Hacker News Reader

Comment by kickopotomus | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty disingenuous to call Austin a "flyover small town".

> Austin is the capital of Texas and the 11th largest city in the United States, and the 3rd largest state capital. The population of Austin is estimated at 964,254, which is an increase of more than 3% over the last census in 2010. [1]

Midwest cities are not viable Austin replacements. One of the many reasons for it's success is the University of Texas. It's a research university and one of the largest in the world. Add to that the fact that Austin has a pretty rich culture, temperate climate, and plenty to do; and now you have a place that people want to relocate to.

[1]: http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/austin-population...

View on HN

That’s all true. I’m not from the midwest, nor do I have a big allegiance to it, but the places I’ve visited, explored extensively, and have friends living in (Indy, Minneapolis, St. Louis) I find would be a very pleasant place to live and work. I can imagine that several other mid west cities also have much to offer as well. Perhaps not all at Austin’s “weird” level, but I’ve found plenty of culture (and counter culture), interesting food, and decent housing, in any big mid west city I’ve been around enough.

that's a small fly over town in my book. You can walk from one side to the other in an hour. first time I went to Austin I was shocked at how small it is. Drove in , 14 blocks and a few minutes later drove out. It might be #11 in the USA but it's still small compared Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Hanzhou, Bejing etc...

> It might be #11 in the USA but it's still small compared Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Hanzhou, Bejing etc...

I wonder if that's because American cities tend to have much of the population in surrounding suburbs and towns that are often separate municipalities. For example the city of Atlanta is pretty small, with a population of under 500,000, but the metropolitan area has about 6 million in total spanning a number of counties

The list doesn't change a lot when you measure by metropolitan area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities breaks down the list across several measurement methods.

Temperate climate is a bit of a stretch. Maybe “not as bad as Houston.” But, yeah, Austin has a lot going for it relative to a lot of other cities in that general area of the country.

Austin's weather is just fantastic. Not as bad as Houston, or NYC, or DC, or anywhere on the eastern seabord in the summer -- it's hot, yes, but dry-ish (not dry like Phoenix), and unlike the eastern cities, there's A/C aplenty. In the winter it doesn't get very cold, there's no snow, occasionally some ice, and some times it gets very warm in the winter. The summer heat you get used to, unlike Houston or NYC.

To each their own I guess. I've been in Austin for a fairly typical weekend during the summer and found it pretty awful. But, then, I don't deal with heat very well generally. and I don't like being confined to A/C. That's one of the things I like about living in the North. Outside of the cities you don't even really need to have A/C.

Of course, there's snow in the winter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com