I live in Austin and know the author to boot. I haven't had the time to sit down and read this one yet, but knowing him I can pretty well guess his take. He is my pick for the best writer in the state.

My read of Austin:

- I was born here in 1995. Except for a few years, I've seen double-digit growth in most measurables every year of my life. Growth is the only thing I have ever known so I am comfortable with it, and I can also see why previous generations (I.e. my parents) are not.

- Change is painful. Especially at this clip and for this long. But man, it is beautiful.

- The City Council here is undoubtedly the worst part of the problem. They consistently buckle to NIMBYs, and allocate money in just unreasonably idiotic ways. ("No one riding the train that cost $1.1 billion? Easy fix! Spend $7 billion more!") They are making the change much more painful.

- Natives were largely fine with the first wave of California refugees in 2008. This COVID wave is different though. The new movers kept their jobs and are working remote from Austin – meaning that they still have their Cali / NY inflated paychecks. It feels like a money fight, and we keep losing.

Lived there until around 2021 and visited often before the hype. It is the same as the rest of Texas, but offers employability in the technology sector. People have this notion that there's a "different vibe", but really it feels like political posturing and wanting to feel hip.

There's nothing really wrong with Austin, and it has a cool lake. But that's really it.

I can't read the article because it's paywalled but I've lived in NYC and SF for several years each, and have now been in Austin for 2. I'll just say one thing which I like about it a lot.

Being a blue city in a red state, the public's approach to policy seems more reasonable than in a lot of other places where it only goes one way.

For example, a few years ago they had a ballot measure to allow homeless camping on the streets more easy to do and less punishable. In short order, the city became swamped with it. At one point city hall downtown was even entirely surrounded with tents. I mean straight lines down all four sides of the block. It looked like somebody had gone to Walmart and bought 100 of the same 3 tents. The situation wasn't very good.

So 2 years later it was put back up for vote and people voted to undo it, and now the city is much cleaner than it was before. Yes, there are still homeless, and I bet lots of people are gonna have opinions about whether undoing it actually helped homeless people as that's a hot topic today, but having lived in NYC and SF, that was something I'd almost never seen before.

Vote to try something, and then actually vote to undo it when the results are not good? It was incredible to me. In the other cities things only ever go one way, which seemed to be doubling down. I admire Austin for its ability to experiment and undo when things don't work out, it seems rational.

Other than that, well, it's a medium-sized city in Texas. That means it's very hot in the summers and it is not as connected as the continuous coastal sprawls of the east and west coasts. If you don't like heat or simpler cities, come say hi and have fun for a week, but it might not be for you for living. You don't have to throw shade on it though to decide it's not a fit for you for the long term. It's a great place to be.

I grew up in Austin in the 90s and currently live in SF. My family still lives in Austin, so I visit fairly frequently.

I think this was well-written. The Austin that exists today is unrecognizable from the Austin of my childhood—particularly the downtown areas like South Congress. In one way, it's sad, because the changes are certainly evident of a new professional class in Austin that did not exist before. There's a wealth gap that is much more apparent. Many of my friends I grew up with live farther out than they expected—Leander, Georgetown, Round Rock.

But on the other hand, compared to San Francisco, I'm glad that Austin is encouraging growth in _some_ direction. SF seems to have tried its hardest to repel tech growth, and its downtown is now deservedly emptied out. It's actually exciting to come back to Austin and see a city that is building and changing—it makes SF feel stagnant.

> “There’s this spirit of the Texas frontier—strong people confronting challenges and doing so boldly.”

There is certainly an attitude I miss about the people I knew in Texas. There's a sense of optimism and capability I remember that doesn't seem as pervasive elsewhere.

That said, I don't think I'll return to Austin. I had enough of the hot climate, and all of the changes make me feel like it's no longer my hometown.

I lived there for 10 years, around 2007-2017 or so. It was fantastic during this time, and if you rode a bike, just genuinely the best town in Texas. The food was great, there was always something to do, the weather was better than Houston (less humid, less rain), and there's actual hills and lakes.

The traffic has always been terrible, which is why I mention riding a bike. The infrastructure was never intended to handle this many people, so sitting in dead stop traffic is just an everyday occurrence multiple times a day, pretty much anywhere in the city.

All that said, the majority of my favorite bars and restaurants on the East Side are now giant apartment complexes. I also no longer drink, so that's removed a large part of Austin life for me.

The charm of Austin was it's small town nature, offering really unique things and a chill pace of life. Now its a giant town in the foot print of a small town, offering mostly corporate owned things.

It's still probably more fun than any other city in Texas, but at this point in my life I'd never move back.

Grew up in Austin and family has been here for several generations. Mr. Wright puts it best:

If you live long enough in a place, it becomes haunted by ghosts: memories of events and friends long gone still inhabit spaces that have been levelled and covered over by the unstoppable newness.

I've moved from Austin as have most of the people I know, or they've passed away. To me it is a city of ghosts, not just those that have left, but the entire groups of people who have been priced out and excluded. Gentrification destroys neighborhoods and destroys cities. Whether this process is beneficial or harmful is a matter of perspective.

Austin as a place, and the American continent as a whole, has been over thousands of years and especially the past few hundred, a land of displacement. Numerous American Indian tribes displaced each other, and the Spanish, the Mexican, French, Anglos, and so forth. To be truly American, in the continental sense, is to be not only a displacer but to eventually be displaced yourself.

To have experienced the displacement in only one to two decades is a concentrated experience, perhaps shared in a fortunately peaceful way, but economically violent, by other groups over time: the Greeks in Anatolia after Turkish independence, the population transfer in Israel and Palestine, or between India and Pakistan at partition. Having a city stolen from you by the monied is preferable to getting forced out by a mob, but if you can't pay rent or property taxes, the sheriff is coming to pay a visit and he's armed.

The old Austin was fun while it lasted, simultaneously boring and exhilarating. But it's dead, and we natives should have a funeral for it, and either in town or out, move on. Meet me down by one of the few remaining moontowers and we'll crack open a Lone Star for one final tribute to Leslie and, with SRV playing in the background, toast to our dearly departed. Ausitn, you had a good run, here's to your memory.

I grew up in a small town just north of Austin, and lived in town after college for a few years. If you aren't a big foodie or into live music, there's really not much reason to live there. Horrible traffic, surface-of-the-sun hot, wildly overpriced, geographically uninteresting, etc.

People are generally very friendly and it's a blue city in a deeply red state, which I personally appreciate, but I'd live in inner-loop Houston before moving back to Austin, and in turn I'd live in just about any other coastal state before moving back to Texas.

I don't live in Austin but for me the town died a little when the Armadillo World Headquarters closed. [0] I hitchhiked from Michigan on college spring break to visit. The Police were playing that night. It fully lived up to the legend.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_World_Headquarters

Moved there in 2017 from Florida. It's grown tremendously even in that amount of time. So many more high rises than there were 5 years ago even. Austin's been able to attract flagships like the Google Wave building downtown, which is a beautiful building on Lady Bird Lake. Far more of the "east side" has also developed in that time. A lot of old ranch houses and old bars and restaurants that I briefly got to see have been razed for the 4-6 story mixed use buildings that now run almost the entire length of east 6th. It's gone from an eclectic, artsy, hipster vibe on that side of town to trendy and modern. Although, there's still plenty of great bars to enjoy over there.

One thing I feel about Austin, is that people are super friendly. A lot of people are transplants, and they're usually more than willing to make new friends. Sometimes you'll meet some Austin veterans or natives there. They'll tell you that the east side used to be very crime-ridden (I'm guessing in the 90s and early 00s). They'll bemoan all the growth, but a lot of them will also say that they haven't grown tired of the city because of the constant change.

I do think the author's anecdote about the people being more "libertarian"-ish is kinda true. A lot of my Democrat friends in ATX tend to be very pro-gun rights, for example. I do think you get a lot of more moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans in Austin and that is a political culture you won't really find in most tech hubs.

I would say my only major complaint about ATX is that it's right smack in the middle of Texas. Nothing wrong with Texas, but it's a very large state and if you want to take a road trip to the mountains or the beach or somewhere different, it's a long haul.