(Texas Monthly) What Nobody Says About Austin: Is Austin the state’s most segregated city?

[walkingman]

4. My experience working in Austin (long)

is both a positive and negative. I was transfered to Austin in '87 from Houston after the oil bust in Texas and was really excited to come to a place I had made a regular weekend trek from Houston for years. The music scene, the hippie scene, and the large number of college students as a percentage of the population. I liked Houston (although it was a lot smaller in those days) and loved the culture of Montrose (in the 70's) but expected even better things in this "Keeping Austin Weird" culture.

What I found was not what I expected. First of all, it was expensive compared to Houston and the people at my workplace were from the burbs and although were good folks - not progressive at all. The "tracks" in those days was I35 - everything east was taboo and in those days South Congress was the "hooker" part of town. There was a lot of very cool small businesses East and South but ethnically the city was very segregated.

I have seen all of that change in the last 25 years as the population has grown but more along income levels rather than ethnicity. Austin is still expensive and although there is a trend towards urban living most people just cannot afford it. IMO, along with this the cool factor has diminished and it mostly a holdover of days gone by. I think the lack of transportation planning (a big problem) is a direct result of lack of diversity. Most of the money is and was used for the wealthy parts of town.

Just my opinion - I still consider Austin probably one of the most progressive parts of Texas and for the time being the struggle continues to keep it that way. Sending more Californians this way has helped not hurt this city.