balanced in its creation of new jobs and residences, more densely concentrated in Activity Centers, and supporting regional transportation planning that connects these Centers through multiple transportation modes.

As the Capital Area works to address challenges related to middle-skill and middle-wage jobs, Data Points is taking a close look at the manufacturing sector, one of the key historical sources of  those jobs throughout the country.

Those job gains have come in across a wider range of manufacturing sectors, helping to diversify manufacturing employment beyond electronics and semiconductors.
And while total employment has declined precipitously from its peak in 2000, the number of manufacturing establishments has largely stabilized near peak levels. Following employment trends, establishments in Travis County are growing more diverse, operating in sectors ranging from food and beverage manufacturing (108 establishments in 2013) to fabricated metal and machinery manufacturing (132 establishments in 2013).

Turning from history to the future, how will manufacturing in our region continue to evolve? How will dynamics like rapid population growth, the rising price of land, and an increasingly diverse economy shape the region’s goods producing sectors? We may not have all the answers yet, but there are several interesting factors to consider.

First, the increasingly regional nature of the local economy has been a boon for manufacturing opportunities. While manufacturing of semiconductors and electronics components has declined in Travis County, it has blossomed in the rest of the MSA. Between 2001 and 2016 the First, the increasingly regional nature of the local economy has been a boon for manufacturing opportunities. While manufacturing of semiconductors and electronics components has declined in Travis County, it has blossomed in the rest of the MSA. Between 2001 and 2016 the number of jobs in that sector in the rest of the MSA grew from just under 3,000 to about 7,750—an increase of about 161%. Overall, manufacturing employment in the Non-Travis counties of the MSA has increased from 13,564 in 2001 to 18,659 in 2016.

Other efforts are also underway to strengthen manufacturing in the region. Texas Workforce Commission and Austin Community College are proving to be a powerful partnership to provide targeted skills development to companies in need of workers with specific manufacturing capabilities. Commercialization of research coming out of the University of Texas and Texas State has the potential to create new high-growth manufacturing companies in the region. And looking at future workers, House Bill 5 and an increased emphasis on technical/vocational training in high school offers a mechanism for training a  new generation of skilled manufacturing workers.

One seemingly large loss to the future competitiveness of manufacturing in the region is Union Pacific’s decision to pull out of the Lone Star Rail project. While there has been much discussion of that project’s potential benefits through the provision of commuter rail, the creation of a new freight line running through the eastern part of the MSA offered interesting potential for manufacturing in the region. The apparent loss of that potential feels like a missed opportunity to jumpstart manufacturing in a part of the MSA that is hungry for middle-skill job opportunities.

In short, manufacturing is no sure bet to be the provider of middle-skill employment opportunities in the Capital Area that it once was. However, there are reasons to be optimistic about the sector’s future, and working to identify opportunities to support manufacturing in the region may be  an economic development strategy that bears considerable fruit.

Between 2003 and 2013, the Austin-Round Rock MSA saw population grow by over 500,000 people and employment grow by more than 220,000 jobs.  For this issue of Data Points, we thought we’d ask the question, “Where did we put all those people?”  The maps below show changes in employment and residential densities in the MSA between 2003 and 2013.

With respect to jobs, the map highlights the primacy of Travis County in the local economy. The vast majority of employment density falls in Austin-proper, illustrating why so many workers in the region must cross a county line to commute to and from work every day. Looking more closely, though, one can see that employment grew more dense along IH-35, particularly in Hays and Williamson County. Along IH-35, the cities of Kyle, Buda, and Georgetown, as well as the areas around them, show marked increases in job density. In Williamson County specifically, one can also see significant employment density growth in Cedar Park and along Highway 79, which connects Round Rock, Hutto, and Taylor.  Looking east from Austin, one can also see job growth taking place in Bastrop County. It is most dense along Highways 71 and 290, but employment density seems to have increased throughout much of the western half of Bastrop County.

The changes in population density follow similar patterns, with high density areas growing near the major highways and freeways in the region. However, while jobs in the region are fairly concentrated, housing is far more spread out. Moderate levels of population density essentially cover all of the suburban or rural areas in the MSA. This view is in line with what CAPCOG has observed throughout the region: Generally speaking, Texans like their space. Mixed-use and multifamily developments are often viewed as common sense features of a downtown space, but individual personal preferences lean heavily  toward single-family housing, driving the need to spread residential development across the region.

Given this distribution of jobs and population, it is not surprising that the region suffers from congestion issues. Solving that issue will require dramatic gains in one (or more likely, all) of the following areas:

• Deeper integration of transportation planning with land use and economic development planning. The region’s long-range plans must center on the relationship between employment, housing, and the transportation network that connects those two. CAPCOG has pushed for planning processes that combine economic development and transportation and has produced plans that do combine these functions for Blanco, Lee, and Llano Counties. 

 

• Growth of jobs outside of Travis County. Though many of the communities outside of Travis County are seeing job creation, increasing the scale at which that takes place is necessary to take cars that would otherwise commute to Central Austin off of the region’s congested roadways.

 

• More varied housing options within neighborhoods. Although not visible on this map, one of the major contributors to congestion in the Austin MSA is the homogeneity of housing options (both in terms of type and price) within neighborhoods. Often, long commutes are dictated by the high cost and limited availability of housing options near to one’s employment.

For the communities outside of Austin and along major corridors, the data shown on these maps present a tremendous opportunity. The regions residents have spread out faster and farther than employment has. Put another way, the workers who are helping to fuel the dramatic economic growth the region has seen in recent years either already reside, or are soon to be represented in much larger number, in communities outside of Austin. Several communities, particularly in Williamson and Hays Counties, have already begun to capitalize on this phenomenon by showing prospective companies that a high-skilled workforce already resides in their community, even if it currently commutes to somewhere else.