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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Question for the HNers in the "Texas Triangle": does it "feel" like a megaregion? I've spent very little time in Texas (only a handful of trips), but my impression was that there's a very stark drop from moderate density urban cores, to sprawling suburbs, to virtually uninhabited interstitials around highways. In other words: it wouldn't occur to me (as a non-Texan) to even think of Austin and Dallas as belonging to the same "megaregion."

This is in contrast with e.g. the "Northeast Corridor," where dense towns (sometimes denser than Texas's urban cores) line the roads and rail links between the major cities.

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Spent a lot of time on the I-35 corridor between Austin and Dallas in the last 15 years

There's still a ton of farmland/open/rural space, but you pass a number of smaller cities along the highway (Waco, Temple, West, etc), and some of them have been exploding economically. Some are unrecognizable from how they used to look

Having spent nearly a decade in the San Antonio/Austin area, no. I'd say only recently have San Antonio and Austin even felt connected. But Dallas and Houston are completely different worlds in my mind. It's nearly 5 hours from San Antonio to Dallas, with not much interesting in between.

Yeah but it’s a 77 minute flight. That’s one thing that always catches me off guard when I’m in an airport in Texas: the number of intra-state flights is massive. With pre-check and valet parking, you really can make it from door to door in about 2hrs.

I'm no longer there, but I grew up there, and I would say yes to an extent. Yes in that there's a large amount of movement within the area (e.g., grow up in Dallas, go to school at A&M, settle in San Antonio) and that you may have to go to one of the other cities now and then for something specialized (e.g., from Austin to Houston for a consulate or a highly specialized medical visit). There's also somewhat of a rivalry, I guess. But, still, there's not a "feeling" of connectedness, but is there between, say, Baltimore and Philadelphia?

I can't really compare it to the Northeast Corridor, though. I lived in NYC, but not long enough to really have a connection much beyond the city.

Agreed. I grew up in Dallas, went to school in Austin and College Station and now live in Austin. We frequently travel to San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston for the kids' events like dance and marching band competitions.

Your intuition is correct.

My place is inside the 610 in Houston. More precisely Third Ward/Museum District.

I think even most Texans wouldn't put Austin and Dallas in the same region. Dallas is radically different from Houston as well.

That said, if you look at what they are calling mega-regions, I think there are many departures from what people in those areas would think. For instance, most people in North Carolina would think of the Triangle as its own thing and Atlanta as another, separate thing. Here, they are saying that Atlanta and the Triangle are the same. Maybe because of people connections? Not sure? But that would strike people in the Southeast as strangely as looping Austin-Dallas-Houston into the same thing strikes Texans.

ETA:

Actually, now that I've looked more closely at the map, I'm not sure it lines up at all with what most people would think? I notice in the Midwest region, Columbus and Dayton are on the map in spite of Chicago's rail links to St Louis, Urbana-Champaign, and perhaps the most baffling omission on the map, Minneapolis? They got some serious economic firepower up there in that metro, and more commercial links between them and Chicago than anyone else in the region. Maybe because Minneapolis is thought to be its own thing? Whereas they don't believe Dayton or Columbus are their own thing?

It'd be interesting to read how these regions were determined? On the surface, yes, many of them seem a bit, off?

I believe megaregions is an economic concept. It is supposed to show concentrations of linked economic activity/common infrastructure/interests. The US has 11 megaregions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_Stat...

TBH I think it feels like it's starting to get a lot more "connected". For a long time, Austin was the outlier - very progressive and uniquely a tech center compared to the other cities. Over time, though, I think that has changed:

1. Pretty much all the cities in Texas are rather progressive now - like pretty much everywhere else it's an urban/rural divide now. Houston was the first city in the US with a lesbian mayor.

2. Austin is still the tech center, but I've started to see more companies (and people) move to Houston or Dallas as Austin has gotten ridiculously expensive.

3. You are correct about the wide expanses of nothingness in between the major urban/suburban areas, but I don't think that's quite critical to the author's thesis. That said, as Austin has gotten more expensive I lot of areas further out that I used to think of "nothingness" now have seen big booms. Lots of places between Austin and San Antonio in particular feel like they've exploded over the past decade.

4. One thing that I think that you're likely to miss from asking HNers is that, at least among people I know, there is much more "connectedness" among the cities between people and industries not in tech vs. those in tech. E.g. on the upper end folks I know in legal and banking travel fairly frequently between some of these cities, and on the lower end I know a bunch of Mexican immigrants that have friends and family spread out in San Antonio, Houston and Austin.

The big question in my mind is climate change. I've lived in Austin for a quarter century, and while our summers are always hot, last year was a new beast entirely - relentess week after week after week of 105-110 weather. I'm doing everything I can to get out of Austin in the summer now.

Not to me. I've lived in Dallas for over a decade at this point. I've visited Houston once. I've visited New York at least once a year. Putting aside that we're as far from each other as London is from Paris and Amsterdam, there is damn near nothing between us. When you add in the several hours you spend getting to an airport, getting through security, waiting for your plane to board, then the massive amount of time spent taxiing because DFW the airport is bigger than Dallas the city, the time difference between flying to Houston versus flying to a coast is negligible compared to your total door to door travel time, so frankly, Houston may as well be as far away as New York is.

I think it's very different when you grew up there and have significant family there, compared to if you are a transplant (even one with a decade under your belt). That extended family brings with it people moving between the cities, holiday visits to gather, etc. On my family's last couple of trips to Houston, we've included visits to Dallas to visit with other family members and I don't think it's that rare.

Plus, very few are even thinking of flying between the cities. Car ownership is high that flying to visit one of the other cities is definitely an edge case.

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