Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasPlaya
ATX/SATX corridor?
All the green between South Austin and East San Antonio is rapidly vanishing. Pretty much from Austin to San Marcos is built up along I35 with a little bit of daylight between San Marcos and New Braunfels.
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That 10 minute stretch between San Marcos and New Braunfels is all the remains. As an expat of both, I think these predictions are accurate but a bit overhyped.
For starters, for the actual math to work (I.E. the way the census bureau and OMB define, and calculate inclusion in, a metro area), one or both of San Marcos or New Braunfels would have to become a legitimate business center with their own corporate bases and suburban commuter belts. This is not outside of the realm of possibility, as those communities do not traditionally consider themselves to be bedroom communities, but rather satellite cities.
Even still, the greater likelihood (and it still requires San Marcos or New Braunfels stepping up the plate)is that the two MSAs stay separate but are combined into a single CSA.
An under appreciated possibility is that the Killeen-Temple-Belton MSA vanishes as a distinct entity and is folded into the Austin MSA. Points to consider:
1. Austin’s sprawl is stronger and more cohesive to the north than it is to the south. Similarly, San Antonio’s sprawl is strongest and most cohesive to the west. They are sprawling away from one another, not towards, development between the two consists of a narrow band of pearls along the I-35 necklace. Killeen, Temple, and Belton are sprawling collectively southerly toward Round Rock and Georgetown down both freeways: I-35 and SH-195. Just as the sprawl between San Marcos and New Braunfels is rapidly filling in green space, Jarrell is poised to be the next big boomburg with master planned developments stretching much further away from the interstate than anywhere between San Antonio and Austin.
2. Not only are the distances shorter between Austin and the three cities than between Austin and San Antonio (Austin-Belton: 61 miles; Austin-Belton: 68 miles; Austin-Killeen: 68 miles), but legitimate corporate bases in North Austin (the Domain, 60 minutes), Round Rock (Dell, 45 minutes), and soon-to-be Temple (Samsung, 45 minutes) are much closer and within a reasonable commuting distance. Georgetown has already distinguished itself as the regional suburban shopping location and a regional retirement center.
3. Commuting patterns are a complex system in reality, and one of the interesting artifacts of the way the census bureau calculates MSAs is that when considering dissolving one metro and adding its counties to another, metros with more highly dispersed employment patterns are more likely to be dissolved than those metros with a very tight core. Examples here include San Jose and the Inland Empire, Gainesville in Georgia, and others. Both of these metros are perpetually on the verge of being eliminated and combined with others into a single more multipolar metro. Contrast this with Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. These cities have dense cores and comparatively unipolar employment markets, and most people wouldn’t consider the possibility that they’d be combined with another metro. Killeen-Temple-Belton is the former and San Antonio the latter.
Of course, the math becomes harder for an Austin-San Antonio CSA if the Killeen, Temple, and Belton MSA is folded into the Austin MSA.
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My longstanding belief is that this pattern (whether documented at each step or not) is the most likely:
2020s:
• Austin MSA adds Milam and Lee counties.
• Marble Falls mSA recreated from Blanco, Burnet, and Llano.
• Austin CSA recreated from Austin MSA and Marble Falls mSA.
2030s:
• San Antonio MSA captures both the Kerrville mSA and Pearsall mSA.
• San Antonio CSA adds Fredericksburg mSA and Uvalde mSA.
• Austin MSA captures Marble Falls mSA.
• Austin and Killeen-Temple-Belton become a CSA.
2040s:
• San Antonio MSA captures Fredericksburg mSA.
• Austin MSA captures Killeen-Temple-Belton.
2050s:
• Austin-San Antonio CSA becomes a reality.
2060s:
• Single Metro?
• Mega-region with Waco?
• Fool’s errands?
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