AUSTIN | Misc. Discussions - No Politics

[AusTex]

Originally Posted by Novacek

"In 2022, Rogan bought The Ritz, a historic theater in his new city’s downtown that had seen better days."

as a big fan of the Alamo Drafthouse, I take a lot of offense at this

What is there to be offended by? Alamo, reorganized and closed the Ritz location. Now it is a successful comedy club; adding adult entertainment to East 6th Street. Great! Please explain what is to be offend by?

I have been a patron of Alamo Drafthouse since the first month they were open. I even walk to one from home now. I am glad the space at The Ritz is SOOO successful, adding to a genre already on East 6st.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by AusTex

What is there to be offended by? Alamo, reorganized and closed the Ritz location. Now it is a successful comedy club; adding adult entertainment to East 6th Street. Great! Please explain what is to be offend by?

I have been a patron of Alamo Drafthouse since the first month they were open. I even walk to one from home now. I am glad the space at The Ritz is SOOO successful, adding to a genre already on East 6st.

The “seen better days” implies some old broken down rat trap, not a highly successful business up until the pandemic

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by FrankLloydLeft

Thank you!!

Same. It's a shame they've essentially turned into the shills they initially stood up against.

Yes, imagine if they were really environmentalists. And after the passage of the SOS ordinance which was supposed to limit sprawl over the aquifer, they would have pushed for denser housing in the core, transit, etc.

You oppose sprawl? Encourage density in the city.

You oppose freeways? Encourage transit.

But they never did those things. Instead they have been exposed as Nimbys who used environmentalism as justification to oppose pretty much everything.

Now these same folks want to "rewild" Zilker Park. Zilker Metropolitan Park, Austin's signature urban park which certainly does need some love. I love Barton Springs, but the park overall is severely lacking IMO. Why are there no tennis or basketball courts? Why does Barton Springs Rd. not have curbs or sidewalks?

Go see other cities flagship park, and tell me Zilker is not underwhelming. It's a crime that as Austin has boomed over the last few decades the city has never really improved the park.

[mercury6]

Originally Posted by Novacek

The “seen better days” implies some old broken down rat trap, not a highly successful business up until the pandemic

My brother you need to touch grass. Compared to what it is now, the "seen better days" is appropriate.

[gillynova]

Apologies guys for not being active on the forum. I've had a pretty busy year and just moved into a house with my gf! I'm catching up on everything and trying to get back to speed with what's going on in Austin. Hopefully I'm able to upload photos soon

[the Genral]

Originally Posted by gillynova

Apologies guys for not being active on the forum. I've had a pretty busy year and just moved into a house with my gf! I'm catching up on everything and trying to get back to speed with what's going on in Austin. Hopefully I'm able to upload photos soon

Are you still in Austin?

[ATX2030]

Austin drops for third year on 'Best Places to Live in the USA' list

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/aust...n-the-usa-list

AUSTIN, Texas - Austin has dropped yet again on U.S. News & World Report's annual list of the "Best Places to Live in the USA" and out of the top ten completely for the second year in a row.

Austin now ranks 40th out of 150 U.S. most populous metropolitan areas on the list, despite having been no. 1 for three years straight from 2017 to 2019. Austin still ranks first in best places to live in Texas, according to the list.

Austin is also the only Texas city to rank in the top 100, with San Antonio just outside of it at no. 103.

Metro areas were analyzed based on quality of life, job market, value of living there and people's desire to live there. Scores are on a scale of 10 and Austin had an overall score of 6.4, down from 7.3 in 2021.

In the categories U.S. News looked at, this is how Austin scored:

Desirability - 6.5
Value - 6
Job Market - 6.5
Quality of Life - 6.6
Net Migration - 7.3

The publication uses data from sources like the United States Census Bureau, the FBI, the Department of Labor and their own internal resources.

According to the publication, people are drawn to Austin's music scene, outdoor spaces and cultural institutions, but the median sale price for a single-family home in Austin is well above the national median. Austin also offers a lower housing costs to household income value than other similarly-sized metro areas.

The publication also states that Austin has an average commute time of 0.7 minutes more than the national average, up from 0.4 minutes in 2019.

The top 10 is as follows:

Green Bay, Wisconsin
Huntsville, Alabama
Raleigh & Durham, North Carolina
Boulder, Colorado
Sarasota, Florida
Naples, Florida
Portland, Maine
Charlotte, North Carolina
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Other Texas cities to make the list include San Antonio (#103), Dallas-Fort Worth (#113), Killeen (#122), El Paso (#124), Beaumont (#131), Corpus Christi (#132), Brownsville (#134), McAllen (#137), and Houston (#140).

[clubtokyo]

This list is trash imo. But honestly do these lists ever make sense? Lincoln, NE and Des Moines Iowa rank higher than Austin? Lol.

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by clubtokyo

This list is trash imo. But honestly do these lists ever make sense? Lincoln, NE and Des Moines Iowa rank higher than Austin? Lol.

The methodologies on a lot of these lists are often sketch.

Their methodology appears to favor smaller cities. And seems biased against larger cities. For example, I'm guessing the commute time metric is based solely on drive time and does not include commute by mass transit.

[randalls]

Originally Posted by clubtokyo

This list is trash imo. But honestly do these lists ever make sense? Lincoln, NE and Des Moines Iowa rank higher than Austin? Lol.

I’ve been to Iowa. Nothing desirable about it.

[ILUVSAT]

I agree with those who don't take these lists seriously. It's click bait. And, they are quite subjective - no matter how one tries to quantify it.

Desirability...Value...Quality of Life. All of these depend on with whom you are speaking.

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by paul78701

Their methodology appears to favor smaller cities. And seems biased against larger cities. For example, I'm guessing the commute time metric is based solely on drive time and does not include commute by mass transit.

I think this is a smart point. I grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and it is indeed exceptionally livable . . . but it's also in Arkansas (which has socio-economic and political implications on the state level) and is also quite small, relatively speaking. In fact it's so small -- relatively speaking -- that to compare it with, say, Chicago, is a difference in kind rather than in degree. You really need two totally different set of metrics to evaluate them.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by We vs us

I think this is a smart point. I grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and it is indeed exceptionally livable . . . but it's also in Arkansas (which has socio-economic and political implications on the state level) and is also quite small, relatively speaking. In fact it's so small -- relatively speaking -- that to compare it with, say, Chicago, is a difference in kind rather than in degree. You really need two totally different set of metrics to evaluate them.

to pile on, if you actually look at their methodology it's pretty trash.

https://realestate.usnews.com/places/methodology


"Blended Annual Housing Cost: To determine the annual cost of a mortgage in each metro area, we consulted the U.S. census, which collects data on the amount homeowners pay for housing (including mortgage, utilities and taxes). To determine the housing cost for renters, we collected the median gross rent of each metro area, which includes utilities if paid by renters. We multiplied the monthly cost of living for owners and renters by 12 to get the annual cost, and then using our ratio of renters to owners, we calculated the blended annual housing cost."

So for owners they're using data from 3 years ago? For renters, more updated (i.e. higher)?

So a city with a greater proportion of renters will get knocked from this.


"Desirability Survey (65%): Using SurveyMonkey, we polled approximately 3,500 people across the country to find out in which of the ranked metro areas they would most like to live. Metro areas were then ranked according to the percentage of the total votes they received. This survey was conducted in March 2023."

So an internet poll. Trash.

"Net Migration (15%): Net Migration measures whether people are moving to or away from each metro area. While the Desirability Index measures whether a metro area is appealing, Net Migration represents whether a metro area is actually attracting new residents. Using data from the U.S. census – and eliminating any fluctuations caused by births or deaths – we determined how many people are moving to or away from each metro area. Note: If a piece of data was not available for a given metro area, we adjusted the weighting of the other scoring categories for which we had data on a pro rata basis so that no metro area benefited or suffered from missing data."


" so that no metro area benefited or suffered from missing data." That's not even remotely to close to how this works. So a (presumably smaller) metro that didn't have this available, if it ranked higher on other measures, got extra benefit from those other measures (even if it's actually losing people left and right).


"Establishments-to-Population Ratio (10%): Through data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we indexed for each metro area the total number of restaurants and drinking establishments per 100,000 people. This ratio provides an equal playing field compared with a total count of establishments. "

That's also not how it works. Living in Austin I'm not limited to the 1/20 of establishments its trying to allocate to me. I can go to any of them. There's a benefit to me (more fringe, obscure, or niche establishments) compared to a 5k town that has the exact same numerical score on this.


worthless

[ATX2030]

Guess we shouldn't count the three years from 2017-2019 that they ranked Austin as #1 either......

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by ATX2030

Guess we shouldn't count the three years from 2017-2019 that they ranked Austin as #1 either......

Not really, no. We shouldn't. Nobody should take lists like this seriously when their methodology is so specious and arbitrary.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by ATX2030

Guess we shouldn't count the three years from 2017-2019 that they ranked Austin as #1 either......

It had problems then, but they seem to have made it worse.

They haven't used a consistent methodology.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190409...es/methodology

Net migration used to be its own separate category, and 10% of the score (Austin got a 9 on it then). Now it's combined and works out to only 3% of the score.
Even though it's really the one concrete measure of where people want to live and don't.

This BS "stablishments-to-Population Ratio" is new.

[lzppjb]

Spurs win the draft lottery. Will draft Victor Wembanyama #1. Tickets for those 2 games in Austin just became a hot commodity.

[jake.robs]

Is there a thread for the plot of land surrounding the Austonian (the rest of the block)? Found out some details that I wanted to confirm, but can't find the thread. I thought I'd seen one.

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by jake.robs

Is there a thread for the plot of land surrounding the Austonian (the rest of the block)? Found out some details that I wanted to confirm, but can't find the thread. I thought I'd seen one.

It was way back on page 3 but I found it!

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=251247

[jake.robs]

Originally Posted by We vs us

It was way back on page 3 but I found it!

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=251247

Thank you! I knew it was around but after scanning through the first 4 pages twice I thought maybe I was imagining it.