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Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

Dallas:

- Highest growth rate in the nation (especially for 18 - 30 years old), after Houston, which is down now due to the oil industry, placing Dallas at #1

- Highest spending on food and alcohol at restaurants - http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/dallas-fort-worth-...

- One of the most affordable places to live in the U.S.

- Large number of top tier universities within 3 hours (Univ of Texas, Baylor, TCU, SMU, UNT, Texas A&M, UTD, UTA)

- Massive amount of wealth/wealthy investors, who, are starting to put their wealth into more and more seed start-ups

My point is, many cities all fit the same criteria as he listed. But until the people IN those communities move to make it happen, it won't. In the last 3 years, I've seen a magnitude increase in Start-up/entrepreneur activity happening in Dallas. And I believe much of the criteria PG said is right and a good part of the reason, but those things won't just "make" it happen.

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Dallas misses on a few of pg's key points: it's a sprawling driving city, lack of a top university, and a red state culture.

> Pittsburgh is fortunate in being a pre-car city. It's not too spread out. Because those 25 to 29 year olds do not like driving. They prefer walking, or bicycling, or taking public transport... Cities where you can get around without driving are just better period.

> Pittsburgh has something Portland lacks: a first-rate research university. CMU plus little cafes means you have more than hipsters drinking lattes. It means you have hipsters drinking lattes while talking about distributed systems. Now you're getting really close to San Francisco.

> The culture of Pittsburgh is another of its strengths. It seems like a city has to be very socially liberal to be a startup hub, and it's pretty clear why. A city has to tolerate strangeness to be a home for startups, because startups are so strange.

EDIT: map of red/blue counties in Texas: http://frontburner.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/upload...

I wouldn't associate "red state culture" and a particular city in that state together. Remember, Austin is a city in Texas.... The 4 major cities in Texas in fact are either well mixed or liberal (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). I hardly move my car on the weekends, get around just fine. My current job I have to commute by car (actually I could ride the train technically...), but many people walk/use public transportation. There is even an entire underground tunnel network between most of the buildings downtown...

Also, what is your definition of a "top university"? Ivy?

Also fun fact...Dallas has the largest public transit system in the nation as far as length of track.

That last fact is a negative. You maximize track miles by having sprawl connected with trains. That's not what you want. Number of riders per mile of track is a much better metric.

I understand that, I was mentioning that because it's interesting, not to say it's better than others. It's an interesting fact because it shows how much of a massive area the Dallas metro is. It's fun to take the DFW area and overlay on other metros on a map. I wouldn't call it negative either. The potential Dallas has BECAUSE we have so much more room to grow is why I stay here.

Dallas has the largest light rail system in the nation by length of track. New York, DC, San Francisco, and Chicago all have larger rail transit systems overall.

> Also, what is your definition of a "top university"? Ivy?

Great, well-known, research CS university. Think Stanford, Berkeley, etc. In Texas there's UT and to some extent Rice... neither in Dallas.

>In Texas there's UT and to some extent Rice... neither in Dallas.

How do you mean "to some extent Rice"?

Rice is #18 in the US News ranking of top colleges in the US and has a 17% admission rate--the highest rated univ in Texas. It has a top-notch CS dept, most particularly well known for its compiler research.

Disclaimer: I did not attend Rice, but know several people who attended its CS program.

Sorry, I know it's a top school (I lived in Houston) but wasn't sure if it was considered in the same group as UT Austin, MIT, Stanford, etc.

It doesn't have to specifically a CS research university... A good research university does much more than CS. I'd argue that having a great CS research university in close proximity is somewhat irrelevant to creating a great startup hub. Startups are SO much more than just tech.

Yes, there is. UT Dallas is third ranked public school in Texas and a top tier STEM research school. Dallas is perhaps best suited for building a company.

When I think of the top engineering schools in the US: UT Austin is on that list. Dallas isn't. There's a pretty big gap between the two schools.

It's not even ranked in the top 100 US universities. That's nowhere near the level of Stanford, Berkley, or even CMU.

Length of track is completely unrelated to the quality of the system. It's something you could be proud of for sure... But it's still completely unrelated to the quality of the network.

"I wouldn't associate "red state culture" and a particular city in that state together"

You might not, but many of the people you're trying to recruit will. I realize it may not be accurate but there's a perception that Texas is universally horrible except for Austin, at least if you're left of center or want urban living. It doesn't matter if that perception's wrong if it means you never even talk to your potential candidate to say how great Dallas is.

Also, having the most track is a dubious distinction, just as having the most miles of road would be; that makes it sounds like commutes are long too. Interestingly a lot of the earliest suburbs weren't enabled by the car but by rail; San Diego and Los Angeles both have neighborhoods (now considered pretty close-in) whose construction was really enabled by rail.

Yes, but Dallas fails abysmally on the urban livability and density test. It's one giant exurb. Much of it should be reclassified as a rural area.

(Speaking as an Atlantan -- we have the exact same problem.)

I've only been to Dallas a couple times, but it seems like the soul of the city is in the suburbs.

Downtown seems dreary and dismal; it has the potential to be exciting, it's quite a beautiful area — but so few people! Scattered coffee shops and restaurants, but I felt like I could've been literally anywhere else.

I felt like I could've been literally anywhere else.

Bingo! That applies to 90% of Atlanta, as well, despite some notable exceptions.

Back in the 80's they pretty much highway-locked downtown (surrounded it with highways) and killed off a lot of the urban/livability. However much of that is changing/has changed. Downtown actually has people out at night. When you include Deep Ellum and Uptown (right next to downtown), though places are really active. I go out a lot at night...(too much)

I'm not sure what your definition of "rural" is... but the suburbs of Dallas (Plano, Irving, Mckinney, Richardson) are most definitely not rural by any definition. Suburbs...yes...I'd even say dense suburbs at that.

I think you've nailed it with regards to Atlanta--I quite like Atlanta and have a lot of friends there (when DragonCon rolls around I stay an extra 3-4 days on each side of it to hang out with my local friends too), and I'd love to move there except I would almost have to have a car.

Dallas is a little different in that its suburbs are fairly dense, but you have to go there, and...car again. And, for me, life is way, way nicer without a car.

I lived in downtown-Midtown ATL without a car for several years, and currently reside in Midtown as well. We're a family of five, and drive maybe once a month. It is definitely possible, but you have to be extremely committed, make heavy use of on-demand/gig economy services, and incur considerable expense in structuring your life that way. I made (and make) a point of living near a MARTA station and other compromises many folks may not be willing to make. Wife + newborn + two stepkids in a 1200 sq. ft. 2 BR apartment is one of them--nothing terribly unusual by my native Eastern European standards, but probably stands out in America.

For most people, the biggest problem would be commuting to work. Since I'm self-employed and can choose where to have an office (yes, I do have one), I have one within walking range.

Yeah, I get you. What you describe makes sense, from talking to friends who live there; only one friend of mine down that way seems to have any luck with that approach, and he lives in Buckhead and a lot of his Uber travel gets comped by his job.

I really like the city, but I think any benefits I'd get from a cheaper area (because Boston is not cheap) would be drowned out by the need for a car or the expenses from not having one. MARTA's pretty nice though.

I pinged you on Twitter, btw.

PS. I took a look at your sig & web site; looks interesting! We should get in touch and maybe catch up next time you're in town for Dragon*Con. Drop me a private message of some sort? (same username on Twitter)

My aunt and uncle live in Dallas, and I could imagine if I moved there I would just make sure to be near a Dart station. Like others have said, it is fairly comprehensive for a commuter rail line.

Maybe, but Plano, at least, looks like car country to me. I used to live on the end of one of the better commuter rail lines in the country. I still needed a car, and I hated it.

Atlanta — a massive metro region with the emptiest downtown area I've ever lived in. It's a bit of a paradox.

Indeed! By global standards, it's completely preposterous. 5.5m people should be crammed into 1/10th of the surface area occupied by Metro Atlanta. At most. The downtown area is interesting, but has no imaginable relevance to the lives of 90% of Metro Atlanta residents.

If you want a "downtownish" area of Atlanta, Midtown is really the place to look, a little over a mile north of the official Downtown. It has a lot more residents and consistent pedestrian traffic. I lived there for a few years in the 2000s and it felt very bustling to me. I almost never drove anywhere either.

Now, Downtown Atlanta is often crowded, but it's basically a giant convention center, so it depends on when there are conventions. There are approximately 10,000 hotel rooms within a few blocks of each other, so when it gets crowded it becomes very crowded .

You're not Delirium from K5, are you?

Hah, guilty as charged. I take it you're also an ex-kuron?

Of course! Shoot me an email (in my profile).

Atlanta actually scored better than Detroit in this regard, but is still asphalt hellscape.

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/20/parking-madness-matchu...

Of course, the bay is no exception. Here's the "city" of San Jose, and an explanation of how it might be fixed.

http://usa.streetsblog.org/category/special-reports/parking-...

Streetsblog's Parking Madness is an interesting tournament they run discussing cities that have been destroyed by parking craters. I know a lot of people disagree with me but I really think that when you have these levels of parking the city itself is gone, destroyed and replaced by suburb, or maybe some other human/auto organizational structure we need a new word for.

Yeah, but are people in Dallas truly open minded? I've never lived in Texas but from my understanding, Austin is the only place in Texas which really fosters an truly open thought process. Without that, it doesn't matter how many of the other elements a city has.

Well, you sure sound open minded.

If by open minded we mean writing off 26 million people because they live in a geographical area that's different than yours (and perhaps hold religious views, "quelle horreur!"). But what you really mean by "open minded" is "votes for Democratic politicians". And lucky for you, Dallas (just like all of those other bastions of conservativism, San Antonio and Houston) has a mayor who is a member of the Democratic party!

Funny, huh, stereotypes aren't always accurate.

To be fair, he said he hasn't been to Texas, implying he is not familiar with it, and was only asking a question. He wasn't throwing out stereotypes as truth, just fro what he has heard.

I mean..if you ask half the people in Europe they still think we ride horses everywhere...

I've actually lived in Boulder, CO. and I think Austin is more "hippy" than Boulder...I know...crazy but that was my experience. I'd say Dallas is pretty well balanced as far as number of republicans/democrats.

The horror is when such people use their biased views to impose un-American legislation to strip rights and freedoms from other people because it satisfies their fear of anyone who thinks differently than themselves. Texas has an established track record in this domain.

Remind me when the good people of Dallas stripped the rights and freedoms of any people, besides banning fracking in 2013?

For god's sake, they passed a law prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity/sexual orientation in 2002. That's 10 years before Barack Obama realized that same-sex marriage was a fundamental American right.

I dunno man, I can't say any of this reads as encouraging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Texas

Ctrl-F "dallas" on that article mostly leads to things like "LGBT Protections: Housing, public accommodations, city employment, private employment, city contractors"

In the city, yes, absolutely. Now if you go out way into the suburbs and the country....well..they don't call it the bible belt for nothing...

Note: I'm not knocking on Christians..I am one myself. Just saying a lot of the people out there are not as accepting. However I have found a larger percentage of "nicer" people here than in other places I've lived. "nicer" is hard to define in words though...so I'll leave it at that.

This is speculation, but like most parts of the U.S., I'd suggest that maybe it's more an urban/rural split than anything else. Texas has its pockets of reasonableness and progressivism (and outside of Austin, too--I quite like San Antonio, Dallas is fine, and while Houston is best described as a highway in a swamp a million lanes wide that you merge across to get anywhere, it's a very tolerant community with a gay woman as mayor from 2010 to 2016, when she was term-limited). When you get out of where the money and the people is, it may be different (never been), but the urban areas aren't much different from any other urban area in that regard.

I've lived in small towns in Texas, and I've only found good natured people. Small town life is different. It's a little bit slower, I never had to deal with traffic, and I could drive anywhere in town in 5 minutes. But even my medium sized hometown (pop 60,000) stocked vegan cupcakes in the town bakery. Maybe it's not as progressive as Austin, but I don't appreciate how everybody else in the world writes it off as a joke.

I'm sure the evil bigots living somewhere, but I don't know where.

Did you notice anyone openly gay or transgender there? One of the issues with small towns is that you end up thinking people aren't racists, bigots, whatever because there just aren't that many people there for them to discriminate against. I grew up in a small town and thought it was open minded and didn't realize how wrong that was until I was older when I would listen to political conversations in bars, restaurants, and coffee shops how much mindless hatred was hiding beneath the surface.

If you can drive 5 minutes and still be in town, it's not "small".

> Large number of top tier universities within 3 hours I know in Texas driving 3 hours is a moderate commute, but UT is literally in another metro area. If you read the article, PG mentions Stanford and Berkeley not being downtown as a liability compared to CMU and they both have reasonable public transit options to downtown SF.

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