
God Save Austin - samclemens
http://www.austinmonthly.com/AM/April-2018/God-Save-Austin-Lawrence-Wright/
======
Endama
I find this really puzzling, as Americans, we seem to have this strange
implicit assumption that the market should protect and reinforce culture. That
is to say, that as demand increases for cultural artifacts, that the market
should grow without affecting access to such artifacts.

It seems that when this assumption does not seem to play out, our reflex is to
say that the markets are obviously failing and that policy should step in in
order to preserve the integrity of the culture (i.e. we need to stop ruining
our neighborhoods with all this development and letting all these _other_
people in!).

I feel like this is putting the cart before the horse. IMO (and I'd love to
hear other people's opinion about this) cultures are emergent properties from
markets. When people come together in order to trade goods and services,
market forces will reward economies of scale to those who minimize costs
associated with things like time to market, access to labor, etc. This
increase in density with others leads to community development, which in turn
leads to an exchange of collective values, shared cultural artifacts, etc.

From this perspective, the desire to limit market expansion is really an
attempt to say which values are acceptable and places incumbents as cultural
police for which values are allowed entrance. This seems entirely antithetical
to the American ideal of being a nation of immigrants and/or being a culture
of acceptance and tolerance.

~~~
lazerpants
This problem seems to arise due to the implicit power that money carries,
especially when it hits communities in the US that have their own culture and
have eschewed using money as a proxy for power (maybe it was lower income
inequality in earlier decades). Whereas NYC has always been about
money=power=lifestyle, that was never the case for many communities, and it's
being thrust on a lot of people who never subscribed to that, who live in
places where they want to do their own thing in a low key way without worrying
about construction or ever increasing prices. I can sympathize with their
unhappiness, and I feel that way about Denver when I visit the area where I
grew up. I also have a lot of relatives in Austin and hearing about how it
went from a fun small town to a place clogged by traffic with spiraling
housing prices, but is still the only simulacra of "home" to them, does indeed
sound unappealing.

Edit: rereading my comment, it doesn't quite articulate my point, which is
that people who want to be outside of this big noisy money grabbing game, and
just get to be people, are justifiably unhappy about market determined culture
interfering with their lives.

~~~
Endama
I'm not arguing that it isn't uncomfortable, nor that people aren't justified
in their unhappiness, I am arguing that the desire to use policy to express
that unhappiness and uncomfortability upon the polity is wrong (I would even
say it's selfish). Their comfort when "things were better" was built upon the
market at the snapshot in time they enjoyed it. To demand that the market
revert to that time is, by definition, regressive.

~~~
lazerpants
I mostly agree, but the point I'm making is that the people who made Austin a
mecca for interesting culture moved there precisely because it was not a
market oriented culture. So of course they're unhappy about the change in
cultural orientation, and without money themselves, they have little recourse
outside of policy (though they do have the ability to shape policy given the
long term power structures there). And I'm not sure it's wrong to try to prop
up established elements of the culture they like, though I do suspect it's
untenable.

------
ravitation
I'm from Austin, but I haven't live there since I moved away for college. This
attitude, that Austin is destined to become a "megacity" or that Austin is now
showing signs of "inauthenticity", is both amusing and somewhat disgusting to
me.

Austin, to me, was never about "[Keeping] Austin Weird" (a slogan born from a
marketing campaign, not some organic cultural movement, in 2000), or about its
"flourishing musical subculture". Austin is and will always be, I think,
simply home to me. The author's obsession with these, to be honest, relatively
meaningless aspects of Austin's national (or international) image strikes me
as the most inauthentic thing about people that call themselves Austinites.

Where true authenticity is found in the mourning of the inevitable
transformation of cities is when a city's ability to be home is lost. When
people are displaced from areas that mean more to them than some hip music
venue, or the place where I met Willie Nelson. Give me a break.

~~~
fhood
It is funny how people always seem to represent this as the entire city going
down in flames. Sometimes cities grow. It happens. But the hole in the wall
bars and auto shops and whatever don't stop existing, they just change
neighborhoods. People just don't like it when familiar things change. They
never have, and they probably never will.

------
davidw
> The very places that made Austin so hip are being demolished to make room
> for the hotels and office spaces needed to accommodate the flood of tourists
> and newcomers

....

> When we arrived in Austin in

Sigh...

~~~
Kalium
The drawbridge mentality is increasingly common in major cities. A place was
perfect when you moved there and fell in love. Any changes since then are but
a fall from grace, an unwelcome change that destroys everything you love and
insults your wonderful memories.

It's a deeply human and very understandable response. Of course, that isn't
the same as making good policy.

~~~
csours
There's a walking/hiking trail behind my house. One of my neighbors hates the
fact that the trail has been 'improved' and now other people use it. He was
used to it being 'his' trail.

~~~
Spivak
Is this supposed to be an unreasonable opinion? I run all the 'bad' trails in
my city because it's nice to be alone.

Just because something is a net gain doesn't mean some people don't lose.

~~~
csours
The reason I bought that house in particular is because of the trail and green
space. I think its funny(?) that he was complaining to (at?) me, and I'm part
of the problem.

> Just because something is a net gain doesn't mean some people don't lose.

See also free trade. Consumers benefit, but some workers lose.

~~~
trophycase
Eh I can understand it. In our society it really seems that nothing is sacred
and it's really easy to empathize with someone who just wants one thing to go
untainted by capitalism

~~~
Kalium
It sounds like this person wanted the public to maintain a resource (trail and
green space) but also maintain near-private access.

It's possible that improvements to this public good are capitalism in action,
destroying something beautiful and wonderful. But, some might see this
scenario as someone attempting to capture public resources (the trail and its
maintenance) for their own gain, which is one of the worst expressions of
capitalism.

It's perhaps less easy to empathize with that.

~~~
murftown
Yeah ... I don't think someone who celebrates a bit of mostly untouched nature
in the city they live in represents "one of the worst expressions of
capitalism".

I follow your line of thinking, but I think it's a bit out of context.

~~~
Kalium
I understand how you feel. Untouched nature isn't one of the excesses of
capitalism!

Yet, perhaps a government-maintained trail that someone feels entitled to
treat as their private property is something less than a shining example of
virtue.

------
georgeecollins
San Francisco, and many other places in the US, have been far more taken over
by tourists than Austin. As someone who was born in the SF I can remember how
important it was to the local economy in the 80's before tech moved into the
city. Tourism changed SF before the tech boom did. My parents, also from SF,
(well mom was born in Oakland, but dad was born in SF) talked about how what
was charming about the city had changed, before many people reading this were
born.

It's always changing! If you feel a place is no longer charming, guess what?
Some other place is becoming charming.

~~~
vpribish
Resistance to change in SF from old-timers always surprises me too! SF has
been constantly, radically, changing since it's founding - gold rush, the
fire, WWII military port, the 60's cultural shift, then the more recent things
we all are aware of. If there's any place in the country where resisting
change is out-of-place it's here. So, ironically, it's the people who want it
like it was that are most at odds with the longest-standing character trait of
the city. _smh_

~~~
georgeecollins
All places are changing, some faster than others. The Berlin of Christopher
Isherwood and the Paris of Hemingway are long gone.

The funny thing for me is when I say my mom's family moved to the Oakland
hills after the earthquake, they think I mean in 1989.

------
bm1362
I’m from Austin and have met many tech people who want to move there. They’ll
get a rude awakening when they actually look for jobs- it’s slim pickings and
the satellite offices there for major tech companies often work on pretty
boring products.

~~~
chiph
Austin gets looked-down-on by the SV types for being the home of many
lifestyle businesses (I used to work for one). But y'know - they provide a
product that customer pay for, they employ people, and they tend to be around
for a long time, unlike a lot of the here-today, gone-tomorrow startups.
There's nothing wrong with "boring" if it makes you money.

~~~
bm1362
I worked at Polycom for two years out near the Freescale campus. Talk about a
lifestyle company, the product (cheaper conference phones than Cisco) barely
changed and we had so many company outings. I felt it was a scam, like some
kind of middle class adult daycare.

------
csours
People want to live near downtown Austin because it is cool.

It is cool because of all the cultural stuff that happens there (music,
comedy, parties, education, etc).

Price pressure increases on the dive bars and quirky places and they close up
as condos replace them. The dive bars are not replaced (who wants to live
above a bar??)

Downtown becomes less cool.

------
amclennon
> The Colorado serves the same purpose as the Seine in Paris, as a cultural
> divide.

Slightly off topic, but I've always found it fascinating how much rivers and
other bodies of water can have a drastic impact on the culture despite how
easily we can cross them.

Also see San Francisco / East Bay, Manhattan / Brooklyn, or really any other
city where water is involved.

------
dlandis
> "The very places that made Austin so hip are being demolished to make room
> for the hotels and office spaces needed to accommodate the flood of tourists
> and newcomers who have come to enjoy what no longer exists"

Anyone know what places he is specifically referring to with that statement? I
didn't see any specific examples mentioned in the article.

~~~
bonoetmalo
A good/recent example is the Graffiti Park.
[https://www.mystatesman.com/news/local/austin-graffiti-
park-...](https://www.mystatesman.com/news/local/austin-graffiti-park-
demolition-approved-relocation-the-works/uaTGxx4a62ucPDgm3bAj1M/)

Another is Uncommon Objects, an antique store originally on South Congress
[https://www.statesman.com/business/uncommon-objects-
moving-f...](https://www.statesman.com/business/uncommon-objects-moving-from-
longtime-south-congress-home/j0hWIrm7w5oe8mlBFYUoHI/)

~~~
drcongo
Don't forget Rainey Street.

------
simulate
What cities will see the kind of growth Austin has experienced in the _next_
twenty years? Perhaps Raleigh, Denver?

~~~
bonoetmalo
Minneapolis and Asheville both have decent tech scenes although I don't know
if they have the tourist capacity to encourage tech people to move there.

~~~
microDude
My old boss moved to Bend, OR, but was surprised when I did not follow him. He
did not give me a pay raise to afford the $400k entry house for my family. I
could have lived out in the sticks, but wanted to be able to walk to downtown,
like I do now.

~~~
bonoetmalo
Yeah, after living in a house for so long I absolutely could not see myself
moving back into a condo/apartment again, for any job.

------
jpster
>Something similar is happening now in the city, with the video game industry
and national intelligence. There are so many ex-spooks moving to Austin it has
become a kind of Texas Abbottabad.

Why is it attracting people from the intelligence community?

------
bonoetmalo
.

~~~
alsetmusic
> .

Stand by your words. Editing a comment to remove it after seeing downvotes
undermines your credibility as a whole.

~~~
bonoetmalo
Original replyer was correct, I should have read the full article. Edited the
comment long before the downvotes. I don't stand by my words, move on.

~~~
alsetmusic
> Original replyer was correct, I should have read the full article. Edited
> the comment long before the downvotes. I don't stand by my words, move on.

So edit the comment and disavow the statement. Removing it from the record is
a form of whitewashing history.

