Quote:
Originally Posted by Plaid Shirts
Question for all you Austin people.
I live in Salt Lake City. Here, we always hear about how Austin is booming, growing, how it has such a young workforce and population.
With that, what is it about Austin that is making it such a booming, modern, hip city?
Also how is it that there is always skyscrapers being built? How much demand is there really for businesses and living in Austin.
Thanks!
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Native Austinite here. When I was born, the population was less than half of what it is now. An explanation: in addition to being the capitol city of the second largest state in the country, it's home to one of the largest universities in the country (the University of Texas). Over time, the combination of students and government (the same dynamic exists in Salt Lake City, in fact) combined to create a pretty unique and interesting place. It's got a river flowing right through it (we call it Lady Bird Lake now, used to be Town Lake) with a trail around it (so many of these residential developers are trying to get as close to the "lake" as they can because it's a lifestyle thing) and lots of parks (Zilker Park, Auditorium Shores) right in our downtown area. So it developed a sort of Bohemian, hippie atmosphere and reputation. Being the most liberal city in the state of Texas tends to attract a lot of liberals from other towns and cities in Texas, where they may feel marginalized. Austin is their haven. In this environment, music flourished. My mom moved here from Alabama (to go to UT) in the 1960's and sang in a band. Somewhere along the line, likely due to our annual music festivals like South by Southwest, the moniker "Live Music Capital of the World" was applied to us and it just took off. Being Texans in addition to Austinites, we tend to be proud of where we're from and probably talk it up a bit too much. All that talking led to us becoming a trendy place and once you become a trendy place it's hard to become un-trendy. So lots of young, interesting people from all over the country started moving here and it just sort of snowballed from there. In the beginning, we probably weren't half as cool as we made ourselves out to be. But we're pretty dang cool now.
Oh, and it's warm. That's part of it, too.