The Astonishing Transformation of Austin

  • Settle in one place that truly feels like home

    • Author grew up in Texas but left immediately

    • Spent “vagabond years” with wife looking for home

  • Joined writing staff of Texas Monthly in Austin

    • Small population then

    • Favored the Raw Deal restaurant

    • Relaxed city culture

  • “Keep Austin Weird” anecdote with Oat Willie’s mascot character

  • Beautiful city, but undermined by racial divisions

  • Liked the small town of Austin

  • Induction of Joe Ely, “Austin City Limits”

    • Suddenly confronted with skyscrapers because of fast growth

    • Loss of defining qualities of Austin - traffic, billionaires, higher costs

    • Disorienting to the new metropolis feel

  • 1983 Microelectronics and Computer Consortium (MCC) hosted in Austin

    • Because of quality of life & affordability

    • Dell began his career and launching off Austin’s tech industry

    • Culture & tax breaks drew in tech giants

      • Music clubs razed; Barton Springs polluted; Capitol overshadowed

  • Austin used to not have lavish properties for billionaires

    • Now celebrities in massive estates

  • Now identity and culture seems to have changed extremely

    • McConaughey went to UT in an Austin culture that was laidback

    • Five years later, he was arrested for “disorderly conduct”

    • He appointed himself as Austin’s minister of culture to preserve qualities of Austin

  • Armadillo World Headquarters founder Eddie Wilson criticizes Austin’s lack of affordability

    • Armadillo & Raw Deal both gone

  • Music scene used to be “youthful and cheap”

    • Jim Franklin’s “icon of hippiedom”

    • Started South by Southwest (SXSW)

      • When it expanded beyond music, it became placeless

  • “Austin City Limits” origin

    • Musical epicenter

    • Country-music inspired showcase, Armadillo type vibe

    • “Live-music capital of the world”

      • Should there be more focus on smaller Austinite musicians or celebrities?

    • Henri Herbert, an English piano player, vouched for the greatness of SXSW - community

    • Gin Chavez, musician, “city of legends”, ambivalent attitude

  • Income disparities

    • 1928 Master Plan & gentrification racially divided Austin

    • East Austin became melting pot, but received complaints

    • Market pressure & housing crisis

  • UT’s equity initiatives aim to address these issues, but hard to change systemically (voter suppression, CJR, etc.)

    • Not demographically proportional because Houston attracting talent away from Austin

  • East-west divide highlighted in the mayoral race → West conservative & East progressive

    • Transportation & affordable housing always issue, just scale changed

  • Growth is too fast paced (scarcity of campus housing & rent hikes)

    • “Decriminalized homelessness”

    • Save Austin Now reinstated camping ban

    • Reminiscent of 1988 protest on camping ban enforcement

    • Texas passed law to make public camping a misdemeanor

    • Alan Graham → Mobile Loaves & Fishes to deliver food to homeless, Community First! Village provide housing & caring social structure (rent w gov assistance

  • Elon Musk created businesses in Austin (Tunnel-drilling, computer-brain interface, SpaceX)

    • Relocated children to Austin

    • Goat statue on Circuit of the Americas

  • “More unknowable and unlimited every day”

  • Gigafactory that promises to make Austin an “ecological paradise” one day