What are the burbs of Austin like? (Dallas, San Antonio: live in, housing)

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

Kinds funny, we are now surrounded on the south, west, and north sides by the Austin City limits, and on the east with Round Rock.

That's not unusual in areas of rapid sprawl. Hollywood, California is a district in the City of Los Angeles, but to its west is West Hollywood, an incorporated city, and then further west is Beverly Hills, and both are completely surrounded by the City of Los Angeles. The streets are continuous, but small signs on major throughfares mark the borders.

In your area what is unusual is that not only has Austin continued to expand its boundaries, but Round Rock as well.

[supernaut112]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

The Austin Monster, lovable as it is, coming out and surrounding those pre-existing towns does not make them into Austin suburbs, no matter how much some folks might want that to be true so they can say they live in Austin.

Yup. Yes. Exactly this.

And the madness is spreading. People who live in Salado and Killeen claim that they live in "North Austin" now. It's just dumb. But hey, it's not relegated to Austin. A friend called me and asked me to visit her in Houston. She just moved there. Where does she live, really-really? Beaumont! Isn't that, like, 100 miles away from Houston, closer to Lake Charles?

I guess folks want to think that they live in a Big Cool City or something. Can't figure it out.

My question is this: At what point does North Austin become South Waco? Or South Dallas? Or will we one day call Waco "North Austin," too? What about San Marcos, is that South Austin now?

[love roses]

I would say Salado is closer to Austin considering it's just a tad past Jarrell. Killeen falls into the Waco area for sure.

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by supernaut112

Yup. Yes. Exactly this.

And the madness is spreading. People who live in Salado and Killeen claim that they live in "North Austin" now. It's just dumb. But hey, it's not relegated to Austin. A friend called me and asked me to visit her in Houston. She just moved there. Where does she live, really-really? Beaumont! Isn't that, like, 100 miles away from Houston, closer to Lake Charles?

I guess folks want to think that they live in a Big Cool City or something. Can't figure it out.

My question is this: At what point does North Austin become South Waco? Or South Dallas? Or will we one day call Waco "North Austin," too? What about San Marcos, is that South Austin now?

To non-Texans on the Internet, I'll say I live in Austin or the Austin area - just because most folks have no idea where "Brushy Creek near Round Rock" is.

I thought it was kinda both funny & insulting when Marriott opened their new full service hotel in Round Rock's La Frontera shopping area and named it the "Austin Marriott North".

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/trave...arriott-north/

[TexasHorseLady]

I live in (well, just outside of) Jarrell.

Temple is as close as Austin is. Salado is just north of us. So are Jarrell and Salado south Belton or north Georgetown, by the reasoning on this thread?

I assume no one here is loony enough to insist that Georgetown is a suburb of Austin.

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

I live in (well, just outside of) Jarrell.

Temple is as close as Austin is. Salado is just north of us. So are Jarrell and Salado south Belton or north Georgetown, by the reasoning on this thread?

I assume no one here is loony enough to insist that Georgetown is a suburb of Austin.

I give it 6 months

[Westerner92]

Originally Posted by OpenD

No, that's what makes them exurbs.

Otherwise, you'd just call them small towns.

Your semantics seem different from most people's. An exurb usually just refers to a far-flung suburb. Whether it's incorporated or not doesn't affect what it's called.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by Westerner92

Your semantics seem different from most people's. An exurb usually just refers to a far-flung suburb. Whether it's incorporated or not doesn't affect what it's called.

Kinda maybe sorta. The terminology is imprecise and mashed-up and used in different ways by different contingencies to the point that we have overlapping understandings of what the words mean. As evidence note that some people refer to the independent city of Round Rock as a suburb of Austin, whereas at least one poster considers Travis Heights and Clarksville, each a short bike ride to the downtown core, to be suburbs of Austin. That's a huge difference in thinking.

I'm not a city planner, but I do like to play with words, and I think it's fun to note that the word "suburban" literally means "below the city." It was first coined to describe the areas just outside the city limits of Paris, because the city sits on a hill, and the "suburbs" were downhill from the "urbs." Houses down there there were also considered "down market," because they were cheaper and coarser and less convenient and therefore less desirable than properties in town which were closer to "High Street".

Today, most people understand the term suburbs to be those more newly developed areas at the edges of a city, often just outside the city limits. Although predominantly residential in nature, they can also be industrial. One of the best known industrial suburbs in the country is the aptly named City of Industry, east of Los Angeles, which has over 2,500 businesses, employing over 80,000 people, but only about 200 residents. There are industrial parks on the fringes of Austin which could properly be referred to as industrial suburbs.

Much more than just "far-flung suburbs," Exurbs is a term coined in 1955 by A.C. Spectorsky to describe the ring of prosperous communities, outside the suburbs and often separated from them by a greenbelt, that surround a number of big cities, and which serve as residential areas for the wealthy. For instance around NYC were the exurbs of Westchester and New Haven, CT. Since these were often centered around existing small "main street" towns, the term came to be associated with independent communities outside the suburbs of large cities.

In the 1990s another term emerged that is perhaps more accurate and more easily understood: edge cities. In the case at hand, I think Pflugerville and Round Rock and Elgin and San Marcos and Cedar Park are all more properly referred to as edge cities than as suburbs of Austin.

[sxrckr]

Good point on the edge cities term, definitely more accurate.

[Aquitaine]

I guess I don't understand why anybody cares whether some place 20-30 miles out is a "suburb," an "exurb," or "another city," given that you can go only 10 miles out and have a totally different experience from downtown depending on which direction you go.

When I grew up in Wilmington, DE I would tell people who lived far away that we were "just outside Philadelphia" which was 30 miles away and in a different state. We didn't identify as Philly residents but it made sense to describe us that way because nobody knew where the heck Delaware was on the map and Philadelphia was the largest metro area influence on where we lived.

I don't feel like being a resident of Austin means I have some duty to protect the integrity of the city and stop people who live in Georgetown or Temple or anywhere else from associating with it. It's obviously accurate to say that these other places are either towns in their own right or not close enough to be "Austin" but who cares? If we're talking about "elite downtown street cred" then Circle C sure as heck isn't Austin either, but I left NYC in part to get away from that kind of thing. I don't care how close to the raucous heart of 6th street your address is or if you live in Cedar Park or Hyde Park. You know whether you're "from Austin" or not and thankfully you don't have to renew your ID card with me or the forum.