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Originally Posted by theOGalexd
If it plays its cards right, SA has a shot at striking more of a balance that Austin didn't. Ironically though, the "culture" here is part of what keeps the city going through the motions IMO. SA needs to figure out how to attract/retain young people if it wants to level up further. I wish I knew what the complete solution was, but as the days go by I understand why more people go north for greener pastures. SA has a ton of potential, but it's still a pretty tough sell for "ambitious" 20-30 somethings unless they have ties here.
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I grew up in San Antonio and then went to UT in the late 80s/early 90s. In the 70s and into the 80s, Austin had a 'no growth" mentality. That was part of what made Austin so charming. The way it was pictorialized in the 70s in Dazed And Confused was easy to film in the early 90 because it hadn't taken off yet. That didn't really happen until a few years later in the late 90s. But the seed had already been planted. Until then, Austin was known as a place with lots of highly educated people (mostly because of UT) who chose to live there even though they couldn't find jobs that matched their skillsets, because it was such a cool place.
IBM and Texas Instruments had a presence in Austin, and of course Dell. Then in about 1988 Austin got its first big tech PPP project with Sematech. Then the dominos started to fall as more and more companies started moving in. Then about 20 years ago it exploded.
Today, San Antonio has more and better colleges than it did back then. UTSA has really improved and grown, TAMUSA has been established and is growing, and Trinity of course, as well as a few others. So San Antonio has more potential for such growth than it used to. And Austin has gotten so congested and overpriced that some people are choosing to move down to SA (my sister being one of them). We'll see what happens next.