Existing Conditions
Midtown Area Regional Center
Explore the tabs below to learn more about the assets, challenges and opportunities in the Midtown Area and to view our study area map.
The map below shows the Midtown Area Regional Center in relationship to San Antonio. The area is highlighted in black.
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Assets
Midtown is a place of choices. It’s rich in rivers, trees, and parks. A diverse mix of housing types, including small to large apartment buildings, supports a diverse population. There are new shopping and restaurant clusters, traditional Mexican-American eateries and fruterías, specialty hardware stores, multiple museums and colleges, and San Antonio’s primary cluster of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Plus gathering places and businesses. Midtown’s employers include large organizations like Metropolitan Methodist Hospital, and locally owned business. Midtown’s residents and visitors can participate in its cultural heritage while contributing to the area’s future. Midtown’s strong social fabric and cultural roots will maintain an eclectic identity for the area as it adapts to changing times.
Challenges
The places and neighborhoods in Midtown mean different things to different people. Midtown’s transportation system is designed primarily for automobiles, but growing numbers need or want other convenient, reliable, and safe transportation options. Recent, new housing is not priced affordably for many people who already live here. Midtown is home to people and families with lifetimes of living room memories, and regional destinations like the museums and colleges that are important to all San Antonians. Midtown’s places have unique identities, rooted in the landscape, buildings, and people. As Midtown continues building on its strengths, central challenges are to ensure that all people can participate in Midtown’s future and improve quality of life, while maintaining the unique communities and cultures that comprise Midtown today.
Opportunities
Midtown has room to grow. It can become a place of even more choice, with more options to live, work, and play. Midtown has housing that is diverse and affordable. We have an opportunity to maintain that diversity and affordability, and to create more. Midtown also offers a diverse base of employment and educational opportunities to local and regional residents. San Antonio residents should have the choice to live in centers of opportunity, such as Midtown and other regional centers. The historic grid street pattern, future high capacity transit options, and momentum from 2017 transportation bond projects on Fred Road, St. Mary’s Street, and Broadway Street mean that Midtown can have a truly multimodal transportation system that is convenient and safe, and that will help San Antonio be more sustainable and healthy.
The map below shows the Midtown Area Regional Center Plan boundary and the connectivity throughout the area and beyond.
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Sub-Area Plans
Sub-Area Plans are intended to provide a more coordinated, efficient and effective structure for neighborhood planning. Existing and future neighborhood planning will be integrated into the planning for regional centers and community planning areas. Neighborhoods will become integral sub-geographies of these sub-areas while also receiving special attention through chapters and/or sections in each Sub-Area plan, reflecting specific opportunities, challenges, recommendations and priorities from each participating neighborhood. Neighborhood and community plans should be respected, as appropriate, as they are integrated into the sub-area plans.
Comprehensive Plan Regional Centers
Regional centers are one of the major building blocks of San Antonio’s city form and are a major component of the Comprehensive Plan and the overall SA Tomorrow effort.
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While most cities have one or two larger employment centers, we have 13. This provides challenges and opportunities. A major organizing element for the Comprehensive Plan is to focus growth in these regional centers, building on the existing pattern of development. They’re envisioned as new “places” where we live, work, and play.
New development is already gravitating to these centers and we can guide additional growth in these areas. Each center is different and its development will be influenced by its existing uses. However, many of the centers are also well-positioned to develop as vibrant mixed-use places. They offer a variety of housing options and price ranges, allow higher-density and incorporate carefully designed and located amenities that will benefit both residents and employees of the center. Each center’s character can attract a different mix of businesses and employees. Therefore, San Antonio must focus its investment and infrastructure strategies on supporting and leveraging the unique identity and assets of each center.