The questions that arose Wednesday on the city of Austin's ongoing effort to overhaul its land development code centered on so-called transition zones at the edges of the city's central neighborhoods, where it appears the rewrite will create the greatest potential for more housing.

Those areas, where neighborhood lots sit closest to Austin's high-traffic streets, have emerged as one of the rewrite's main targets for creating a potential for 405,000 new housing units in the next decade.

As the City Council ordered in May in a hotly debated policy guideline document that is now shaping the rewrite, transition zones were broadly defined as areas where two to five housing lots could extend into a neighborhood.

On Wednesday, staff gave a more detailed look at what that means, offering the council a peek under the hood as to how they will determine where the city code will allow neighborhoods' housing density to increase and to what extent.

City staffers showed that in areas that meet all of their criteria to create transition zones, lots on the outer edges of neighborhoods could be redeveloped into six-unit housing developments. Farther into neighborhoods, the transition zones could allow for four-unit housing.

Staff also said there would likely be areas where transition zones would extend farther than five lots into a neighborhood. They could extend up to 850 feet into a neighborhood from a busy street, but most would top out at 700 feet.

Council Member Alison Alter, who was on the losing end of many votes during the council's creation of the rewrite's policy document, said she hopes she'll get more clarity soon about the effects transition zones will have on neighborhoods.

"We need to communicate that so people know what it means for their neighborhoods," Alter said.

Council Member Jimmy Flannigan, conversely on the winning side of most of those same votes, said he was committed to sticking with compromises ironed out during the meeting that led to the policy document's creation.

"I feel strongly that we made our compromises, and I am going to stick to what we agreed upon as a body," he said.

The council's next meeting on the rewrite will be Sept. 11, when some council members asked city staffers to provide some mapping of where transition zones will be. A draft map and code are set to be released Oct. 4, to be followed by a rapid round of community meetings.

The council will hold its public hearing on the rewrite in November and is slated to take up the approval of the overhaul in December.

After the meeting, Clarksville resident Brooke Bailey said the process was moving too fast.

"There's too many unknowns," Bailey said. "There's too much that is undefined and too many variables."