is Austin pretty? (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio: neighborhoods, tornadoes, living)

[steph410]

one more question about Austin: is it pretty? I know there are hilly parts & nature preserves, etc. But I'm just wondering if you consider the city of Austin and surrounding areas to have a lot of natural beauty? Has the area been planned well & is it nice to drive around or is it overdeveloped, etc?

thanks!

[intmd8r]

That's a really tough question, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What some may consider pretty, others may not. Also, where you are coming from may big a big factor, as well.

That being said, coming from Phoenix, we though Austin was pretty. We visited in the spring when it was very green and Phoenix is never green. We enjoyed the rolling hills, etc. Missed the mountains on the horizon, but enjoyed the overall beauty immediately around us far more than Phoenix.

However, if we had spent the last 10 years in San Diego instead, we might think it was rather bland, as it is flat in comparison.

In the end, after driving around for 4 days, we certainly though Austin was pretty.

[tongpa-nyi]

Parts of Austin are quite ugly all year round, wet year or dry. That's probably true of every city; even Paris has vast swaths of hideous suburbs and industrial zones.

Other parts of Austin are gorgeous regardless of the weather or season.

Right now the city is entering its peacock phase, which will remain as long as we keep getting enough rain to sustain the verdant abundance of life that is springing forth all around us. On the whole, it looks a lot nicer here when we're getting rain than when we're in a drought. Even the native plants go into a kind of partial dormancy during droughts and heat waves, everything looks half-dead but it comes alive with a single decent rainfall.

The sky is gorgeous, especially in summer when moisture above steadily marches to the north from the Gulf of Mexico like a vast army going to the battlefields of the Plains and Midwest where they eventually will fuel the supercells that generate tornadoes and massive thunderstorms. We get our fair share of T-storms but they're generally not as violent as those to the north where more air masses collide.

Sometimes there's haze and smog, especially in summer on days when the air is still.

My sister was blown away by the beauty around here, but I stayed out of the suburbs and we spent all our time in the nice parts of town and the hill country. Her credentials for evaluating beauty are solid --- she has lived in Seattle for 30 years.

To the north, east, and south of Austin, it's Texas. Some people don't even like the hill country. If you're definitely moving here then I hope you will find beauty in whatever you see. If you're trying to decide whether to move here, find all the photos you can and keep searching. And never forget about our summers. They're pretty miserable!

[Exiled Texan]

Not all parts. It has more pretty parts than Houston for sure.

[Exiled Texan]

Austin is many things, but I would not call it well planned.

[tongpa-nyi]

Originally Posted by Exiled Texan

Austin is many things, but I would not call it well planned.

Terse and oh so accurate. To merely use the words "Austin" and "planned" in the same sentence risks a bemused response from cities such as Portland, OR.

[10scoachrick]

As mentioned, it really does depend on your perspective--where you came from. It's hard to beat Atlanta/Georgia during the Masters(+- one week). On the other hand, Austin doesn't turn yellow/green from pine pollen like Atlanta! The Austin roadsides and intersections(say, along 183) are really dreary looking with mostly dirt and scrub vegetation and what little grass that might adorn a median strip has been worn away from the constant pacing of panhandlers.

Speaking of 183, heading north to the Rattlesnake Round-up(this weekend in Lampasas/Lometa area) should offer some color as well as hill country vistas, especially after all the early spring rain. The bluebonnets, etc. were exceptional ?three? years ago when we visited after a similar rainy period.

The general area is a whole lot prettier than it was just at the beginning of March...ain't spring grand!

I guess we just have to be 'flexible' in our expectations of 'pretty'.

[sxrckr]

People come here from other states and complain about the overhead powerlines, access roads/feeder roads, and stripmalls. This is like this in all of Texas. So people from other Texas cities won't notice, but people from some other states might.

If that's what you were asking, that is.

[atxcio]

I'd say it's the prettiest large city in Texas, but sxrckr is right about the powerlines and strip malls. They are here like in any other Texas city. But we have the nice river through downtown, several lakes, trees, hills, greenbelts inside the city, etc.

When people say Austin isn't well planned, that's only partially true. Traffic is bad, but it's not from an ignorance of how to plan a city -- it's from decades of anti-road and anti-growth sentiment by city planners. In some ways they were successful, and kept the areas "in town" highly desirable. As the traffic increased, desirability of the neighborhoods only increased. They preserved a lot of green space inside the central city, which is good. They also wanted to encourage biking and pedestrian activity, and in that sense they have also succeeded -- but only by Texas standards. They were really thinking ahead when they attempted to attract non-manufacturing jobs (high tech), and were successful in that. In recent years, they encouraged more housing in downtown (sustainable living) and the result was that several parking lots became residential towers.

By not jumping to build hundreds of miles of highways (the path San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas took) we saved ourselves from some of the sameness and sprawl that plagues those other cities. And you know what? Places like Houston STILL have horrible traffic, and for much longer stretches than in Austin.

So overall, I don't think the planning was that bad here, with one exception: Public transportation. But Capitol Metro shares much of that blame with the city.

[sxrckr]

Originally Posted by atxcio

By not jumping to build hundreds of miles of highways (the path San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas took) we saved ourselves from some of the sameness and sprawl that plagues those other cities. And you know what? Places like Houston STILL have horrible traffic, and for much longer stretches than in Austin.

I don't know, the last list I saw had I-35 in Austin as the worst traffic in the state, and Houston's overall ranking for bad traffic had improved by a few spots even though they've added many more new residents than Austin has.