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They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

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Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#321

Post by AnthonyMouse »

luckylion wrote: post #273
spaced-out wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's pushing people out is the rising cost of property, caused by more and more money bidding for less space. If the government had done more to create more space, prices would not have risen so dramatically. What if government policy for the last few decades had been to keep housing as affordable as possible. So if average rent in a city started increasing, the government would make sure new apartments and got bui…

We'd end up with megacities who'd continuously expand and grow denser, swallowing their surroundings in that case, wouldn't we?

Those two things are the opposite of one another. If a city grows denser, the size of its footprint is smaller.

Suppose you create a lot of high density housing in the city. Housing costs decline. People who used to have to live with their parents get their own place. People have shorter commutes.

The population of the city hasn't changed. Maybe if you're the only city doing this then it's a competitive advantage and people move there from other cities to take advantage of the lower cost of living. But if all cities do this then there is no relative advantage and all that happens is that housing is more affordable and people waste less time sitting in traffic.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#322

Post by majormajor »

luckylion wrote: post #273
spaced-out wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's pushing people out is the rising cost of property, caused by more and more money bidding for less space. If the government had done more to create more space, prices would not have risen so dramatically. What if government policy for the last few decades had been to keep housing as affordable as possible. So if average rent in a city started increasing, the government would make sure new apartments and got bui…

We'd end up with megacities who'd continuously expand and grow denser, swallowing their surroundings in that case, wouldn't we?

> We'd end up with megacities who'd continuously expand and grow denser, swallowing their surroundings in that case, wouldn't we?

I imagine you'd still have the same pattern, just perhaps in more consistent circle shapes. Yesterday's "outskirts" would turn into tomorrow's "upcoming new area" and the people who lived there initially because it was all they could afford would get pushed further out, etc. The three story buildings will slowly get replaced with ten story buildings with wealthier residents, etc.

Constant growth doesn't mean more that in-demand areas won't stay expensive as demand constantly grows too, or that once less-demanded areas will stay less-demanded.

It's not our densest cities that our our cheapest cities. The demand is the underlying factor, not the density. (The density follows the (lack of!) demand for the cheap places.)

I'm not sure how you'd lower cost of living without negative population growth. Try to reduce the footprint of the city but keep the population the same, and you still have just as much money competing for places, so the supply/demand dynamics will keep prices high for the places people want.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#323

Post by LudwigNagasena »

It is not bad to move from one city to another. And every citizen have such basic right. Traditions are also not something good by itself. The title tries to incite a negative emotional response, but if you think about it, there is nothing wrong per se with moving from one city to another and wanting to end a certain practice you don’t like. Of course it may or may not be reasonable, but the title presents as if this information is enough to blame someone.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#324

Post by selimthegrim »

chrisco255 wrote: post #67
adjkant wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good callout, but it's important not to fudge the numbers here. Using this source[0], it seems like the population doubled, not tripled, from 911K to 1.84M. If we use that 10% to 7.5% drop, the city's black residents went from 91K to 138k. Hardly tripled, in fact only a 50% increase compared to over 100% population size increase. So the comparative growth was half as fast. I'd still say thats notable to the article's…

Difficult thing is sometimes you look up a source for a city's population and they will show you the exact population of the city limits and sometimes they will show you the population of the metropolitan area. The article rounded up the actual census data from 9.5% to 10% for the 2000 numbers, but left the 2017 number at 7.5% (fudging with precision). At any rate, if someone moves from East Austin to Del Valle or Ma…

Manor, in fact, is I think where many of the Black (and perhaps Latino) residents have gone.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#325

Post by xapata »

dionidium wrote: post #306
treis wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The asshole blaring music and doing burnouts is very unlikely to respond positively to a suggestion they stop doing that. If they were reasonable people and considerate of others they wouldn't be doing that in the first place. I suspect that if you polled the long term residents of the area they would have similar negative perceptions of the car club. It's just that they don't have the power to effect change or don't…

> If they were reasonable people and considerate of others they wouldn't be doing that in the first place. Respectfully, you're probably giving yourself too much credit here (and your neighbors not enough). It's almost certainly the case that you (and me and everybody else reading this) has done something that annoyed a neighbor. You either just didn't realize it or you were tired or stressed and slipped up. But the…

Again, it's not a question of what the most likely reaction is, but how grave the worst reaction would be.

You hold at least one insurance policy? If so, you understand the rationale in at least one domain.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#326

Post by CDSlice »

sneak wrote: post #297
wl wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of a confrontation escalating makes dealing with such things myself a very unattractive option, especially if it's a stranger. I've had a simple, polite request to turn down the thumping music at 1 AM end with me blocking punches, retreating to my unit, and calling the cops. Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally.

If you wouldn't come back with a gun yourself to resolve the issue, it's a dick move to call someone else (a cop) to come over with a gun. If you're making phone calls for armed response because someone is playing music, the problem might be with you.

I'm pretty sure they called the cops on their neighbor because they were getting assaulted ("having to block punches"), not because of the music.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#327

Post by jeegsy »

sjg007 wrote: post #188
vorpalhex wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the people who own houses? For all their faults, those houses were affordable and many residents owned them. Now they've been forced out by increased property taxes. Those luxury buildings are going exclusively into poor neighborhoods because they have the cheapest land and least restrictions.

Texans could, you know, opt for income taxes in lieu of property taxes.

No Thanks!

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#328

Post by theli0nheart »

chmod600 wrote: post #287
howinator wrote: post #238

I live in this neighborhood, about three blocks north of where the car club meets. I’m white. I’m a homeowner. You get the picture. Honestly, these people complaining in Weaver sound insane. They moved into a community and it’s their job to integrate with the community. We have a Brit who lives on my street that does community organizing and he’s been wonderful about building a sense of community that integrates the…

"They moved into a community and it’s their job to integrate with the community." Is that a broadly-accepted opinion? Does it apply consistently to all cultures -- e.g. does it apply when nonwhites move into a white area? And, does it reflect reality? Do new populations really preserve the prexisting culture in practice?

>> "They moved into a community and it’s their job to integrate with the community."

> Is that a broadly-accepted opinion? Does it apply consistently to all cultures -- e.g. does it apply when nonwhites move into a white area?

If you move to a place and don't respect the local traditions or culture, you're making life harder both on yourself and to the existing community. I see no reason why it wouldn't apply every direction.

> And, does it reflect reality? Do new populations really preserve the prexisting culture in practice?

It largely depends on the societal and cultural homogeneity of the newcomers. If newcomers are largely from the same place or share the same culture, then I'd expect it would be more likely that they'd shift things in their direction.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#329

Post by selimthegrim »

geoduck14 wrote: post #13
ryandrake wrote: post #3

Real estate law has this concept of “Coming to the nuisance” where if you know that there is some kind of “nuisance” nearby and you move next to it anyway, you can’t complain about it later. I’m not a lawyer so I’m probably pedantically wrong about it in some way but that’s my understanding of it. People do this with small local airports all the time. They move in, knowing full well (or should know full well) that th…

There is an asphalt factory 10 miles from where I live, on the access road to a major highway, and in the middle of lots of urban development. The factory has been around since the mid 80s. There is a nearby new housing development with residents complaining about the air pollution (apparently it is really smelly) - and their response is "yeah, we've been here since before you were born, so whatev". It cracked me up.…

I wonder if any of these residents complain about the GP in Austin.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#330

Post by failwhaleshark »

patcon wrote: post #289
wl wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of a confrontation escalating makes dealing with such things myself a very unattractive option, especially if it's a stranger. I've had a simple, polite request to turn down the thumping music at 1 AM end with me blocking punches, retreating to my unit, and calling the cops. Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally.

> Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally. I empathize, esp if you're of the generation (like me) where we've grown accustom to distance in time and space via async messaging. Having said that, I would respectfully push back: negotiating everyday conflicts of life with others (who are most often strangers) is NOT something we should allow to be overly professionalized. Yes, it's true that some…

I agree. I think it's good to ask a neighbor if they seem the type to be amenable to it, otherwise better ask them if they've seen a cat wandering around.

I had a neighbor who was an out-of-work hot-head who shouted at everyone and had his own posse of low-lifes. The guy BBQed right next to the wooden fence (in violation of fire codes) using absurd amounts of lighter fluid and charcoal that seeped into my unit directly above. I tried asking them to move it but they just ignored me. I tried a second time and then him and his posse surrounded me, mean mugged me, and tried to start a fight. I asked the property management to do something, they tried, and they took out their bad experiences on me passive-aggressively. I finally got out of there because it was a horrible situation.

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