Quote:
Originally Posted by the Genral
...you almost never hear or read a mention of Austin without being followed by Texas. Detroit wasn't follow by Michigan in that story.
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There are a few factors contributing to this phenomenon, and pardon me for repeating some of the points others have made, but I'm going to state all of them as I perceive them:
1. Categorization --- we form categories based on a list of exemplars, and there's only so much room on those lists. Detroit was there first, and it has a lot more going for it than population. It's got deep history, the auto industry, and the fact that it was one of the top 5 cities in the nation for population and GDP in its prime. I think there's a certain amount of "category inertia" that makes it difficult to reorganize our lists, but I bet that there's a statistically significant difference between the way young and old people think about Austin vs. Detroit. It would be interesting to get data correlating the pairing of Austin with Texas, and age. My bet is that people under 40 are more likely to drop the "Texas" because Austin has become its own brand and has top-of-mind name recognition for young people, whereas for people over 70 there may be a lingering image of a dusty little cow town somewhere in the heart of Texas. Our first and early impressions can be updated, but a trace of the original impression remains.
2. Blame it on Boston! I've run into this problem many times, where people think I said "Boston" even though I said "Austin." It's because Boston has historically played a much bigger role in the nation and the world. Our brains are brilliant at interpreting the fuzzy data transmitted by neurons, but when there's a strong similarity between two images or names or tunes, the pattern-matching neuronal activity of our brains will reach immediately for the most available match, and up until very recently it was more likely that a person would talk about Boston than Austin (assuming one was neither in Texas nor MA.)
3. Texas pride? I've always enjoyed telling people that I live in Austin, Texas, because there's an in-your-face quality about Texas. Is it just me, or can anyone relate? For native Texans there's a well-known pride of place, but for an ex-Californian liberal like me it's especially fun because I like to confuse people and break their stereotypes. I like the contradiction. "Austin, Texas" is a socio-political-geographic oxymoron. I fucking LOVE that, and I've milked it for the 26 years that I've lived here.
4. Because a lot of people actually don't know where Austin is! However, I'm much less likely to add the "Texas" now than I was in the past. People are much more likely to know where Austin is now, but in the 90s it was often useful to clarify because, let's face it, most people are geographically illiterate. So they get a free geography lesson in the process of learning about where you're from.
I've spent a few summers traveling around the country and up into Canada, taking months-long road trips so as to help Greenland get rid of its pesky glaciers. On these trips, I've always been driving a Hyundai Santa Fe with Texas plates and some sort of hippie bumper stickers. I used to have liberal political stickers, but I've gone non-political in recent years and now sport one of those ubiquitous "COEXIST" stickers (done with symbols of different religions) and a NAMASTE sticker. Total hippie shit. And this is all part of an image that plays up the contradiction. I love having those stickers on a car with Texas plates, because it's fun to violate people's stereotypical expectations. I would probably have some kind of libertarian sticker if I lived in the Bay area. However, in all this pretense of being a rebel, I have to admit that Austin probably has more COEXIST bumper stickers
per capita than just about any other city in the country, so I'm playing right into a stereotype about Austin that I actually like and that I want to amplify.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the Genral
In another article / viewpoint vlog, the writer asks, "Why doesn't Austin feel like a big city"? This perplexes me too.
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First, a vlog is a video, so saying "the writer asks" when referring to a vlog is a contradiction. I like it.
But regarding the question about Austin's feel, I think it's a pretty straight-forward case of the historical context of the development of cities. Older cities were built dense and tall, with imposing stone buildings that have a grandeur about them, and they've always been more oriented toward public transit because they were big before cars were the preferred mode of transport. I think this is by far the main factor that gives Austin a smaller-city feel, it's that we don't have an extensive downtown with skyscrapers butting up against one another.
Our zoning laws have also prevented the traditional type of development, favoring lots of open spaces rather than a dense skyline. All the setbacks, the CVCs, the tree ordinances, and the neighborhoods close to downtown that prevent it from expanding, it all contributes to a very small core with scattered skyscrapers, surrounded by miles of sprawl. And the absence of tall buildings outside of the core also makes it look smaller. That's almost entirely due to zoning, correct? I regret this, and wish there could be clusters of highrises outside of downtown, although maybe private developers aren't even interested in doing that, given the fact that the Domain hasn't taken advantage of its own capacity to be much taller.
And one more factor that might contribute to the small-city image is the preservation of an amazing urban tree canopy, such that when you look at the city from a vantage point like the I-35 upper deck, you mostly see UT through downtown, and the rest of it is obscured beneath trees. That's pretty sweet, and something we can be happy about. And the geography of the city makes it impossible to see its extent from any angle near the ground. Even from Mt. Bonnell it's impossible to see a lot of the city, maybe as much as half of the area where people live is obscured even from up there.
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