For months I’ve been hearing, “Austin is like Portland, you’ll love it,” which is kind of a funny thing to say to a person who is leaving Portland because he doesn’t like it. Austin reminds me a lot of more of Salt Lake City.
The downtown is impressive. The streets are big and wide (minimum of 3 lanes in each direction, just like SLC). They’re building aggressively: lots of huge, new skyscrapers, and what isn’t a skyscraper is a massive Texas-sized cube of red brick spanning multiple blocks. They’re building with a goal in mind, like in a few years they’ll be finish and it will all rise from the ground as some kind of battlestation that will protect the Earth. I think this will be one of the most important cities in the US someday; or that’s the plan.
Also like Salt Lake, they haven’t entirely figured out urban renewal. Still stuck on cars, for one thing. A lot of folks are fighting change, afraid that renewal will force Austin to lose its distinctiveness. Occasionally they’re right — there’s some SLC-style stripmalls out here, and they suck. PDX has figured out how to build new and maintain personality, Austin could learn from that.
It’s sort of a liberal oasis, hence the Portland comparisons. But the slackers out here (and there are plenty of slackers) remind me more of SLC kids: really enthusiastic about their bands and concerts and lives. They’re not as complacent as Portlanders.
Austin is mostly like Austin. I’d like to try this out for a while.
