Austin resident here. My wife and I have been talking to renovators and have heard several times that projects simply take longer these days because many workers now must live farther out from the city core than they used to. I wouldn't be surprised the same thing happens here -- to a lesser degree perhaps, as we have more geographical space to expand into -- with avg commute time being the primary constraint on growth.
Austin is a lot more progressive about accommodating new residents. Of course you do hear a lot of folks complaining about how the skyrocketing rents are destroying some long-time businesses, but like you said there is a LOT more land to expand and accomodate new residents.
Also, the Domain development has somewhat eased the traffic situation by shifting a lot of new businesses slightly closer to the Northern Suburbs. Which is a welcome respite: the traffic situation would have been a LOT worse (if that's possible ;-) ) had the Domain not been developed.
I'm pretty optimistic about Austin's future. It offers an extremely high standard of living on a developers salary. Most suburbs are not too far away. There is a lot of undeveloped land. And the City Government is proactive and responsive to the needs of citizens. I think it can evolve into another Tech hub, maybe rivaling Seattle. For it to rival Bay Area, I think we would need a lot more VC's to set up shop here.
Disclaimer: lived in Austin for 5 years now, loved every year so far.
I live in Austin as well. I'm optimistic but not nearly as much as you. Traffic is strangling the city and slowing growth, especially of the downtown core. And the city is wasting time and money expanding highways (something proven to be useless in the long run) instead of investing in public transport like most successful cities have.
I'm looking into buying a house but anything that is affordable is out in the suburbs or neighboring cities. And I say that as someone who makes $100k.
You make good points. The only highway expansion I see is for Mopac though, right? After that disastrous experience (which is finally nearing completion), I think people have become a lot more against expanding the highways any more.
Austin does unfortunately have a terrible record when it comes to public transit. The rail system is a joke. Although, I am hoping that future infrastructure projects will focus more on creating a viable train/rail/subway system from suburbs to dt/domain. The density of dt is skyrocketing with recent developments, and I can only hope that it will spur a rethinking of transportation policy.
As for the cost of housing... unfortunately, all the outsiders coming in are flooding the market and driving prices ridiculously high. I don't really see an end to the boom... which is why I too have stayed away from considering purchasing a house for the time being.
Yeah. It's not so much about distance, it's about time. Better infrastructure for moving people in and out of the city enables a larger city, and a more populated one.
I spent ~10 years living in Europe. While there was still a lot of traffic, huge numbers of people took rail. To me, the cities were much more livable than the average NA city.
Shouldn't we at least be talking about working remotely and why that doesn't happen more often?
I would bet most people have to drive in primarily because there manager did it that way when he/she was in the developer role.
Working remotely is friendlier on the environment and saves time commuting. It's also cheaper for the company and more easily scales as head count increases.
It's not just about work. Sports stadiums, bars, meetup groups, nightlife, concerts, comedy clubs, etc etc all involve bringing people into the city. Commuting is just part of the battle
Working remotely might give a town more years before they have to expand the highway due to rush hour traffic. They may work in the next town over too, so more diffuse nightlife, bars, etc... It's not a panacea, because of some of the activities you mention (stadiums), but I think it could help with infrastructure and reduce our carbon footprint.
Time and time variance on travel. I know a contractor that has moved out of Seattle because he naturally needed to go to a lot of different locations and the really long and unpredictable travel times made his work very difficult. The pay and availability of jobs will be less at his new place, but lower housing costs and little traffic made the move worth trying in his case.
> Six lanes of traffic
> Cue whining about how pollution and an over-priced mass-transit utopia and high rise apartments will solve all our problems.
You do realize that six-lane highways are every bit as expensive as mass transit lines, right? And that a pair of railroad tracks down the median of that six lane highway can move a volume of people about 3x bigger than all the lanes put together?
Honestly even if you just love driving, you should be in favor of anything that will get other drivers out of their cars, because otherwise the end-state is horrific traffic for you to sit in.
There is no known way to scale up a city while keeping cars the dominant mode of transit. You can only add so many lanes before you run out of space, and long before that point you start hitting un-enlargeable bottlenecks in parts of the system that propagate outward.
If you look at an historical chart of GDP growth by city you'll find others[1], since I believe the issue of increasingly coveted zones that push out lower income inhabitants has been a problem in rapidly growing large urban centers since before history. I read how it was a common complaint in ancient Rome. I experienced it myself working in London during the 90's, and now too in the Bay Area.
I wonder how self-driving cars will impact conurbation size when compared to other advancements like boats, horses, carts, roads, canals, trams, steam-engines, trains, tarmac, subways, combustion-engines, bikes, cars, steel bridges, and mechanized roadway construction?
Austin has managed growth poorly, which has resulted in traffic nightmares. But the cost of housing has also been going up to a degree that may push people away. (Closing in on retirement in my current job and although I will likely continue programming, I am thinking about moving somewhere else.)
