book of austin
DESCRIPTION
Book about the city of AustinTRANSCRIPT
05 image of the city
24 building the imageenvironment
27 structure andidentity
34 imageability
57 brief history ofaustin
69 maps of austin
89the top big demographic trends in austin
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the image of the citykevin lynch
Looking at Austin can give a special pleasure, however, commonplace the sight may be. Like a place of architecture, Austin is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. Austin’s design is therefore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other temporal arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across. It is seen in alllights and in all weathers. At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the sequences of events leading
the image of the environment
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up to it, the memory of past experiences. Every citizen has had long associations with some part of Austin, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings. Moving elements in Austin, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts. We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with the other participants. Most often, our perception of Austin is not sustained, but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other concerns. Nearly every sense is in operation, and the image is the composite of them all. Not only is Austin an object which is perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of widely diverse class and character, but it is the product of many builders who are constantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own. While it may be stable in general outlines for some time, it
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is every changing in detail. Only partial control can be exercised over its growth and form. There is no final result, only a continuous succession of phases. No wonder, then, that the art of shaping Austin for sensuous enjoyment is an art quite separate from architecture or music or literature. It may learn a great deal from these other arts,but it cannot imitate them. A beautiful and delightful city environment is an oddity, some would say an impossibility. Not one American city larger than a village is
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of consistently fine quality, although a few towns have some pleasant fragments. It is hardly surprising, then, that most Americans have little idea of what it can mean to live in such an environment. They are clear enough about the ugliness of the world they live in, and
they are quite vocal about the dirt, the smoke, the heat, and the congestion, the chaos and the monotony of it. But they are hardly aware of the potential value of harmonious surroundings, a world which they may have briefly glimpsed only as tourists or as an escaped vacationer. They can have little sense of what a setting can mean in terms of daily delight, or as a continuous anchor for their lives, or an extension of the meaningfulness and richness of the work. Although clarity or legibility is by no means the only important property of a beautiful city, it is of special importance when considering environments at the urban scale of size, time, and complexity. To understand this, we must consider not just Austin as a thing in itself, but Austin being perceived by its inhabitants.
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Structuring and identifying the environment is a vital ability among all mobile animals. Many kinds of cues are used: the visual sensations of color, shape, motion, or polarization of light, as well as other sense such as smell, sound, touch, kinesthesia, sense of gravity, and perhaps of electric or magnetic fields. Psychologists have also studied this ability in man, although rather sketchily or unlikely that there is any mystic “instinct” of way-finding. Rather there is a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment. This organization is fundamental to the efficiency and to the very survival of free-moving life. To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in Austin. We are supported by the presence of others and by special way-finding devices:
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maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap of disorientation once occur, and the sense of anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance and well-being. The very word “lost” in our language means much more than simple geographical uncertainty; it carries overtonesof utter disaster. In the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual . This image is the product both of immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action. The need to
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recognize and pattern our surroudings is so crucial , and has such long roots in the past, that this image has wide practical and emotional importance to the individual. Obviously a clear image, enables one to move about easily and quickly: to find a friend’s house or a policeman or a button store. But an ordered environment can do more than this; it may serve as a road frame of reference, an organizer of activity or beliefe or knowledge. On the basis of a structural understanding of Manhattan, for exmaple, one can order a substantial quantity of facts an gancies about the nature of the world we live in. Like any good framework,
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such a structure gives the individual a possibility of choice and a starting-point for the acquisition of further information. A clear image of the surroundings is thus a useful basisfor individual growth. A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable of producting a sharp image, plays a social role as well. It can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collevtive memories of group communication. A striking landscape is the skeleton upon which many primitive races erect their socially important myths. Common memories of the “home town” were often the first and easiest point of contact between lonely soldiers during the war.
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A good environmental image gives its possessor an important sense of emotional security. She can establish a harmonious relationship between herself and the outside world. This is the obverse of the fear that comes with disorientation; it means that the sweet sense of home is strongest when home is not only familiarbut distinctive as well. Indeed, a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also hewightens the potential depth and intensity of human expewrience. Although life is far from impossible in the visual chaos of Austin, the same daily action could take on new meaningw if carried out in a more
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vivid setting. Potentially, Austin is in itself the powerful symbol of a complex society. If visually well set forth; it can also have strong expressive meaning. It may be argued against the importance of physical legibility that the human brain is marvelously adaptable,
that with some experience one can learn to pick one’s way through the most disordered or featureless surroundings. There are abundant examples of precise navigation over the “trackless” wastes of sea, sand, or ice, or througha tangle maze of jungle. Yet even the sea has the sun and stars, the winds, currents, birds, and sea-colors without which unaided navigation would be impossible. The fact that only skilled professionals could navigate among the Polynesian Islands, and this only after extensive training indicates the difficulties imposed by this particular environment. Strain and anxiety accompanied even thebest-prepared expeditions.
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In our own world, we might say that almost everyone can, if attentive, learn to navigate in Jersey City, but only at the cost of some effort and uncertainty. Moreover, the positive values of legible surroundings are missing: the emotional satisfaction, the framework for communication or conceptual organization, the new depths that it may bring to everyday experience. These are pleasures we lack, even if our present city environment is not so disordered as to impose an intolerable strain on those whoare familiar with it. It must be granted that there is some value in mystification, labyrinth, or surprise in the environment. Many of us enjoy the House of Mirrors, and there is a certain charm in the crooked streets of Boston. This is so,
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however, only under two conditions. First, there must be no danger of losing basic form or orientation, of never coming out. The surprise must occur in an over-all framework; the confusions must be small regions in a visible whole. Furthermore, the labyrinth or mystery must in itself have some form that can be explored and in time be apprehended. Complete chaos without hint of connectionis never pleasurable. But these second thoughts point to an important qualification. The observer himself should play an active role in perceiving the world and have a creative part in developing his image. He should have the power to change that image to fit changing needs. An environment, which is ordered in precise and final detail, may inhibit new patterns of activity. A landscape whose every rock tells a story may
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make difficult the creation of fresh stories. Although this may not seem to be a critical issue in our present urban chaos, yet it indicates that what we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuousfurther development.
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Images are the result of a two-way process between the observer and his environment. The environment suggest distinctions and relations, and the observer with great adaptability and in the light of his own purposes selects, organizes, and endows with meaning what he sees. The image so developed now limits and emphasizes what is seen, while the image itself is being tested against the filtered perceptual input in a constant interacting process. Thus the image of a given reality may vary significantly between different observers. The coherence of the image may arise in several ways. There may be little in the real object that is ordered or remarkable, and yet its mental picture has gained identity and organization through long familiarity. One man may find objects easily on what seems to anyone else to be a totally disordered worktable. Alternatively, an object seen for the first time may be identified and related not because it is individually familiar but because it conforms
building the image environmental
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to a stereotype already constructed by the observer. An American can always spot the corner drugstore, however indistinguishable it might be to a Bushman. Again, a new object may seem to have strong structure or identity because of striking physical features, which suggest or impose their own pattern. Thus the sea or a great mountain can rivet the attention of one coming form the flat plains of the interior, even if he is so young or so parochial as to have no name for these great phenomena.
structure and identity
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As manipulators of the physical environment, city planners are primarily interested in the external agent in the interaction, which produces the environmental image. Different environments resist or facilitate the process of image making. Any given form, a fine vase or a lump of clay, will have a high or a low probability of evoking a strong image among various observers. Presumably this probability can be stated with greater and greater precision as the observers are grouped in more and more homogeneous classes of age, sex, culture, occupation, temperament, or familiarity. Each individual creates and bears his own image, but there seems to be substantial agreement among members of the same group. It is these group images, exhibiting consensus among significant numbers, that interest city planners who aspire to model an environment that will be used by many people.
The systems of orientation that have been used vary widely throughout the world, changing from culture to culture, and from landscape to landscape. The world may be organized around a set of focal points, or be broken into named regions, or be linked by remembered routes. Varied as these methods are, and inexhaustible as seem to e the potential clues, which a man may pick out to differentiate his world, they cast interesting sidelights on the means that we use today to locate ourselves in our own city world. For the most part these examples seem to echo, curiously enough, the formal types of image
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elements into which we can conveniently divide the city image: path, landmark, edge, node, and district. An environmental image may be analyzed into three components: identity, structure, and meaning. It is useful to abstract these for analysis if it is remembered that in reality they always appear together. A workable image requires first the identification of an object, which implies its distinction from other things, its recognition as a separable entity. This is called identity not in the sense of equality with something else, but with the meaning of individuality or oneness. Second, the image must include the spatial or pattern relation of the object to the observer and to other objects. Finally, this object must have some meaning for the observer, whether practical or emotional. Meaning is also a relation, but quite a different one from spatial or pattern relation.
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Thus an image useful for making an exit requires the recognition of a door as a distinct entity, of this spatial relation to the observer, and its meaning as a hole for getting out. These are not truly separable. The visual recognition of a door is matted together with its meaning as a door. It is possible, however, to analyze the door in terms of its identity of form and clarity of position, considered as if they were prior to its meaning. Such an analytic feat might be pointless in the study of a door, but not in the study of the urban environment. To begin with, the question of meaning in the city is a complicated one. Group images of meaning are less likely to be consistent at this level than are the perceptions of entity and relationship. Meaning, moreover, is not so easily influenced by physical manipulation, as arethese other two components.
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If it is our purpose to build cities for the enjoyment of vast numbers of people of widely diverse backgrounds and cities which will also be adaptable to future purposes we may even be wise to concentrate on the physical clarity of the image and to allow meaning to develop without our direct guidance. The image of the Manhattan skyline may stand for vitality, power, decadence, mystery, congestion, greatness, or what you will, but in each case that sharp picture crystallizes and reinforces the meaning. So various are the individual meanings of a city, even while its form may be easily communicable, that it appears possible to separate
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meaning from form, at least in the early stages of analysis. This study will therefore concentrate on the identity and structure of city images. If an image is to have value for orientation in the living space, it must have several qualities. It must be sufficient, true in a pragmatic sense, allowing the individual to operate within his environment to the extent desired. The map, whether exact or not, must be good enough to get one home. It must be sufficiently clear and well integrated to be economical of mental effort: the map must be readable. It should be safe, with a surplus of clues so that alternative actions are possible and the
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risk of failure is not too high. If a blinking light is the only sign for a critical turn, a power failure may cause disaster. The image should preferably be open-ended, adaptable to change, allowing the individual to continue to investigate and organize reality: there should be blank spaces where he can extend the drawing for himself. Finally, it should in some measure be communicable to other individuals. The relative importance of these criteria for a “good” image will vary with different persons in different situations; one will prize an economical and sufficient system, another an open-ended and communicable one.
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Since the emphasis here will be on the physical environment. As the independent variable, this study will look for physical qualities, which relate to the attributes of identity and structure in the mental image. This leads to the definition of what might be called imageability: that quality in a physical object, which gives it, a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. It is that shape, color, or arrangement, which facilitates the making of vividly, identified, powerfully structured, highly useful mental images of the environment. It might also be called legibility, or perhaps visibility in a heightened sense, where objects are not only able to be seen, but are presented sharply and intensely to the senses.
imageability
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Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute of an artistic object and called it apparency. While art is not limited to this single end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was to create images, which by clarity and harmony of form fulfill the need for
vividly comprehensible appearance. In his mind, this was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning. A highly imageable (apparent, legible, or visible) city in this peculiar sense would seem well formed, distinct, and remarkable; it would invite the eye and the ear to greater attention and participation. The sensuous grasp upon such surroundings would not merely be simplified, but also extended and deepened. Such a city would be one that would be apprehended over time as a pattern of high continuity with many distinctive parts clearly interconnected. The perceptive and familiar observer could absorb new sensuous
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impacts without disruption of his basic image, and each new impact would touch upon many previous elements. He would be well oriented, and he could move easily. He would be highly aware of his environment. The city of Venice might be an example of such a highly imageable environment. In the United States, one is tempted to cite parts of Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, or perhaps the lakefront of Chicago. These are characterizations that flow from our definitions. The concept of imageability does not necessarily connote something fixed, limited, precise, unified, or regularly ordered, although it may sometimes have these qualities. Nor does it mean apparent at a glance, obvious, patent, or plain. The total environment to be patterned is highly complex, while the obvious image is soon boring, and can point to only a few features of the living world.
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The imageability of city form will be the center of the study to follow there are other basic properties in a beautiful environment: meaning or expressiveness, sensuous delight, rhythm, stimulus, choice. Our concentration on imageability does not deny their importance. Our purpose is simply to consider the need for identity and structure in our perceptual world, and to illustrate the special relevance of this quality to the particular case of the complex, shifting urban environment. Since image development is a two-way process between observer and observed, it is possible to strengthen the image either by symbolic devices, by the retaining of the perceiver, or by reshaping
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one’s surroundings, You can provide the viewer with a symbolic diagram of how the world fits together: a map or a set of written instructions. As long as he can fit reality to the diagram, he has a clue to the relatedness of things. You can even install a machine for giving directions, as has recently been done in New York. While such devices are extremely useful for providing condensed data on interconnections, they are also precarious, since orientation fails if the device is lost, and the device itself must constantly be referred and fitted to reality. Moreover, the complete experience of interconnection the full depth of a vivid image, is lacking. You may also train the observer. Brown remarks that a maze through which subjects were asked to move blindfolded seemed to them at first to be one unbroken
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problem. On repetition, parts of the pattern, particularly the beginning and end, became familiar and assumed the character of localities. Finally, when they could tread the maze without error, the whole system seemed to have become one locality. DeSilva describes the case of a boy who seemed to have “automatic” directional orientation, but proved to have been trained from infancy (by a mother who could not distinguish right from left) to respond to “the east side of the port” or “the south end of the dresser.” Shipton’s account of the reconnaissance for the ascent of Everest offers a dramatic case of such learning. Approaching Everest from a new direction, Shipton immediately recognized the main peaks and saddles that he knew from the north side. But the Sherpa guide accompanying him, to whom both sides were long familiar,
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had never realized that these were the same features, and he greeted the revelation with surprise and delight. Kilpatrick describes the process of perceptual learning forced on an observer by new stimuli that no longer fit into previous images. It begins with hypothetical forms that explain the new stimuli conceptually, while the illusion of the old forms persists. The personal experience of most of us will testify to this persistence of an illusory image long after its inadequacy is conceptually realized. We stare into the jungle and see only the sunlight on the green leaves but a warning noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. The observer then learns to interpret the scene by singling out “give-away” clues and by reweighting previous signals. The
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camouflaged animal may now be picked up by the reflection of these eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire pattern of perception is changed and the observer need no longer consciously search for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. He has achieved an image, which will operate successfully in the new situation, seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appears among the leaves, plain as day. In the same way, we must learn to see the hidden forms in the vast sprawl of our cities. We are not accustomed to organizing and imaging an artificial environment on such a large scale; yet our activities are pushing us toward that end. Curt Sachs gives an example of a failure to make
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connections beyond a certain level. The voice and drumbeat of the North American Indian follow entirely different tempos, the two being perceived independently. Searching for a musical analogy of our own, he mentions our church services, where we do not think of coordinating the choir inside with the bells above. In our vast metropolitan areas we do not connect the choir and the bells; like the Sherpa, we see only the sides of Everest and not he mountain. To extend and deepen our perception of the environment would be to continue a long biological and cultural development, which has gone from the contact sense to the distant sense and from the distant senses to symbolic communications. Our thesis is that we are now able to develop our image of the environment by operation and on the external physical shape as well as by an
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internal learning process. Indeed, the complexity of our environment now compels us to do so. Primitive man was forced to improve his environmental image by adapting his perception to the given landscape. He could effect minor changes in his environment with cairns, beacons, or tree blazes, but substantial modifications for visual clarity or visual interconnection were confined to house sites or religious enclosures. Only powerful civilizations can begin to act on their total environment at a significant scale. The conscious remolding of the large-scale physical environment has been possible only recently and so the problem of environmental imageability is a new one.
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Technically, we can now make completely new landscapes in a brief time, as in the Dutch polders. Here the designers are already at grips wit the question of how to form the total scene so that it is easy for the human observer to identify its parts and to structure the whole. We are rapidly building a new functional unit, the metropolitan region, but we have yet to grasp that this unit, too, should have its corresponding image, Suzanne Langer sets the problem in her capsule definition of architecture: “it is the total environment made visible.” It is clear that the form of a city or of a metropolis will not exhibit some gigantic, stratified other. It will be a complicated pattern, continuous and whole, yet intricate and mobile. It must be plastic to the perceptual habits of citizens, open-ended to change of function and meaning, receptive to the formation of new imagery. It must invite itsviewers to explore the world.
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True enough, we need an environment, which is not simply well organized, but poetic ad symbolic as well. It should speak of the individuals and their complex society, of their aspirations and their historical tradition, of the natural setting, and of the complicated functions and movements of the city world. But clarity of structure and vividness of identity are first steps to the development of strong symbols. By appearing as a remarkable and well-knit place, the city could provide a ground for the clustering and organization of these meanings and associations. Such a sense of place in itself enhances every human activity that occurs there, and encourages the deposit of a memory trace. By the intensity of its life and the close packing of its disparate people, the great city is a romantic place, rich in symbolic detail. It is for us both splendid and terrifying, “the landscape of our confusions,” as Flanagan calls it. Were it legible, truly visible, then fear and confusion might be replaced with delight in the richness andpower of the scene.
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In the development of the image, education in seeing will be quite as important as the reshaping of what is seen. Indeed, they together form a circular, or hopefully a spiral, process: visual education impelling the citizen to act upon his visual world, and this action causing him to see even more acutely. A highly developed art of urban design is linked to the creation of a critical and attentive audience. If art and audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millionsof their inhabitants.
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a brief history of austinbiruta celmins kearl
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Austin hasn’t always been the bustling city that it is today. This gentle bend in the Colorado River had many residents and visitors long before the firstcornerstone was laid. For hundreds of years, nomadic tribes of Tonkawas, Comanches, and Lipan Apaches camped and hunted along the creeks, including what is now known as Barton Springs. In the late 1700s, the Spanish set up temporary missions in the area. In the 1830s the first permanent Anglo settlersand called their village Waterloo. In 1839, tiny Waterloo was chosen to be the capital of the new Republic of Texas. A new city was built quickly in the wilderness, and was named after Stephen F. Austin, “the father of Texas.” Judge Edwin Waller, who was later to
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become the city’s first mayor, surveyed the site and laid out a street plan that has survived largely intact to this day. In October 1839, the entire government of the Republic arrived from Houston in oxcarts. By the next January, the town’s population had swollento 856 people.
The new town plan included a hilltop site for a capitol building looking down toward the Colorado River from the head of a broad Congress Avenue. “The Avenue” and Pecan Street (now 6th Street) have remained Austin’s principal business streets for the 150 years since. After Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, it took two statewide elections to keep Austin the capital city.
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By the 1880s, Austin was becoming a city. In 1888, a grand capitol building, advertised as the “7th largest building in the world,” was completed on the site originally chosen in the 1839 plan. Funded by very creative financing involving the famous XIT Ranch, the building remains a central landmark on the Austin skyline. It has also, of course, remained the center of one of the city’s most prominent industries—government. In September of 1881, the Austin City Public Schools admitted their first classes. In that same year, the Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute, predecessor of Huston-Tillotson College,opened its doors.
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Efforts to place the new University of Texas in Austin faced some opposition, however. Parents were warned that sending their sons to school so close to lawmakers would be a terrible influence on their morals. In 1893, the construction of the Great Granite Dam on the Colorado River was another milestone in the city’s growth. The dam stabilized the river and provided hydraulic power to generate electricity, which in turn attracted manufacturers. By 1938, the dam had been replaced by a series of seven U.S. government-funded dams. One official who helped shape these public works was the young congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson, who got his start in government work in Austin. As Austin emerged from the Depression, the seeds of the city’s future as a center of high technology were
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being carefully planted. By the 1950s, several research laboratories and think tanks had been founded, and began to draw innovative thinkers and high-tech companies to the area—a trend that has continued to this day. As Austin’s economy prospered, the area attracted even more modern amenities. Several movie theaters arrived, along with more public swimming pools, a branch library system, and a professional baseball team. Rapid growth in the 1970s contributed to more political activity, this time at the local level. Strong neighborhood, environmental, and historic preservation communities sprang up, and remain an integral part of Austin’s civic life today. In particular, concern about the purity of water flowing from Barton Springs has led to this landmark
becoming an icon for many of the “Austin frame of mind.” Diverse cultural groups have been attracted to Austin throughout its history, including immigrants from Europe, Africa, Mexico, and, most recently, Asia. All of these groups have enriched Austin’s civic and cultural life, including its recent development as a mecca for music fans. Austin’s musical rebirth began in the 1970s, when artists such as David Rodriguez and Willie Nelson drew national attention—and more musicians—to the city. Now, on any given night, scores of artists can be heard playing countless musical styles in the city’s nightclubsand concert halls. Today, Austin is known as much for its cultural life and high-tech innovations as it is for the senators and
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schoolteachers who shaped its beginnings. The same success that has gained the city a national reputation has brought with it many difficult choices, as the city expands on a scale that might shock the early residents of Waterloo. As a new century begins, and as Austin completes its transformation from town to city to metro area, the city and its people face decisions on how the city will preserve its past, and how we will allow that past to shape our future.
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maps of austin
MAP OF AIRPORT
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Aircraft Rescue & Fire Fighting Station (ARFF)
9,000 foot RunwayTexas ArmyNational Guard
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12,250 foot Runway
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downtown austinmap of
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austin neighborhoodsmap of
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the university of texas at austin campusmap of
the top big demographic trends in austin
ryan robinson
1010
90
Austin is evolving as a city and as an urban area. Its point along a trajectory of growth and demographic change can be located and described by outlining several large-scale phenomena of urbanization. This list of The Top Ten Big Demographic Trends will attempt to answer these questions: Where have we just come from, where are we now, and where are we going as a city? Demographically speaking that is. The theme of ethnic change and diversification is a common one throughout the Top Ten, and yet each point addressing the issue highlights a particular aspect of ethnic change significant in its own right. In one way or another, the trends discussed below are inherently intertwined with one another—each force exerting its own push or pull on the collective, synergistic direction of the city’sdemographic path.
91
No Majority The City of Austin has now crossed the threshold of becoming a Majority-Minority city. Put another way, no ethnic or demographic group exists as a majority of the city’s population. The city’s Anglo share of total population has dropped below 50% (which probably occurred sometime during 2005) and will stay there for the foreseeable future. It’s not that there hasn’t been absolute growth in the total number of Anglo households
92
1
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 20200%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
ethnicity shares history and forecast
angloblack
hispanicasian
in Austin but rather it’s because the growth of other ethnic groups has outpaced the growth of Anglo households. For example, the growth rate of Latino and Asian households far exceeds the growth of Anglo households in Austin.
Lake Travis
married with childrenconcentrations of marriedwith children households
austin, texas census 2000 data census blocks
Share of Total Households
No Population 10% to 20% 30% to 40%
Less than 10% 20% to 30% 30% to 40%
Decreasing families-with-children share in the urban core. The share of all households within the city’s urban core made-up of families-with-children is slowly declining. In 1970, the urban core’s families-with-children share was just above 32%, Census 2000 puts the figure at not quite 14%. Moreover, with only a few neighborhood exceptions, the urban core is also becoming almost devoid of married-with-children households. Citywide, the trends have been similar in that the overall number of families-with-children has increased while the share of total households from families-with-children has decreased. This relative loss of families-with-children households has significant implications for the city’s several school districts, but AISD will feel the greatest brunt of the effect. 95
2
Here’s the rub: the absolute number of children in the city is going up, while their share of total population is declining. This paradox is further exacerbated by the fact that in absolute terms the demand for services will
increase as the share of families that remain within the city will become, in relative terms at least, increasingly poor because of who’s left and who’s moving in. School systems and health care providers will have a hard time managing the increasing absolute need in light of this loss in share.
1970 1980 1990 2000 201040,000
45,000
50,000
55,000
60,000
65,000
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austin families with children householdsnumber over time
96
Although there will continue to be pockets and neighborhoods with high concentrations of affluent families in Austin, it has been middle class families that are becoming increasingly less common within the urban core. Without a sizable share of middle class families to stabilize the urban core, working class families suffer because the rung above them on the socio-economic ladder has been removed, making it more difficult for them to achieve upward social mobility.
97
place of birth of austin s asian foreign-born
‘
chinese12.2%
indian18.2%
filipino4.5% korean
11.2%
vietnamese18.1%
taiwanese7.9%
African American share on the wane. The city’s African American share of total population will more than likely continue its shallow slide even as the absolute number of African Americans in the city continues to increase. The import of this decrease in share should not be underestimated as just a few decades ago African Americans made-up around 15% of the city’s population and just a few decades from now African Americans could represent a mere 5% of the city’s population and constitute the smallest minority group in the city.
98
3
Hispanic share of total population…will it ever surpass the Anglo share? Maybe not, but they’ll be close to each other in a short 25 years. You just can’t say enough about how strong Hispanic growth has been. The city’s Hispanic share in 1990 was under 23%, the Census 2000 figure was almost 31%, and this share of total is probably around 35% today. Importantly, the city’s stream of incoming Hispanic households is socio-economically diverse. Middle-class Hispanic households have migrated to Austin from other parts of the state and the country for high-tech and trade sector jobs while international immigrant Hispanic and Latino households have come here for construction and service sector jobs. Among other effects on the total population, the huge influx of Hispanic families into Austin,
99
4
with higher-than-average household sizes and more children per household, has acted to dampen the increase in the city’s median age, keeping Austin one of the youngest cities in the country. Moreover, were it not for Hispanic families moving into the urban core, the city’s falling families-with-children share would have had a much steeper descent.
100
Asian share skyrocketing. The Asian share of total population in Austin almost doubled during the nineties, leaping from 3.3% in 1990 to almost 5% by 2000 and stands somewhere near the 6.5% mark today. Like their Hispanic counterparts, the incoming Asians to Austin during the past 15 years are a much more diverse sub-population than what existed in Austin in the past. For example, thirty years ago, if you were Asian and in Austin, chances are you were Chinese and somehow associated with the University of Texas.
101
5
Today, Austin hosts an Asian population that spans the socioeconomic spectrum and is sourced by several countries of origin, with India, Vietnam and China being thelargest contributors.
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vietnamese householdsSurnames: Nguyen, Tran and Pham
as of October 2006
Austin has become a destination, for example, for Vietnamese households flowing out of metropolitan Houston. This highly entrepreneurial population has opened new businesses, purchased restaurants, made loans available to its network and acquired real estate. Emerging clusters of Vietnamese households are evident in several northeast Austin neighborhoods. Amazingly, by the middle of the next decade, the number of Asians in Austin will more than likely exceed the number of African Americans. While the general population of Austin doubles every 20 to 25 years, the number of Asians in Austin is doubling every ten years.
103
place of birth of austin s asian foreign-born
‘
chinese12.2%
indian18.2%
filipino4.5% korean
11.2%
vietnamese18.1%
taiwanese7.9%
Geography of African Americans, dispersion and flight to the suburbs. The critical mass and historical heavy concentration of African American households in east Austin began eroding during the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s, had really begun to break apart. Over the past 25 years, middle-class African American households have left east Austin for the suburbs and other parts of Austin, please see map. The level of residential segregation for African Americans has dropped significantly as their level of spatial concentration has diminished. Many community leaders talk today of how many of these families are still returning to churches in east Austin on Sunday morning. However, many of these same community leaders fear that the newly-suburban African
104
6
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changing african-americanlandscape in east austin
african-american population concentrations1990 and 2000
Percent African-American
No Population 20% to 40% 60% to 80%
0% to 20% 40% to 60% 80% Plus
American population will eventual build suburban churches closer to home, leaving the original houses of worship somewhat stranded. The potential impact of the loss of these churches and their community outreach and community care programs on the African American households left in east Austin could be devastating.
african-americanpopulation distribution
absolute number of african-american individuals, 2000
Number of African-American
No Population 20 to 30 60% to 80%
0 to 20 30 to 50 80% Plus
Geography of Hispanics, intensifying urban barrios along with movement into rural areas. Maps of Hispanic household concentrations from Census 2000 reveal the emergence of three overwhelmingly Hispanic population centers in Austin: lower east Austin (which also serves as the political bedrock of Austin’s Hispanic community), greater Dove Springs, and the St. Johns area. Dove Springs shifted from being about 45% Hispanic in 1990 to almost 80% by 2000. St. Johns went from being 35% to 70%--this radical transition is clearly evident on the streets of St. Johns, a neighborhood that once hosted one of Austin’s oldest African American communities. The import of this trend is this: at the same time that ethnic minority populations are moving into the middle-class and are more capable than ever to live anywhere they choose, there are parts of the city where ethnic concentration is greatly increasing. However, it is lower-income minority households that are most likely to participate in the clustering phenomenon.
107
7
Lake Travis
DeckerLake
hispanic - latinopopulation concentrations
city of austin, census 2000 data
Percent Hispanic - Latino
20% to 40% 60% to 80%
Less than 20% 40% to 60% 80% Plus
An increasingly sharp edge of affluence. Maps of Median Family Income from Census 2000 show an increasingly hard edge between affluent central Texas and less-than-affluent parts of the urban region. While some forms of residential segregation have decreased markedly over the past few decades in Austin, the degree of socio-economic spatial separation has steeply increased. The center of wealth in Austin has slowly migrated into the hills west of the city. This trend of wealth-creep out of the City creates an even greater burden for citizens funding services and facilities that are used and enjoyed by individuals from across the region.
109
8
Austin is becoming a more divided city, divided not just in terms of income but also in terms of cultural attributes, linguistic characteristics and political persuasions. For example, precinct-level results from the 2004 Presidential election reveal a deep cleavage within the Austin urban area in terms of the residential location of Republicans and Democrats and the dividing line between Red and Blue Austin that roughly follows MoPac from south to north, illuminating the strong east to west political spatial dichotomy.
110
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$25,000 to $49,999
$75,000 to $99,999Less than $24,999
$50,000 to $74,999$125,000 Plus
No Family Income
$10,000 to $124,999
Regional indigent health care burden. During the foreseeable future, the regional indigent health care burden will continue to grow and the city’s disproportionate shouldering of the cost willincrease as well. The creation of the Travis County Hospital District in 2004 was a giant step toward leveling the uneven burden of indigent health care across the Austin region, and yet, there was an obvious spatial pattern of who supported the creation of the district and who did not, as illustrated by the precinct-level results of that vote.
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Intensifying urban sprawl. The Austin region will continue to experience intense urban sprawl. Although there is an enormous amount of residential development currently underway within the urban core and in downtown Austin, the thousands of new units being created there will be only a drop in the regional bucket of total residential units created. There simply are very few land availability constraints in the territory surrounding Austin. And yet this is not to say that the positive effects of new urbanism and Smart Growth policies won’t be felt inside the city, it is rather to say that even with the success of the many enlightened urbanizing efforts currently afoot in Austin, urban sprawl and its footprint will have an enduring presence in central Texas.
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1010
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Kyle
Buda
Wimberley
Dripping Springs
West Lake Hills
Georgetown
austin s urbanized area over time1970 through 2004
Urbanized from 1980 to 1990Urbanized from 2000 to 2004
Urbanized from 1970 to 1980Urbanized from 1990 to 2000
Urbanized before 1970
’
Austin is a magical place, an attractive place, attractive not only in terms of natural beauty but also in terms of its gravitational pull for people. Austin draws its special character from its physical setting along the Balcones Escarpment, a city wedged between coastal plain and dramatic cliffs, canyons and juniper carpeted rolling hills; it sits on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert existing as a physical and cultural oasis where talented, entrepenurial, hard working people are drawn from all over the world. Austin’s quality of life has become its biggest economic development engine, and the city’s diverse demographic structure serves to support andenrich its quality of life.
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bibliography
Kearl, Biruta C. “Brief History of Austin.” City of Austin - Austin City Connection: Home Page. Web. 06 Nov. 2011.
"Austin, Texas Maps - Perry-Castañeda Map Collection - UT Library Online." University of Texas Libraries. Web. 06 Nov. 2011.
"About Austin: History / Heritage." Austin, TX | Austin Hotels, Events, Attractions, Things To Do & More | AustinTexas. org. Web. 06 Nov. 2011.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge [Mass.: Technology, 1960. Print.
All photos were taken by Marie Dort, unless otherwise
noted: photo on p.4 from flickr user EgOiStE, p.25 from flickr user
TIMPATTERSON, p.52 from flickr user STUSEEGER, p.68 from flickr user
JDLASICA, p.88 from flickr user MLHRADIO, p.111 from flickr user WBLJ,
p.117 from flickr user MRFLIP and p.118 from flickr user MHARVEY.NYC.
Robinson, Ryan. "City of Austin Demographics." City of Austin - Austin City Connection: Home Page. Web. 07 Nov. 2011.