By Saul Elbein, The Hill | Austin’s “magic” has slipped away thanks to poorly planned development run amok, a new book argues. In “Lost in Austin,” out Tuesday, journalist Alex Hannaford details how spiking rents have sent development sprawling into the Texas city’s ecologically sensitive hinterlands — increasing traffic, sucking up the source of its water and potentially spelling a warning for its doom.
This trajectory from laid-back, compact college town to global city has hollowed out much of what made Austin grow, Hannaford contends — and illustrates a broader issue of spiraling real estate costs threatening to undermine the social foundations of cities across the country.
When Hannaford moved to Austin in 2003, it was still “an affordable city that artists and musicians and people of all backgrounds and economic statuses could live in: line cook, cleaning lady, artist, full-time musicians,” he told The Hill.
From about 2015, however, prices began to spike, driven by the city’s embrace of a tech industry diaspora whose expansion in the area was driven in part by rising costs in Northern California — a trend the COVID-19 pandemic only further fueled.
During the same period, the city’s supposed position as a music mecca has slowly eroded, Hannaford writes.
The number of official music venues counted by Visit Austin — the city’s marketing and tourist promotion arm — has reached a record high in recent years.
But based on city statistics, Hannaford found, most of those locations are not true full-time venues but side stages at restaurants and bars that host occasional cover bands.
These, he conceded, have a place — but the old full-time venues that hosted the up-and-coming artists who gave Austin its reputation as a creative mecca have been lost.
“Visit Austin still likes to extol the virtue of ‘Live Music Capital of the World’ — but working musicians can’t afford to park downtown, let alone live there,” Hannaford said.
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Read the rest of Mr. Hannaford’s thoughts here:
https://thehill.com/homenews/4907909-lost-in-austin-book-development-affordability-traffic-water/
Photo: Lost in Austin book cover