November 25, 2005

Peeking In

A big Texas "howdy" to y'all from Austin. I haven't been online much - too busy - but I did get a chance this morning to read a few of the posts by my various guest bloggers. Good stuff!

It was 82 degrees and sunny in Austin yesterday - just perfect - but it's cooler and gray today. We've been staying in Courtyard by Marriott hotels on this trip. The on in west Little Rock was the best. In Austin we spent the first night at the one in the Aboretum district, but switched to the one in Round Rock the next day. I'm not sure which was better - neither is close to the quality of the one in Little Rock.

Austin has changed - a lot - since I was here 10 years ago. It's grown immensely. A decade ago, the five-county Austin metro area was smaller in population than the eight-county Nashville metro area. Today, it's larger by about 200,000 people. Austin's metro area had 1.4 million people at the end of 2004.

You can see the growth in Austin everywhere you drive - the size, scope and scale of the road construction projects here dwarfs anything in the Nashville area. I may photograph some of the elevated expressways and other projects, if I get some time. Currently there are 65 miles of new toll highways under construction in and around the Austin area, plus improvements to various other main arteries. It's all going to be done by December 2007. (Photos here.) Compare that to the glacially slow pace of construction of the Route 840 beltway around the south side of the Nashville area.

The two cities are similar in a number of ways. Both are their state's capital, both are big university towns, and both have an impressive music scene - although Nashville turned its music into an industry that makes money while Austin turned its into a year-round party and has fun). Austin has a much larger tech sector, too, and is a much more online city than Nashville.