9 ms·

The Astonishing Transformation of Austin

58 points by aloukissas 4y ago

fumar 4y ago
Interesting take on tech and Austin over a long period. I was one signature away from moving there in 2019. I had visited Austin on behalf of clients for fours years prior. It has it charms and a Texas-like version of Denver in a way. I passed on Austin because of its subtropical humid climate. My allergies coupled with high humidity made it an unbearable place to be for long periods of time. I put Miami in the same bucket. After years of traveling and experiencing multiple major US cities, I am sticking with Mediterranean climates.
- forgot_old_user 4y ago
  where did you end up going? I love Austin but its a little too hot during the summer.
  - fumar 4y ago
    Southern California. You can't escape compromising on certain factors like costs, but I find it a pleasant place to wake up everyday. As I've gotten older, I've prioritized my daily wellbeing more and more.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  I've never lived out of subtropical climates... basically New Orleans and Dallas. The changes in seasons is always miserable for me. I've got seasonal allergies and also seasonal asthma. Back home in New Orleans, I was always fine from May until early October. And for the next half of the year, it's been a constant struggle with shortness of breath and sinus infections ever since I can remember.
  - fumar 4y ago
    I empathize as I had the same issues for decades. I grew up in the midwest and spent considerable time in NY too. I had three sinus surgeries before turning 30. I've been in SoCal for almost four years and my sinus issues rarely flare up.
- jasondigitized 4y ago
  I just can't with these humidity comments. Austin is not humid. It is hot as f*ck but not humid. Houston on the other hand is the most miserable place on earth when it comes to humidity.
dpflan 4y ago
Anyone who lives Austin able to provide anecdotes?
- mrclaus12 4y ago
  Lived there until around 2021 and visited often before the hype. It is the same as the rest of Texas, but offers employability in the technology sector. People have this notion that there's a "different vibe", but really it feels like political posturing and wanting to feel hip. There's nothing really wrong with Austin, and it has a cool lake. But that's really it.
- fintechjock 4y ago
  I live in Austin and know the author to boot. I haven't had the time to sit down and read this one yet, but knowing him I can pretty well guess his take. He is my pick for the best writer in the state. My read of Austin: - I was born here in 1995. Except for a few years, I've seen double-digit growth in most measurables every year of my life. Growth is the only thing I have ever known so I am comfortable with it, and I can also see why previous generations (I.e. my parents) are not. - Change is painful. Especially at this clip and for this long. But man, it is beautiful. - The City Council here is undoubtedly the worst part of the problem. They consistently buckle to NIMBYs, and allocate money in just unreasonably idiotic ways. ("No one riding the train that cost $1.1 billion? Easy fix! Spend $7 billion more!") They are making the change much more painful. - Natives were largely fine with the first wave of California refugees in 2008. This COVID wave is different though. The new movers kept their jobs and are working remote from Austin – meaning that they still have their Cali / NY inflated paychecks. It feels like a money fight, and we keep losing.
  - 71a54xd 4y ago
    This is basically my exact position as a native austinite - personally the transformation was complete for me when Magnolia's on Lake Austin blvd closed. Now it's all just Tesla's with CA plates
    - fintechjock 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
I spent 8 months on a death march of a project that colored Austin for me but that aside, infrastructurally, Austin sucked getting around and didn't have a ton to offer that didn't revolve around UT (6th primarily) or Rainey. The public transit (what is that streetcar thing even?) is horribly underdeveloped and heavily car dependent. Downtown is "bridge and tunnel"-y. Maybe if I had ventured out to the burbs more, I would have found more? But it was pretty underwhelming.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  I mean honestly infrasructurally the bay area sucks too, unless you happen to live in certain parts of the city or on the Caltrain (in which case transit is good but eye wateringly expensive). Try living in Alameda, Burlingame, San Leandro, etc. Even so. Like nobody goes from the marina to the mission, or sunset to the mission. People never go to east bay. As for meaningful entertainment I actually think Austin has about as much to offer as sf, but that could just be due to the circles I frequent. Legit the thing I miss is altitude hiking (go climb a huge hill like mt. Tam, or string together four parks around my house and do a six km loop, mostly in parks). Barton creek is amazing though, and it's fantastic that you can forget you're inside a city for about 20km
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    Oh absolutely. I recently had to consider moving to the Bay as well and it was so incredibly underwhelming compared to the cost of living. This was looking at East Bay too. Impossible to get around, less-than-ideal access to entertainment. It is nice being close to nature but that's about it. Tech and nature. Not worth the CoL imo. I say this as someone who is from Chicago and lived in NYC for a long time, so I'm completely biased.
- michaelbrave 4y ago
  I lived there for a while twice, not much in the burbs either, but there was a lot to like as far as music, bars and interesting food. But yeah, getting around wasn't convenient, all of texas is like that, first time I visited I was like "why are there so many toll roads?" plus the frontage roads feel like a carryover from when the population was 1/5 what it is now, the whole city feels like a failure of city planning, but especially the roads.
vngzs 4y ago
https://archive.is/eiMzk https://archive.is/eiMzk
orange_joe 4y ago
I understand the nostalgia for a youth and place that is gone, but it’s interesting to point out in one sentence — “Austin was beset by racial divisions” and in the next paragraph discuss the hope that the city would institute strict zoning to keep out newcomers or as the writing says “if we won’t build it, they won’t come”. So much of this piece is dedicated to the problem of housing, but ignored is the problem in its infancy. If you want artists, creatives and musicians you need to build them cheap places to live.
- dylan604 4y ago
  The vibe from Austin has always been weird to me. "Thanks for visiting, don't move here" or whatever their saying is to that effect. Yet, so few people are from Austin. To me, Austin has always been that poser city trying so hard to be cool and noticed by the other cool cities, but when you try to get to know the city it's just a facade of cool and the rest is just empty and hollow
  - theYipster 4y ago
    Couldn't agree more!
  - bsder 4y ago
    That vibe is very 2000's. Austin used to be cool. Austin used to have a bunch of places open until 3AM. Austin used to be a raging live music scene. Austin used to have latin clubs with 12 piece bands and a dance floor the size of a postage stamp that served amazing homemade tamales. Austin used to have cool food places. SXSW used to have a whole bunch of artists you never heard of--and some of them sucked terribly--but that's how cool works. Austin used to have a biker bar that had the best milkshakes in town. All these things disappeared about the mid 90s (it's no coincidence that Office Space was shot in Austin in 1998-1999). Nothing "cool" has risen to replace any of it. But people also do forget that unless they were UT students they really didn't like the "cool" people very much back then. For example, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Marcia Ball, and their ilk whom everybody now lionize were considered part of the undesirables. The "hippies" were looked at with a mixture of arms length tolerance and active disgust. And as has been pointed out in the article, race relations have been fraught for a very long time.
71a54xd 4y ago
[flagged]
- mikebenfield 4y ago
  You could just support new housing development and sane urban planning. Then maybe Austin will still be a pleasant and semi-affordable place to live in 10 or 20 years. Lots of moderately wealthy people moving in could be, in some ways, a boon for Austin, if you don't do everything exactly wrong. (The alternative is to refuse to build new housing or do any reasonable urban planning out of resentment towards newcomers, and then watch in frustration as traffic becomes even worse, housing prices continue to skyrocket, and you have rapidly rising homelessness and crime. The same way most cities in California handled this situation.)
  - kyteland 4y ago
    As someone leaving Austin after 10 years, one limiting factor to growth here is water. All of the municipal water for the metro area comes from Lake Travis. There's a hard limit to how much growth the city can support even if infrastructure and housing was prioritized.
    - 71a54xd 4y ago
      Not really, most of it comes from the Edwards aquifer and the CO river (which Lake Travis is a damned portion of). If we stopped selling so much water to rice farmers in east texas at a hilarious discount per acre foot we wouldn't have a shortage. Utilities also haven't lowered water prices since they hiked them during draught conditions even though we've had a surplus of supply for years now. Rice farmers are still paying pennies on the dollar for thousands of gallons.
  - 71a54xd 4y ago
    My comment has nothing to do with that - the city council has been a joke for decades. Their strategy up until now was literally "just slow down the process of giving building permits, that way growth will happen at a reasonable pace". We can see how well that played out haha.
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
rossdavidh 4y ago
So, I have lived in Austin since the mid-90's, having come here from the midwest via Silicon Valley (back when it was based on actual silicon, i.e. semiconductor companies). You know you have become a true Austinite when you first say "it's not as cool as it was back when I first moved here". I was hearing it in the mid-90's when I moved here, I have heard it continually in the 25+ years since. Sometime in 2050, Austinites will be talking about how it is no longer as cool as it was in 2022, back when they moved here. The thing is, Austin's vibe comes in part from the large number of newcomers. Newcomers to a city add energy, because they are still out and about looking for things to do and new friendships to make. A town of the same size, with the same industries, etc. which had been that size for a while, would not have the same vibe. Cities are vectors, not scalars; what gives Austin it's cool vibe is in part that there is a lot happening, and a big part of that is that new people are constantly showing up. Sure, Austin has problems from this, because building enough housing to keep the prices down is hard, and keeping the infrastructure up is also hard, and Austin needs to do better on both. But, if you could somehow freeze Austin's size where it is, or where it was in a few decades back, you would not get the same feel. Rather, it would feel stultifying, full of people who already have their close circle of friends and don't feel a need to go out much, or if they do go only to the same things they went to last year. You can't freeze a candleflame, and a growing city is more like a candleflame (reacting and changing) than it is like an ice sculpture.
- ngoldbaum 4y ago
  Look at Boulder for an example of what happens when you institute strict limits on growth.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    And what is Boulder like?
    - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
      Aside from the areas around CU Boulder which have the normal amount of college things, it is very quiet, bucolic and great for cyclists.
carpet_wheel 4y ago
"Anyone who takes 6 months of paternity leave is a loser" "I had to flee SF, the city literally built in my VC image, because someone said some mean words to me" These people are a parody of themselves. Talent-less rich kids, spending other people's money all day, and so incredibly insecure they have to constantly find ways to belittle anyone who doesn't treat them like a genius. Narcissism run rampant, and spreading everywhere they decide to touch down on their endless journey away from the consequences of their own behavior.
- zwkrt 4y ago
  I think it is individualism more than straight-up narcissism, but the two go closely hand-in-hand. But I do think there is a difference between people who have been enculturated to not need (or think they need) community and people who would only participate in community if they could be the leader.
- outside1234 4y ago
  Especially since Pete's child was in the ICU - it is not like he was on vacation in Hawaii or something.
agnos 4y ago
Maybe just an untimely experience, but I visited Austin once a little over a year ago during the summer, and downtown was basically a ghost town. I assumed it was because UT was on break, but still I couldn't help thinking "where is everybody?" given the Austin hype. That being said, as a remote worker becoming increasingly disillusioned about Bay Area cost of living and politics, Austin is on my radar. Any Austin transplants here who can shed some light on moving there? How easy is it to establish a social network/sense of community as a newcomer?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Austin is a generally friendly place. I lived there for a bit during the COVID times for fun. It's a cheerful vibe where people will greet you on the street and there's a few fun places to go to. I thought it was quite pleasant for the bit I was there. I should warn you, though. It is not a city by any measure. More like a small town with a couple of streets of action. And the politics are not dissimilar in Austin proper from the Bay Area (perhaps because of the large number of people who've moved there from here). However, because of the low cost of land in the associated area you can have things like Wonderspaces, etc. Also, there's things that are hard to do in the Bay like shooting. Ultimately, I chose not to live there because I wanted a more urban life. And I wanted less extreme weather than the place has.
- burlesona 4y ago
  Would not recommend. It's a great city if you like paying almost as much as SF for housing and getting: - High heat and humidity for 8 months out of the year - Mosquitos that make the few nice days out much less nice - Surprising ice/snow storms in the middle of the few months of nice weather - Having to drive everywhere in heavy and hostile traffic - Risking your life if you want to walk or bike somewhere - Being surrounded by an expanse of suburban sprawl that's very ugly - Having surprisingly few cultural institutions / resources close by - Property taxes are eye-poppingly high so if you plan to buy a place be warned that you can afford less than you think That said if you love strip malls and want to live in a place where people equate quality of life to quantity of stuff, then you'll love it!
  - 4y ago
renewiltord 4y ago
Austin is like any other place in America. There is a dominant cultural and economic class in America: Coastal Californians. And they will transform and take your things with money. So either you can figure out how to comfortably rise with the tide or you can build a sea wall and they will breach it. You will then be left with complaints of prices and this and that. Everyone has been warned for ages. They all kick up the usual fuss "No Californians", "stop gentrifying", "X is full". But it doesn't matter. You may not want to give in, but your neighbour will. And then the Californians will take everything around you and mould it in the image they desire. And you will be left, in your intransigence, to rage against the imperialism of money, but you will be unhappy.
elamje 4y ago
I'll take a possibly contrarian position that the growth has been mostly awesome! I've been here since 2013 and as much as people complain, there has been traffic on the 2 main arteries through Austin since I've been here. Austin is getting a lot more attention and interest from the large coastal cities which is bringing in more investment, interesting DTC/Tech companies that wouldn't have considered it otherwise, etc. Plus, if you are a relatively social person there is more fun stuff to do now than 10 years ago imo Of course it is getting more expensive and crowded. How anyone would expect otherwise is baffling to me - more people entering any city is going to increase prices and congestion.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > Of course it is getting more expensive and crowded. How anyone would expect otherwise is baffling to me - more people entering any city is going to increase prices and congestion. Zone everything multi-family, remove set-back restrictions, remove parking requirements, staff up city permitting departments so they can approve within weeks, and house prices don't go up. People flocked to the coastal cities like NYC and SF because of cheap plentiful housing and lots of job opportunities. Sure the housing sucked, but it got better as people worked those jobs and demanded better. Housing in cities being a zero sum game (or more like negative sum...) is a new problem that we have invented for ourselves.
DanCarvajal 4y ago
Speaking as an Oklahoman, Texas is too Texas for its own good.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Would you recommend Bartlesville/Tulsa?
  - DanCarvajal 4y ago
    Honestly, Tulsa and Oklahoma City are pretty darn good these days and represent good options for a lot of people. Oklahoma also sneakily has a lot of great outdoor recreation and some of the best bouldering in the U.S. Oklahoma is interesting, it's got some unique issues but I feel like most people born there never really leave.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      This sounds like Louisiana.
      - DanCarvajal 4y ago
        But with more reasonable humidity!
fratur79 4y ago
It's bizarre when people only move to a city AFTER it's been deemed the new "It" city - then complain about how unlivable it is. The point is to find a city you like before it gets saturated. My bet is on Chicago next.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Good luck saturating Chicago.
jcapaus 4y ago
1967: arrived in Austin as a UT freshman. It was Nirvana. 1971: graduated and left for 8 years. 1979: returned to Austin where I have been ever since. Yep, more than half a century - I'm older than dirt, and older than Lawrence Wright. His article depressed me, but weird here died a slow and painful death some time ago. I am grateful to have experienced Austin as it was, and sad that all who are young will never have had that opportunity. That Austin will not return, and we can only hope that the massive city Austin is becoming will redefine itself as a very different but still vibrant and desirable place to be.

58 points by aloukissas 4y ago

Interesting take on tech and Austin over a long period. I was one signature away from moving there in 2019. I had visited Austin on behalf of clients for fours years prior. It has it charms and a Texas-like version of Denver in a way. I passed on Austin because of its subtropical humid climate. My allergies coupled with high humidity made it an unbearable place to be for long periods of time. I put Miami in the same bucket. After years of traveling and experiencing multiple major US cities, I am sticking with Mediterranean climates.

forgot_old_user 4y ago
where did you end up going? I love Austin but its a little too hot during the summer.
- fumar 4y ago
  Southern California. You can't escape compromising on certain factors like costs, but I find it a pleasant place to wake up everyday. As I've gotten older, I've prioritized my daily wellbeing more and more.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
I've never lived out of subtropical climates... basically New Orleans and Dallas. The changes in seasons is always miserable for me. I've got seasonal allergies and also seasonal asthma. Back home in New Orleans, I was always fine from May until early October. And for the next half of the year, it's been a constant struggle with shortness of breath and sinus infections ever since I can remember.
- fumar 4y ago
  I empathize as I had the same issues for decades. I grew up in the midwest and spent considerable time in NY too. I had three sinus surgeries before turning 30. I've been in SoCal for almost four years and my sinus issues rarely flare up.
jasondigitized 4y ago
I just can't with these humidity comments. Austin is not humid. It is hot as f*ck but not humid. Houston on the other hand is the most miserable place on earth when it comes to humidity.

dpflan 4y ago

Anyone who lives Austin able to provide anecdotes?

mrclaus12 4y ago
Lived there until around 2021 and visited often before the hype. It is the same as the rest of Texas, but offers employability in the technology sector. People have this notion that there's a "different vibe", but really it feels like political posturing and wanting to feel hip. There's nothing really wrong with Austin, and it has a cool lake. But that's really it.
fintechjock 4y ago
I live in Austin and know the author to boot. I haven't had the time to sit down and read this one yet, but knowing him I can pretty well guess his take. He is my pick for the best writer in the state. My read of Austin: - I was born here in 1995. Except for a few years, I've seen double-digit growth in most measurables every year of my life. Growth is the only thing I have ever known so I am comfortable with it, and I can also see why previous generations (I.e. my parents) are not. - Change is painful. Especially at this clip and for this long. But man, it is beautiful. - The City Council here is undoubtedly the worst part of the problem. They consistently buckle to NIMBYs, and allocate money in just unreasonably idiotic ways. ("No one riding the train that cost $1.1 billion? Easy fix! Spend $7 billion more!") They are making the change much more painful. - Natives were largely fine with the first wave of California refugees in 2008. This COVID wave is different though. The new movers kept their jobs and are working remote from Austin – meaning that they still have their Cali / NY inflated paychecks. It feels like a money fight, and we keep losing.
- 71a54xd 4y ago
  This is basically my exact position as a native austinite - personally the transformation was complete for me when Magnolia's on Lake Austin blvd closed. Now it's all just Tesla's with CA plates
  - fintechjock 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago

I spent 8 months on a death march of a project that colored Austin for me but that aside, infrastructurally, Austin sucked getting around and didn't have a ton to offer that didn't revolve around UT (6th primarily) or Rainey. The public transit (what is that streetcar thing even?) is horribly underdeveloped and heavily car dependent. Downtown is "bridge and tunnel"-y. Maybe if I had ventured out to the burbs more, I would have found more? But it was pretty underwhelming.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
I mean honestly infrasructurally the bay area sucks too, unless you happen to live in certain parts of the city or on the Caltrain (in which case transit is good but eye wateringly expensive). Try living in Alameda, Burlingame, San Leandro, etc. Even so. Like nobody goes from the marina to the mission, or sunset to the mission. People never go to east bay. As for meaningful entertainment I actually think Austin has about as much to offer as sf, but that could just be due to the circles I frequent. Legit the thing I miss is altitude hiking (go climb a huge hill like mt. Tam, or string together four parks around my house and do a six km loop, mostly in parks). Barton creek is amazing though, and it's fantastic that you can forget you're inside a city for about 20km
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  Oh absolutely. I recently had to consider moving to the Bay as well and it was so incredibly underwhelming compared to the cost of living. This was looking at East Bay too. Impossible to get around, less-than-ideal access to entertainment. It is nice being close to nature but that's about it. Tech and nature. Not worth the CoL imo. I say this as someone who is from Chicago and lived in NYC for a long time, so I'm completely biased.
michaelbrave 4y ago
I lived there for a while twice, not much in the burbs either, but there was a lot to like as far as music, bars and interesting food. But yeah, getting around wasn't convenient, all of texas is like that, first time I visited I was like "why are there so many toll roads?" plus the frontage roads feel like a carryover from when the population was 1/5 what it is now, the whole city feels like a failure of city planning, but especially the roads.

vngzs 4y ago

https://archive.is/eiMzk https://archive.is/eiMzk

orange_joe 4y ago

I understand the nostalgia for a youth and place that is gone, but it’s interesting to point out in one sentence — “Austin was beset by racial divisions” and in the next paragraph discuss the hope that the city would institute strict zoning to keep out newcomers or as the writing says “if we won’t build it, they won’t come”. So much of this piece is dedicated to the problem of housing, but ignored is the problem in its infancy. If you want artists, creatives and musicians you need to build them cheap places to live.

dylan604 4y ago
The vibe from Austin has always been weird to me. "Thanks for visiting, don't move here" or whatever their saying is to that effect. Yet, so few people are from Austin. To me, Austin has always been that poser city trying so hard to be cool and noticed by the other cool cities, but when you try to get to know the city it's just a facade of cool and the rest is just empty and hollow
- theYipster 4y ago
  Couldn't agree more!
- bsder 4y ago
  That vibe is very 2000's. Austin used to be cool. Austin used to have a bunch of places open until 3AM. Austin used to be a raging live music scene. Austin used to have latin clubs with 12 piece bands and a dance floor the size of a postage stamp that served amazing homemade tamales. Austin used to have cool food places. SXSW used to have a whole bunch of artists you never heard of--and some of them sucked terribly--but that's how cool works. Austin used to have a biker bar that had the best milkshakes in town. All these things disappeared about the mid 90s (it's no coincidence that Office Space was shot in Austin in 1998-1999). Nothing "cool" has risen to replace any of it. But people also do forget that unless they were UT students they really didn't like the "cool" people very much back then. For example, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Marcia Ball, and their ilk whom everybody now lionize were considered part of the undesirables. The "hippies" were looked at with a mixture of arms length tolerance and active disgust. And as has been pointed out in the article, race relations have been fraught for a very long time.

71a54xd 4y ago

[flagged]

mikebenfield 4y ago
You could just support new housing development and sane urban planning. Then maybe Austin will still be a pleasant and semi-affordable place to live in 10 or 20 years. Lots of moderately wealthy people moving in could be, in some ways, a boon for Austin, if you don't do everything exactly wrong. (The alternative is to refuse to build new housing or do any reasonable urban planning out of resentment towards newcomers, and then watch in frustration as traffic becomes even worse, housing prices continue to skyrocket, and you have rapidly rising homelessness and crime. The same way most cities in California handled this situation.)
- kyteland 4y ago
  As someone leaving Austin after 10 years, one limiting factor to growth here is water. All of the municipal water for the metro area comes from Lake Travis. There's a hard limit to how much growth the city can support even if infrastructure and housing was prioritized.
  - 71a54xd 4y ago
    Not really, most of it comes from the Edwards aquifer and the CO river (which Lake Travis is a damned portion of). If we stopped selling so much water to rice farmers in east texas at a hilarious discount per acre foot we wouldn't have a shortage. Utilities also haven't lowered water prices since they hiked them during draught conditions even though we've had a surplus of supply for years now. Rice farmers are still paying pennies on the dollar for thousands of gallons.
- 71a54xd 4y ago
  My comment has nothing to do with that - the city council has been a joke for decades. Their strategy up until now was literally "just slow down the process of giving building permits, that way growth will happen at a reasonable pace". We can see how well that played out haha.

newaccount2021 4y ago

[dead]

rossdavidh 4y ago

So, I have lived in Austin since the mid-90's, having come here from the midwest via Silicon Valley (back when it was based on actual silicon, i.e. semiconductor companies). You know you have become a true Austinite when you first say "it's not as cool as it was back when I first moved here". I was hearing it in the mid-90's when I moved here, I have heard it continually in the 25+ years since. Sometime in 2050, Austinites will be talking about how it is no longer as cool as it was in 2022, back when they moved here. The thing is, Austin's vibe comes in part from the large number of newcomers. Newcomers to a city add energy, because they are still out and about looking for things to do and new friendships to make. A town of the same size, with the same industries, etc. which had been that size for a while, would not have the same vibe. Cities are vectors, not scalars; what gives Austin it's cool vibe is in part that there is a lot happening, and a big part of that is that new people are constantly showing up. Sure, Austin has problems from this, because building enough housing to keep the prices down is hard, and keeping the infrastructure up is also hard, and Austin needs to do better on both. But, if you could somehow freeze Austin's size where it is, or where it was in a few decades back, you would not get the same feel. Rather, it would feel stultifying, full of people who already have their close circle of friends and don't feel a need to go out much, or if they do go only to the same things they went to last year. You can't freeze a candleflame, and a growing city is more like a candleflame (reacting and changing) than it is like an ice sculpture.

ngoldbaum 4y ago
Look at Boulder for an example of what happens when you institute strict limits on growth.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  And what is Boulder like?
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    Aside from the areas around CU Boulder which have the normal amount of college things, it is very quiet, bucolic and great for cyclists.

carpet_wheel 4y ago

"Anyone who takes 6 months of paternity leave is a loser" "I had to flee SF, the city literally built in my VC image, because someone said some mean words to me" These people are a parody of themselves. Talent-less rich kids, spending other people's money all day, and so incredibly insecure they have to constantly find ways to belittle anyone who doesn't treat them like a genius. Narcissism run rampant, and spreading everywhere they decide to touch down on their endless journey away from the consequences of their own behavior.

zwkrt 4y ago
I think it is individualism more than straight-up narcissism, but the two go closely hand-in-hand. But I do think there is a difference between people who have been enculturated to not need (or think they need) community and people who would only participate in community if they could be the leader.
outside1234 4y ago
Especially since Pete's child was in the ICU - it is not like he was on vacation in Hawaii or something.

agnos 4y ago

Maybe just an untimely experience, but I visited Austin once a little over a year ago during the summer, and downtown was basically a ghost town. I assumed it was because UT was on break, but still I couldn't help thinking "where is everybody?" given the Austin hype. That being said, as a remote worker becoming increasingly disillusioned about Bay Area cost of living and politics, Austin is on my radar. Any Austin transplants here who can shed some light on moving there? How easy is it to establish a social network/sense of community as a newcomer?

renewiltord 4y ago
Austin is a generally friendly place. I lived there for a bit during the COVID times for fun. It's a cheerful vibe where people will greet you on the street and there's a few fun places to go to. I thought it was quite pleasant for the bit I was there. I should warn you, though. It is not a city by any measure. More like a small town with a couple of streets of action. And the politics are not dissimilar in Austin proper from the Bay Area (perhaps because of the large number of people who've moved there from here). However, because of the low cost of land in the associated area you can have things like Wonderspaces, etc. Also, there's things that are hard to do in the Bay like shooting. Ultimately, I chose not to live there because I wanted a more urban life. And I wanted less extreme weather than the place has.
burlesona 4y ago
Would not recommend. It's a great city if you like paying almost as much as SF for housing and getting: - High heat and humidity for 8 months out of the year - Mosquitos that make the few nice days out much less nice - Surprising ice/snow storms in the middle of the few months of nice weather - Having to drive everywhere in heavy and hostile traffic - Risking your life if you want to walk or bike somewhere - Being surrounded by an expanse of suburban sprawl that's very ugly - Having surprisingly few cultural institutions / resources close by - Property taxes are eye-poppingly high so if you plan to buy a place be warned that you can afford less than you think That said if you love strip malls and want to live in a place where people equate quality of life to quantity of stuff, then you'll love it!
- 4y ago

renewiltord 4y ago

Austin is like any other place in America. There is a dominant cultural and economic class in America: Coastal Californians. And they will transform and take your things with money. So either you can figure out how to comfortably rise with the tide or you can build a sea wall and they will breach it. You will then be left with complaints of prices and this and that. Everyone has been warned for ages. They all kick up the usual fuss "No Californians", "stop gentrifying", "X is full". But it doesn't matter. You may not want to give in, but your neighbour will. And then the Californians will take everything around you and mould it in the image they desire. And you will be left, in your intransigence, to rage against the imperialism of money, but you will be unhappy.

elamje 4y ago

I'll take a possibly contrarian position that the growth has been mostly awesome! I've been here since 2013 and as much as people complain, there has been traffic on the 2 main arteries through Austin since I've been here. Austin is getting a lot more attention and interest from the large coastal cities which is bringing in more investment, interesting DTC/Tech companies that wouldn't have considered it otherwise, etc. Plus, if you are a relatively social person there is more fun stuff to do now than 10 years ago imo Of course it is getting more expensive and crowded. How anyone would expect otherwise is baffling to me - more people entering any city is going to increase prices and congestion.

com2kid 4y ago
> Of course it is getting more expensive and crowded. How anyone would expect otherwise is baffling to me - more people entering any city is going to increase prices and congestion. Zone everything multi-family, remove set-back restrictions, remove parking requirements, staff up city permitting departments so they can approve within weeks, and house prices don't go up. People flocked to the coastal cities like NYC and SF because of cheap plentiful housing and lots of job opportunities. Sure the housing sucked, but it got better as people worked those jobs and demanded better. Housing in cities being a zero sum game (or more like negative sum...) is a new problem that we have invented for ourselves.

DanCarvajal 4y ago

Speaking as an Oklahoman, Texas is too Texas for its own good.

selimthegrim 4y ago
Would you recommend Bartlesville/Tulsa?
- DanCarvajal 4y ago
  Honestly, Tulsa and Oklahoma City are pretty darn good these days and represent good options for a lot of people. Oklahoma also sneakily has a lot of great outdoor recreation and some of the best bouldering in the U.S. Oklahoma is interesting, it's got some unique issues but I feel like most people born there never really leave.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    This sounds like Louisiana.
    - DanCarvajal 4y ago
      But with more reasonable humidity!

fratur79 4y ago

It's bizarre when people only move to a city AFTER it's been deemed the new "It" city - then complain about how unlivable it is. The point is to find a city you like before it gets saturated. My bet is on Chicago next.

tptacek 4y ago
Good luck saturating Chicago.

jcapaus 4y ago

1967: arrived in Austin as a UT freshman. It was Nirvana. 1971: graduated and left for 8 years. 1979: returned to Austin where I have been ever since. Yep, more than half a century - I'm older than dirt, and older than Lawrence Wright. His article depressed me, but weird here died a slow and painful death some time ago. I am grateful to have experienced Austin as it was, and sad that all who are young will never have had that opportunity. That Austin will not return, and we can only hope that the massive city Austin is becoming will redefine itself as a very different but still vibrant and desirable place to be.