Love Letter to Austin
downtown in pictures
Earlier this year, I spent some time in Austin and had the opportunity to meander around Downtown and the adjacent East Austin neighborhood. The following are a few thoughts and photos captured along the way.
The view from the street
For those who know nothing about Texas, Austin is the politically wayward capital of the state. A common refrain from “naturalized” Austinites is that they “don’t live in Texas, they live in Austin”. And it’s a fair statement to make. The city has always been politically liberal (whatever that’s happened to mean at the time) relative to the rest of the state. The differences aren’t just political though, they’re topographical as well. The city’s urban core is a lot more urban than other metros in the state (try walking anywhere in Houston and you’ll see what I mean).
Like other major cities throughout the sunbelt, Austin is relatively pro-housing.1 In response to surging demand, the city permitted a record number of new units and continues to permit large quantities of multi-family housing, at least relative to the rest of the country.
It’s also not just building housing. It’s creating the transportation infrastructure to make density work as well. The Cap Metro Redline (one station pictured below) is a modest commuter rail system that gives folks an alternative to driving in from the northwestern suburbs. There’s also a light rail planned that will eventually run through downtown and out to the city’s southeast.2
As it turns out, cars (unlike demonic entities) can’t be contained by drawing imaginary lines on the ground. Leaving medieval superstition behind, Austin has begun providing dedicated rights-of-way to pedestrians and cyclists. This particular path runs alongside the CapMetro Red Line and connects with the nearby stations, giving riders an obvious way to get to their final destinations without driving.
I’ve always been partial to murals. I spent the better part of a decade in Oakland, California, and The Town still stands as the example par excellence in my mind for street art. That said, Austin has some gems — here’s a few from the edge of East Austin.
The city is also tech friendly. You can now see Waymos zipping around Downtown and I even spotted delivery drones parked outside of a coffee spot.3
With the caveat that my impressions are mostly from walking around two specific neighborhoods and spending only a couple months in the greater metro area, I’ll conclude with this: Austin feels like a place where the future is still going to happen.
Surely, some of that is just because it’s a college town and there’s literal young people milling about doing young people things. But I also think it’s because the markers of change and growth are so obviously visible.
Change happens whether we like it or not. In Austin, the city is choosing to have that change manifest in simply building more Austin. To the extent that they get that right, they’ll be able to welcome more future Austinites while ensuring current residents get to actually stay.
That’s it for today. Let me know in the comments if y’all (and I do mean y’all) actually like this kind of meandering photo-essay-comme-Jane’s-Walk. Happy to bring folks along for more.
By American standards and in juxtaposition to places like San Francisco.
There’s some political shenanigans where the state government is trying to stop the city government from building out the system. My YIMBY folks in Austin tell me it’s weird culture war stuff (because trains have a partisan valence in the U.S.), so there’s some level of political uncertainty wrt the project.
Revolución on San Jacinto; the coffee is good, I also highly recommend the espresso pie.