> Everything the author likes used to be even nicer before.
Such a universal sentiment, everywhere. I've never heard anyone who lived anywhere for more than a few years say "it's become so much better". I would suspect age effects rather than actually reality. Or maybe everything just does get worse over time, in which case the same thing is happening in Austin as is happening everywhere else.
Perhaps incorrectly, I’ve compared Cincinnati’s recent uptick in population and general reputation to Austin’s, and I’m hoping it’s handled much better.
I’ve lived in the area all my life, and it’s essentially birthright for folks born around here to think Cincinnati is just okay at best and you only stick around because you couldn’t make it elsewhere.
In my early 30s now, I love Cincinnati, with no plans on leaving, and no desire to live anywhere else in the US (at least not without a significant change in CoL or income).
That said, so many folks seem to be thinking similarly and are moving here, and I really hope all the things I love about this place either stay the same or continue to get better. I don’t know how similar we are now to Austin in 2007/8, but hopefully we’re set up better to absorb the influx without changing much about (the good parts of) our identity.
I don't really agree with that. I have family in both Nashville and Raleigh. By both their estimations and mine, both cities have gotten quite a bit better over the last ~20 years.
Downtown Raleigh has definitely changed for the better even if, like a lot of similar cities, the gentrified core with its craft cocktails and trendy restaurants is fairly small.
I'd also say NYC--for all the complaints about Disneyfication. As a visitor, I'd much rather have today's 42nd Street, Lower East Side, Chelsea, etc. than I would the 1980s version. People have certainly been priced out but, then, it's not like Manhattan was cheap even in the 80s.
My biggest reason is the ratio of quality of service and product (such as food) to price went way down. I imagine more and more resources are going towards rent and taxes than to the quality of what people are buying.
Next reason would probably be general cleanliness and drastic increase in homeless.
That's true, but when people complain about their cities getting worse because of transplants, they're usually talking about something different: the newcomers "killed the vibe." This is based on a 1960s-era presupposition that people move due to lifestyle considerations (as opposed to out of economic need, as has been the case since then) and that the newcomers are coming for the "wrong" reasons (people found out that California doesn't get snow!!)
They might be related, though. The ruling class has deliberately destroyed local communities and forced people to become an on-demand proletariat that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are". If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. It's not necessarily pathological that Americans move so much; what is pathological is that they have to do so, just to survive.
>If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else.
That is complete BS. Certainly it is among the tech people I know. Furthermore, even those tech offices that are in the orbit of certain cities often aren't in those cities and are located in, not cheap, but pretty reasonably priced areas outside.
Agree with your sentiment. To add to it: I was just in Longmont, a town 45 minutes north of Denver, where Seagate, Western Digital, and San Disk all had major presence. Definitely not a big city.
Tech has enabled us to live anywhere and do our jobs.
I think there's this thread of people who live (and want to live) in very high CoL cities feeling the need to justify it to themselves and others on the grounds that they have no choice if they want to have a successful career.
Part of the problem is that you only get one real crack at the career game. As you get older, your options diminish and the negative social inferences that come with age (even though they have no basis) tend to mount, so you don't have a lot of chances.
Bosses definitely pick their successors based on the "one of us" metric, much more than actual merit or job performance, and this usually means one has to live in the same expensive neighborhoods and send one's kids to the same expensive schools as theirs. Is it possible to succeed, without playing that game? Yes, of course. However, it's unlikely, and so I wouldn't bet my life on it.
> that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are".
This is often stated on HN and Reddit, but simply not true. At no time in US history has there been less internal migration. It's actually one of the major problems we have with inequality - people are demonstratively not moving to where the economic opportunity is compared to generations past.
I'll have to dig up some stats, but it's been a consistent pattern in my reading on the subject over the past 20 years.
I'm not talking about 2019 to 2020/21 pandemic migration that your article covers. Those years will obviously be an outlier. I'm talking about long-term demographic trends over the past 100+ years.
Why do you think your opinion (and yes, “worse” is objectively an opinion) is reality and everything else is not? Maybe you get flagged/banned for making sweeping statements and shutting out discussion by denying the existence of any other viewpoint.
It has objectively gotten worse. Wages compared to cost of living have stagnated or declined, average height has declined, average age until marriage has increased to nearly 28 (which is usually what happens before things disintegrate) average IQ has declined, suicide and "deaths of disrepair" are way up, homelessness is way up. I can go on all day, things are bad and getting worse and have been since the late 60s/early 70s.
EDIT: And here come the down votes when I bring in facts the progressives don't like.
>I think we are seeing a global trend of mankind rediscovering urban life.
In the US at least, pre-pandemic the trend was primarily an uptick in the number of young college-educated professionals specifically wanting to live in (certain) cities. By comparison, when I finished grad school in the mid-80s, and took a job at a computer company in suburban Boston like quite a few classmates, pretty much no one elected to live in the city.
Such a universal sentiment, everywhere. I've never heard anyone who lived anywhere for more than a few years say "it's become so much better". I would suspect age effects rather than actually reality. Or maybe everything just does get worse over time, in which case the same thing is happening in Austin as is happening everywhere else.