Lost in Austin

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First annotation on Apr 22nd, 2025.

2 quotes

The French anthropologist Marc Augé distinguished between "places" and "non-places." Places, he said, were closely linked to the culture of the society from which they developed: in Austin's case, African American and Mexican culture and, later, the laid-back hippie culture of the '60s. Non-places, on the other hand, are homogenous spaces that have had that culture eradicated, replaced with a sterile sameness; what we find today in chain stores, hotels, and car parks. Is that what Austin had become?
How do you square those differences in perspective? There is no question that there has been a fundamental change that is irrefutably tragic: at the end of the working day, the see-and-be-seens go to their modern condos scattered throughout this growing city, while the cleaners, street sweepers, bar staff, and line cooks jump in their aging cars and join the lines of traffic out of the city toward home. There's a growing chasm between rich and poor in Austin—those who can afford to live in the coolest city in America and those who work there and want to call it home but can't afford to. And yet people continue moving there in droves, coaxed by the same promises that convinced me to do the same thing so many years ago.