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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

#341

Post by lotsofpulp »

spaced-out wrote: post #237
lotsofpulp wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The system we have created around real estate and home ownership is optimized to erode culture and atomize community. We like to pretend that this is somehow inevitable, the will of the market, but we need to own it - this is the world we have built for ourselves. How is it not the will of the market? I don’t see any option other than to limit people’s freedom to move about the city/state/country.

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…

> 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 built and/or expanded roads and public transit to help people live farther away without a longer commute.

This would help and is necessary to solve the problem, but I don’t believe insufficient desirable cities or dense cities with public transit is the whole problem. Part of the problem is the ever widening income/wealth gaps, and people will sort themselves and want to surround themselves with as many people in theirs or the next higher up socioeconomic class as possible. So the bigger the divides, the more this is reflected in the neighborhoods, especially culturally.

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

#342

Post by bluedays »

> One particularly vocal tenant, a non-Hispanic white woman with short blond hair who appeared to be in her fifties, claimed that smoke from the tires was killing nearby trees and that traffic from the gathering would make it impossible for an ambulance to reach her in the event of a medical emergency (though two other roads to the apartment building remain accessible at all times).

Karen? Is that you??

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

#344

Post by xyzzy21 »

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?

I 100% agree - you are a guest on probation when you move into a new area dominated by people different from you.

In the international arena, when visitors wade in and start telling locals "What they are doing wrong and try to boss people around", that has name: UGLY AMERICAN! This is no different in this case.

Most of American history has had new folks ASSIMILATE and INTEGRATE. That happened with my immigrant family - my grandfather was routinely beaten if he spoke our home-country language. I have ZERO problem with that - it was necessary to assimilate to become American FIRST.

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

#345

Post by bobthechef »

harles wrote: post #309
chmod600 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Requiring cultural integration is a slippery slope.

Isn't that what the new tenants are trying to do? Integrate the natives into _their_ culture?

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

#346

Post by xyzzy21 »

harles wrote: post #309
chmod600 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Requiring cultural integration is a slippery slope.

No. It REALLY ISN'T!!!

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

#347

Post by lotsofpulp »

mindslight wrote: post #288
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #86

There are ways that people talk about gentrification that always makes me slightly uncomfortable. As a non-white person, something always feels like gentrification is something that “good” white people like to blame “bad” white people for doing, when the real problem tends to be wider and more systemic. In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from…

> In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from Austin. If you’re born in Chicago, shouldn’t you still have the same rights as someone who was born in Austin? Not necessarily. It's not about where you're born, but about whether you've been somewhere long enough to be part of its community. You have the same natural rights, obviously. But not the sam…

> Going with the principle of live and let live, when you visit or move to some place with a different culture, it's on you to fit in.

Live and let live works for small things where there is no material effect on others, such as your spouse’s ethnicity or gender. For matters affecting others, such as noise, pollution, etc. live and let live is not applicable.

For all of those matters, the ultimate force is might makes right, but some places have democracy that allows votes to serve as proxy for might, or frequently money serves as proxy for might.

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

#348

Post by [deleted] »

caseysoftware wrote: post #335
chmod600 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

> 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 an area and expect everyone to adopt your norms, that's close to colonization or conquering. Alternatively, how do you react to the new person on your team who insists you're doing everything wrong and should change to match their view of the world. "When in Rome…

[deleted]

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

#349

Post by hindsightbias »

alexashka wrote: post #277
adjkant wrote: post #36

At the general level, I doubt anyone is surprised to see this story, and there will likely be more to come as tech flocks to Austin (though it was already a notable tech hub with some of these pressures already before the billionaires decided to give it the seal of approval). To me, the more interesting question here is how does Austin avoid what happened to SF, where tech hollowed out nearly all of its existing cult…

> To me, the more interesting question here is how does Austin avoid what happened to SF It doesn't. There is a limited number of cities with weather conditions humans prefer. Some people think others care about culture - no, they mostly don't. They care about weather conditions, safety and job opportunities. Culture is a nice to have feature. Unless governments get busy building new cities/towns, every existing city…

This. I do look back at Austin in the 80's and 90's wistfully. Was fully cognizant how lucky I was but realized where it was heading and had to let that pretty girl go.

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

#350

Post by quantified »

reducesuffering wrote: post #220
quantified wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have there been any natural experiments where less-wealthy white folk were priced out by more-wealthy non-white? I think the driver of gentrification is economic class not race/ethnicity. Wealthier and whiter show up together but may not be the same thing.

Basically most of the Bay Area

Go on? There are areas where more-wealthy South Asians are prominent, I don’t know if they took over from whites or Latinos though (Cupertino, etc.). White and Asian techies and financiers have displaced white and Latino non-techies, overall. I’m sure there are towns and neighborhoods I’m missing the picture on.
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