Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Not to beat a dead horse, but why is Austin white-hot and Louisville totally anonymous?
They have similar scenery, probably slight edge to Louisville. Both are in cheaper, low tax, business friendly states. Both are relatively liberal outliers. Louisville has way better urbanism, Austin is the state capital and its university is better. Louisville has good summers, Austin has good winters.
Also, why is Birmingham stagnant? Too black? Because it's Alabama? Birmingham has nicer scenery and urbanism than Austin. Still a relatively liberal outlier in a deep-red business friendly state with low taxes and minimal regulation. I think I'd rather live in Mountain Brook (the fancy suburb of Birmingham) than in the fancy Austin hill neighborhoods.
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I think I can
try to answer some of these thoughts. All my family history is in Austin, and I'm now a consultant based in Atlanta that works a fair bit in both Birmingham and Louisville.
For scenery, much of Austin's appeal comes relative to other parts of Texas, but a lot of it is harder to discern without being more intimately familiar with the place. The abundant clear aqua swimming holes with the big live oaks, all the rocky swimmable creeks with attractive college kids swimming mostly (or entirely) naked...it's just a fun place outdoorsy place, even in the scorching hot summers.
Louisville has a riverfront, but otherwise shares non of this appeal. It's attractiveness lies in its beautiful residential neighborhoods, which as you said are urbanistically superior to what you find in Austin, but millennials, and especially techy millennials, will pick trendy and fun over solid urban bones.
Personally, I prefer somewhere like Milwaukee to Austin, and
really prefer Milwaukee over Nashville, but I also completely understand why many prefer cities like Austin, and for most of my friends I think Austin is frankly the better choice.
And Birmingham...well I think you need to spend a bit more time in each place. Birmingham is a nice town with very good building stock town downtown and some nice hills, but it's very similar to my hometown of Omaha. It's nothing like Austin, and would feel very culturally conservative by comparison. Birmingham is mostly democratic like most cities, but it's still deeply southern. This is a major barrier to many but especially west-coast based tech companies...Austin is far more approachable with it's breakfast tacos and music festivals.