{"id":466464,"date":"2026-10-15T05:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T05:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/466464\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T05:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T05:12:08","slug":"austin-is-for-everyone-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/466464\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin is for everyone \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Austin<\/a> <\/p>\n

Texas is constantly growing. Between 2024 and 2025, the state was home to five of the 15 fastest-growing towns in the U.S. Austin is no exception; the city\u2019s population surpassed 1 million<\/a> residents in 2025 \u2014 a 53% increase<\/a> from its population in 2000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Change follows growth, but not everyone approves<\/a> of the departure from what \u201cold\u201d Austin once was. Most notions of Austin\u2019s past, however, are clouded by nostalgia, which can gatekeep the city from its new residents. Austin isn\u2019t just for a select group \u2014 it\u2019s for everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the new people that have come here,\u201d architecture professor Larry Speck said. \u201cThey came here because they love this place. They\u2019re not here just because they were born here, and they want to engage and be a part of this community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosy retrospection<\/a> is a type of cognitive bias<\/a> where people remember the past more positively<\/a> than it actually was. As a result, negative aspects of previous experiences are less likely<\/a> to persist in people\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n

Adam Powell, an Austin native and executive director of the Austin History Center Association<\/a>, said that many iconic moments in Austin\u2019s history were short-lived. For example, Armadillo World Headquarters, one of Austin\u2019s most historic<\/a> music venues, only existed for 10 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austinites are no exception to rosy retrospection, including Powell. Powell said that accounts of old Austin largely depend on what Austin was like when someone moved to the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOld Austin to me, personally, is seeing the UT Tower light up orange after seeing Vince Young win the Rose Bowl against USC,\u201d Powell said. \u201cFor many people a few generations before me, that is like, \u2018Oh my God, UT football spiraled out of control.\u2019 My exemplar old Austin moment is probably an example of Austin\u2019s culture dying to someone else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But not everyone shares the same nostalgic sentiment. For Speck, who moved to Austin in 1975 for work, vacant parking lots, weedy sidewalks and boarded-up businesses along Congress Avenue defined his old Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a real presence to the Capitol building and a few things, but downtown was derelict,\u201d Speck said. \u201cIt was a place where people came in and went to their lawyer\u2019s office, and then went out to the suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an architect, Speck has designed numerous buildings across Austin, including the Austin Convention Center. Speck said without the convention center \u2014 and downtown Austin\u2019s development in general \u2014 festivals like South by Southwest wouldn\u2019t be possible. Without this change, Austin\u2019s modern cultural identity would likely be unrecognizable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d never have South by Southwest if we didn\u2019t have a good, lively downtown to plug it into. \u2026 We wouldn\u2019t have (Austin City Limits Music Festival),\u201d Speck said. \u201cVisitors come to our city because there\u2019s a \u2018there\u2019 there.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the identity of Austin\u2019s \u2018golden age\u2019 is as subjective as it is, it loses its meaning. As someone not originally from Austin, I understand the hesitation to accept so-called \u201ctransplants<\/a>.\u201d But Austin isn\u2019t frozen in time, nor does it belong to a particular group of people. Austin is for those who claim it here and now.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy definition of Austinite \u2026 is if you love Austin, you\u2019re an Austinite,\u201d Powell said. \u201cThat\u2019s if you moved here yesterday, if you\u2019ve been here your entire life, and everything in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mire is a civil engineering sophomore from Mansfield, Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas is constantly growing. Between 2024 and 2025, the state was home to five of the 15 fastest-growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-466464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}