Long-time resident here -- right on the money. While likely not purposeful, Adler's use of the past tense 'made' (the city so attractive) speaks volumes to the negative trends in accessibility, affordability, livability, and viability that Austin has experienced over the last decade or more. This being a weird, artsy, and affordable place to live is a meme that might have been true at one time but is fading quickly into the past, and increasingly so, given the current 'Austin is cool' cultural zeitgeist. Sadly, outside public awareness of this has not caught up and the political will for meaningful change toward sustainable growth ends at someone's $1.2mil front lawn or the amount owed on their property tax bill.

I fear this place is heading more in the direction of LA than SF -- less earthquakes and beaches; yet all the inequality, homelessness, soul-crushing driving commutes, expensive rents, drought, vapid personalities, celebrity, traffic, tech/crypto bros, etc. But, hey, your income taxes will be a little lower! You can spend that win-fall on power generation to heat/cool your home and boil water when the Texas power grid inevitably fails again.

The other sentence you called out, likely refers to the I35 expansion project proposal that is under the authority of state TXDOT officials, who can, and I'd expect will, flout the wishes of the Austin community [0]. Local organizations have developed several potential alternatives which aim to increase affordability, livability, and economic opportunities within the area but these have seemly fallen on deaf ears at the State level [1].

[0] http://www.my35.org/capital-project-capital-express-central.... [1] https://www.kut.org/transportation/2021-08-12/txdot-slams-br...