Is Austin the "golden spike" of US Sprawl, where western and eastern sprawl finally meet? (Houston: house)

[inthecut]

First, click and read the following about how the first continental railroad finally connected the entire US.....

Golden spike - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/images/promontory-point-utah.jpg (broken link)

Now, think about this......can you think of Austin as the same, a "golden spike" that connects eastern AND western sprawl?

Think of it, in that Austin is not only the fastest growing large metro, but the most centrally located one, attracting and connecting relos from other
sprawling metros east AND west of the same......

Now check out a quote from Robert Bruegmann, who has written much about sprawl...

"One day those coming from the East will come face-to-face with those coming from the West. Then our worst nightmare will be a reality. There will simply be nowhere else to go".....

So is Austin the "Sprawl Connector" of the US, the belt buckle that connects refugees from sprawling metros east and west of the same?
Where do we go from here? Do we start all over again? What happens when there is literally no where else to go/flee?

Mexico?......The Canary Islands? .......Tierra Del Fuego?.....outer space, in little space pod capsles?...Indeed, perhaps the only out is UP now.....

The only pods I see in Austin are these kind...
Reinventing self storage, local and long distance moving | PODS


The space kind are an awful long time away....


Space....The final frontier of Sprawl......"The only out is UP"
Space colonization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyone game to open up the first Starbucks in space? LOL!

Starbucks in Space (and Other Adventures in Zero-G) « The Half-Astrophysicist Blog

[CptnRn]

Well, you know, the NASA Space Center is in Houston! Up, up and away!

[jobert]

Space travel will be impossible. We've littered our orbit with so much debris, it's now hitting each other and being smashed into even more infintesimal pieces. When the Chinese blasted the satellite last year to test their missile program, they added about 10,000 extra pieces of junk to the orbit. It will be impossible to break out of orbit, when countless detritus is whizzing by you at 6,000 mph in a galactic firing range. We are on the verge of losing a lot of the existing satellites in orbit within the next 5 years because of this reality. Maybe we should launch magnets into orbit to collect, then re-enter and burn up. Dunno, I'm not a rocket surgeon.

[inthecut]

Originally Posted by jobert

Space travel will be impossible. We've littered our orbit with so much debris, it's now hitting each other and being smashed into even more infintesimal pieces. When the Chinese blasted the satellite last year to test their missile program, they added about 10,000 extra pieces of junk to the orbit. It will be impossible to break out of orbit, when countless detritus is whizzing by you at 6,000 mph in a galactic firing range. We are on the verge of losing a lot of the existing satellites in orbit within the next 5 years because of this reality. Maybe we should launch magnets into orbit to collect, then re-enter and burn up. Dunno, I'm not a rocket surgeon.

I call it "Space Poop".....the excreta of humanity writ large...floating aimlessly in the toilet of space......and yes, it needs to be flushed...

[verybadgnome]

In a sense yes. First the right coast filled out, then midcentury the left coast started to grow at a rapid pace. Being priced out CA people moved up the coast to WA and OR, but before that Texas got the gift that would enable it to attract sizeable number of outsiders, air conditioning. Now that both coasts are expensive and have higher unemployment people are considering Texas and Austin for the first time. They know they have to make adjustments to live here but their parents did themselves a generation before them and their grandparents made an even bigger 'adjustment' during the Grapes of Wrath era. Yeah Central Texas will fill up and pop growth will not level off for some time all the which makes me glad I bought my house within 10k of my job.

Hopefully in the long run we will stop looking for new virgin lands and start redeveloping underutilized areas in established cities in smarter ways than we have in the past. Having visited Israel last year they could teach us a few things about land use management and preventing sprawl all the while saving on energy costs.

[inthecut]

Originally Posted by verybadgnome

In a sense yes. First the right coast filled out, then midcentury the left coast started to grow at a rapid pace. Being priced out CA people moved up the coast to WA and OR, but before that Texas got the gift that would enable it to attract sizeable number of outsiders, air conditioning. Now that both coasts are expensive and have higher unemployment people are considering Texas and Austin for the first time. They know they have to make adjustments to live here but their parents did themselves a generation before them and their grandparents made an even bigger 'adjustment' during the Grapes of Wrath era. Yeah Central Texas will fill up and pop growth will not level off for some time all the which makes me glad I bought my house within 10k of my job.

Hopefully in the long run we will stop looking for new virgin lands and start redeveloping underutilized areas in established cities in smarter ways than we have in the past. Having visited Israel last year they could teach us a few things about land use management and preventing sprawl all the while saving on energy costs.

Or Holland......so little land they have to make use of the little they have, and recycle damn near everything...japan as well.....only we of the open country think we can't do without our SUV's and tossing crap out constantly, sometimes right out the window...