Entire blocks are being razed to the ground (George Rose/Getty Images)
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Not so long ago, Silicon Valley was a magical land where unicorns flourished; anybody with an idea, seed capital and a little luck could become richer than all the kings of folklore. These days, things aren’t so rosy. Silicon Valley’s own bank recently collapsed, some unicorns have turned out to be donkeys, and, depending on your point of view, the Valley is now either Ground Zero for a plague of disinformation or the epicentre of a sinister private-public surveillance regime.
Meanwhile, house prices are so high in San Francisco that even software engineers at mega companies struggle to afford accommodation, tech companies are downsizing, and homelessness is on the rise. Confronted with these problems, the city recently recommended a payment of $5 million each in “reparations” to eligible black residents. The figure was arrived at without actually doing any maths and, it is estimated, would cost everybody else $600,000 each.
As always, Silicon Valley is at the vanguard of a wider Californian trend. Here is a place where things were too good for too long; where the ruling class became unmoored from reality, hastening their state’s decline. Residents are voting with their feet: in 2020, California’s population declined for the first time in its history, a trend which continued through July 2022. Where, people are asking, are all those who came to California seeking success now going?
For many, the answer appears to be Texas. Austin in particular has received some high-profile defections. In 2020, Joe Rogan left LA for the city because, as he put it, “I want fucking freedom.” Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Palantir, the data mining firm that helped locate Osama Bin Laden, declared that Texas beats California “in almost every method you can name, whether it’s education, pollution, homeless[ness].” Trump-supporting billionaire Larry Ellison relocated the HQ of database giant Oracle from Redwood City to Austin following a bitter struggle with regulators. And, most famously, Elon Musk shifted Tesla’s headquarters to Austin in 2021, after claiming that California regulators had started behaving like a “monopoly that cannot go bankrupt”.
Musk’s announcement marked the moment when the rise of Austin as a tech hub reached critical mass in the public consciousness, but the process had been underway for over a decade. Long before Tesla arrived, Google, Amazon and Meta (as well as older firms such as Apple, IBM and Dell) had established significant presences in the city. They had been attracted by a concentration of engineering talent and Texas’s business-friendly government. The result is that the Austin metro’s population has exploded, while rents and house prices have soared. Since I moved here, during the second Bush administration, the downtown skyline has completely transformed. A second centre, “The Domain”, has sprouted in the city’s north, where many tech firms have offices.
The cultural changes have also been profound. The laid-back city of old prided itself on the slogan, “Keep Austin Weird”. But there is a sense among locals that, in the new Austin, idiosyncrasies are ironed out. Formerly hip neighbourhoods that might once have boasted the odd wax museum or vintage thrift store are now lined with luxury boutiques and frou-frou eateries, while quirky institutions have either fled to the remote reaches of the city to survive or closed for good.
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SubscribeI remember when my Oregonian friends would say “Keep Portland weird.” None of them live their now.
I remember when my Oregonian friends would say “Keep Portland weird.” None of them live their now.
And I though that Silicon valley was something that Trump buried his face in with Stormy Daniels?
And I though that Silicon valley was something that Trump buried his face in with Stormy Daniels?
Kathleen Stock is a Founding Faculty Fellow of the University of Austin, Texas and presumably spends some time there.
It’d be interesting to see an article by her on what she’s finding with regard to “Keep Austin Weird”.
Kathleen Stock is a Founding Faculty Fellow of the University of Austin, Texas and presumably spends some time there.
It’d be interesting to see an article by her on what she’s finding with regard to “Keep Austin Weird”.
Progress is a bulldozer! This has been happening from the very beginning. If you don’t want things to change, you have to make things difficult for new arrivals to arrive. Also, you need to allow people who are content to say, “thanks but no thanks, we are happy the way things are.”
There needs to be another article highlighting the same kind of change. Western Europe is very different from 20 plus years ago. It was not money that transformed it, but people. The far left is to blame for this as well. Left of centre is a nice way to be but stray a little bit further to the left and it is very destructive. Far more so than the far right.
Progress is a bulldozer! This has been happening from the very beginning. If you don’t want things to change, you have to make things difficult for new arrivals to arrive. Also, you need to allow people who are content to say, “thanks but no thanks, we are happy the way things are.”
There needs to be another article highlighting the same kind of change. Western Europe is very different from 20 plus years ago. It was not money that transformed it, but people. The far left is to blame for this as well. Left of centre is a nice way to be but stray a little bit further to the left and it is very destructive. Far more so than the far right.
Great informative article. Just shows how lucky we are to live near Europe.
Great informative article. Just shows how lucky we are to live near Europe.
While red states fret about the escapees from blue states arriving to bring destructive policy, seems they are rejecting them. Austin becoming near TX normal might be a good thing for all. But the past charm of Austin is likely to end.
While red states fret about the escapees from blue states arriving to bring destructive policy, seems they are rejecting them. Austin becoming near TX normal might be a good thing for all. But the past charm of Austin is likely to end.