What makes Austin so nice crime rate, schools, shopping? (Houston: fit in, apartment)

[payroll]

What makes Austin so nice is crime rate low? Is the school systems good? Is there good places to go shopping like malls; nice stores? Nice houses and prices?

[deeptrance]

Everyone will give you a different answer, and here's mine.

1. Austin is so quirky and unique, it's like a person. I'm in love with it! It has character, which is hard to define other than "you have to spend some time here to see for yourself." And it might not be to your liking, everyone has a different take on this.

2. Natural beauty integrated into the city -- you can hike from an apartment into downtown on a system of nature trails, and stop for a swim at Barton Springs along the way. There are hike-and-bike trails all over the place, and they're also being incorporated into a lot of the better new subdivisions in the 'burbs.

3. Amazing cultural diversity --- it's hard to find a city this "small" that has so much going on. Film festivals, restaurants, MUSIC, etc. It also has lots of great places and activities for children.

Cost of living? It's higher than the rest of Texas.

Crime? Not too bad, but not great either.

Shopping malls? You want Dallas or Houston for those. We have them but that's NOT what Austin is about. One of the most common bumper stickers you'll see here is "Keep Austin Weird", which started as an anti-chain-store campaign to support local businesses and preserve what makes Austin unique. There are lots of quirky unique stores here. The coffeehouse scene is off the charts, everywhere you go there's a funky coffeehouse and they all seem to compete to see which one can be the LEAST like Starbucks. Is that good or bad? Depends on what you like.

It's a highly informal city but there are areas where you can be extremely formal and wealthy and fit in, which I don't personally consider to be an Austin thing but rather a generic thing you can find anywhere.

FRIENDLINESS!!! Central Texas is friendly in general, as is the entire center of the country, the "flyover country" that coastal elitists love to put down. Heck, they can keep their over-priced lifestyle on the coasts, life's pretty good here in flatland.

Oh, and it's not that flat here! On a macro level it's totally flat, but when you get here you see lots of small hills, canyons, etc. The topography is quite appealing and much more varied than in Dallas or Houston.

[deeptrance]

Oh yeah, one more thing --- deserving of a separate post --- there's the HYPE factor. Austin gets a lot of hype. famous people live here and move here. Movies are made here. Musicians love it here. Sometimes that sort of thing just achieves its own gravitational pull, whether it's deserved or not. So right now we're on the "hot list" of places to be. The buzz is fun but it's superficial. Your daily life is what matters. If you can't afford to be in one of the nicer neighborhoods and your commute is a nightmare of sitting in 100 degree heat on freeways jammed with "stall and crawl" traffic, then why bother? Most of the time you wouldn't be experiencing what people like about Austin, you'd be experiencing the WORST of it and you can find much better places than this if your objectives are to have a low-crime low-cost place to raise a family.