Austin’s burgeoning as a tech market, but that’s sort of a fluke—it intended to be a manufacturing town.
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Austin Mayor Steve Adler told attendees of Bisnow’s Austin hospitality event that Austin was booming in the late 1800s and built a dam to strengthen its foothold in the manufacturing world. However, the dam didn’t create enough power to operate a manufacturing facility, and within five years, it was wiped out by a significant flood. The city donated the land to the University of Texas, and ever since, Austin has relied on academic/innovation drivers.
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Now, there are more startups per capita in the Texas capital than in any other city in the US, if not the world, Mayor Adler says. The city holds 7% of the Texas population but more than one-third of the state’s patents and over one-half of venture capital. It’s a city where people are willing to try and fail. Austin’s been the fastest-growing city in the US for the past five years, Mayor Adler says, and it’s doubled in population every 20 to 25 years since the 1850s. That’s made it a "catastrophic success," as the military would say—it’s growing too fast for infrastructure, and has become one of the most economically segregated cities in the country, he said.
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