Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Perils

The Austin Airport has become so congested now that it takes longer to park and walk in than it takes to drive there.

It seems that cities face difficult decisions--almost Malthusian in proportions--when they're growing fast. They can either greatly expand their infrastructure to accommodate the growth, thereby probably increasing the rate of growth even more, or they can try to slow things down by growing infrastructure much more slowly or not at all.

Austin should be a very rich city, but they are (proudly) talking about having "lean" budgets. The budget, though, is not a match for the city in any way. It's not lean times in Austin, and the incredible number of people moving here need basic city services like navigable roads. They don't, and they're not going to, because the city and state refuse to create enough revenue to build and service them.

Fast growth can be very seductive to a city, but I don't see that it works, at least not in this state. Far better to have a modestly growing, more stable city where growth can be managed more effectively and city services can be useful.

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