Perennially hip Austin flaunts its best features
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The Economy
Austin’s economy is officially growing at around 6% a year; in 2016, Forbes named it ‘America’s fastest growing city’. Like most of Texas, it missed both the mid-2000s real estate boom and the accompanying bust, while tech firms went right on expanding.
There’s a steady supply of new land for homebuilding, and as of early 2017 the city had nearly two-million-feet of new office space under construction. One result: an early 2017 unemployment rate of just 3.4%.
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Music
Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) is a startling collision of music, film, interactive media, culture and business. The vibe is less stereotypical Texan than black t-shirt emo; an attendee might manage projects for a digital agency by day and play in a punk band by night.
The busy music scene began around non-conformist country musicians like Willie Nelson – central to Austin’s ‘weird’ self-image – then grew to encompass folk, blues, jazz, bluegrass, tejano, zydeco, new wave, punk, and indie genres.
3.The creative class
For many observers, Austin is the ‘creative class’ theory in action. 15 years ago urbanist Richard Florida argued that growth-hungry cities should work at attracting smart, creative people, as ‘weirdness, eccentricity and difference’ were essential to a city fostering technological innovation.
Austin has all that, as well as one of the US’s highest shares of…
