Austin is also the home of the University of Texas at Austin, aka "UT,"
the flagship campus of The University of Texas System. Other institutions of
higher learning include Austin Community College, Concordia University,
Huston-Tillotson College and St. Edward's University.
Austin has a heady mix of educators and their students, politicians and
lobbyists. It is also the self-proclaimed "live music capital of the world,"
with a vibrant live music scene revolving around many nightclubs on 6th
Street and a yearly film/music/multimedia festival known as "South by
Southwest." Austin City Limits, the longest-running concert music program on
American television, is videotaped on the University of Texas campus.
Austin's biggest employers include the State of Texas, the University of
Texas, Dell, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor (spun off from Motorola in
2004). Other high-tech companies in Austin include Vignette, AMD, Cirrus
Logic, Apple Computer, and National Instruments. The proliferation of
technology companies has led to the region's nickname, "the Silicon Hills,"
and has spurred rapid development that has greatly expanded the city to the
north and south.
The University of Texas has an outstanding Radio, Television, and Film (RTF)
department and, partly because of this, Austin has been the location of a
number of movies, including Secondhand Lions, Waking Life, Spy Kids, Dazed
and Confused, Office Space, The Life of David Gale, and Slacker. Austin is
home to several well-known directors, including Robert Rodriguez and Tim
McCanlies. Austin hosts the annual Austin Film Festival, as well as the
South by Southwest Festival, which draw films of many different types from
all over the world.
Austin is situated on the Colorado River, with three lakes within the city
limits: Town Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Walter E. Long. Additionally, the
foot of Lake Travis, including Mansfield Dam, is located within the city's
limits. Town Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Travis are all on the Colorado
River. The city is also situated on the Balcones Fault, which, in much of
Austin, runs roughly the same route as the MoPac expressway. The eastern
part of the city is flat, whereas the western part and western suburbs
consist of scenic rolling hills on the edge of the Texas Hill Country.
Because the hills to the west are primarily limestone rock with a thin
covering of topsoil, the city is subjected to frequent flash flooding from
the excessive runoff caused by thunderstorms. To help control this runoff
and to generate hydroelectric power, the Lower Colorado River Authority
operates a series of dams that form the Texas Highland Lakes. The lakes also
provide venues for boating, swimming, and other forms of recreation within
several parks located on the lake shores.
The Congress Avenue Bridge houses the world's largest urban bat population.
In the summer, the colony has up to 1.5 million Free-tailed Bats; in the
winter they migrate to Mexico.
At night, Austin is lit with "artificial moonlight." Several Moonlight
Towers[1] (http://austin.about.com/cs/architecture/a/moonlighttowers.htm),
built in the late 19th century and recognized as historical landmarks,
illuminate the central part of the city. The towers were prominently
featured in the film Dazed and Confused. The Zilker Tree (http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/tol/tree.htm)
is a Christmas tree made of large lights strung from the top of a moon tower.
It stands all year in Zilker Park and is lit in December along with the
Trail of Lights.
Among the professional sports teams in Austin are the Austin Ice Bats of the
Central Hockey League and the Austin Wranglers of the Arena Football League.
Austin is served by the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Residents of Austin are called "Austinites."
Government
Austin is administered by a city council of seven members, each of them
elected by the entire city, and by an elected mayor. Under a tradition known
as "the gentlemen's agreement," which has existed since the 1970s, one of
the council seats is contested only by an African-American, while another
council seat is contested only by a Hispanic American. In the late 1990s,
this system broke down, with the specific place allocations being contested
and won by white candidates, but the overall ethnic makeup of the council
remaining the same. Council and mayoral elections are non-partisan, with a
runoff in case there is no 50% majority winner. The main political actors
within Austin are interest groups such as the pro-environmental Save Our
Springs Alliance.
The political controversy that dominated the 1990s was the conflict between
environmentalists, strong in the city center, and advocates of urban growth,
who tend to live in the outlying areas. The city council has in the past
tried to mitigate the controversy by advocating smart growth, but growth and
environmental protection are still the main hot-button issues in city
politics.
History
Before the arrival of European settlers, the area around present-day Austin
was inhabited for several hundred years by a mixture of Tonkawa, Comanche,
and Lipan Apache Indians, who fished and hunted along the creeks, including
present-day Barton Springs.
In the late 1700s the Spanish set up temporary missions in the area, later
moving to San Antonio.
The first Anglo settlers arrived in the area in the 1830s when Texas was
still part of Mexico. They founded the village of Waterloo along the banks
of the Colorado River. According to local folklore, Stephen F. Austin, the "father
of Texas", negotiated a peace treaty with the local Indians at the site of
the present day Treaty Oak after several settlers were killed in raids.
In 1839, Waterloo was chosen to become the capital of the new Republic of
Texas, and the town was renamed Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin.
A grid plan for the city streets was surveyed by Judge Edwin Waller (after
whom Waller Creek was named). The grid survives nearly intact as the streets
of present-day downtown Austin. The north-south streets of the grid were
named for the rivers of Texas, following an east-west progression from Red
River Street to Rio Grande Street. The exception was the central
thoroughfare Congress Avenue, which leads from the far south side of town
over the river to the foot of the hill where the new Texas State Capitol was
to be constructed.
The east-west streets of the grid followed a progression uphill from the
river and were named after trees native to the region, with Pecan Street as
the main east-west thoroughfare. The east-west streets were later renamed in
a numbered progression, with Pecan Street becoming Sixth Street. The
original tree-named streets survive in nostalgic names, including Pecan
Street, which is the name of a locally-produced beer.
In October 1839, the entire government of the Republic of Texas arrived by
oxcart from Houston. By the next January, the population of the town was 839
people.
After Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845, two statewide elections were
held that attempted to move the capital elsewhere, but Austin remained the
capital.
In September 1881, the city schools admitted their first classes. That same
year, the first institution of higher learning, the forerunner of Huston-Tillotson
College, opened as the Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute.
The Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888 on the site specified in the
1839 plan. At the time it was billed as the "Seventh largest building in the
world."
In 1893, the Great Granite Dam on the Colorado River was constructed,
stabilizing the river's flow and providing hydroelectric power.
In the 1930s, the original dam was replaced by a series of seven dams built
by the federal government which created the string of reservoirs that now
define the river's course through Austin. Lyndon Baines Johnson, then a
member of the House of Representatives, was instrumental in getting the
funding authorized for these dams.
On August 1, 1966, Austin was terrorized by Charles Whitman who shot and
killed 16 people with a high-powered rifle from the clocktower of the Main
Building on the University of Texas campus. The event is considered the most
traumatic event in the city's history.
In the 1970s, Austin became a refuge for a group of Country and Western
musicians and songwriters seeking to escape the corporate industry
domination of Nashville. The best-known artist in this group was Willie
Nelson, who became an icon for the local "alternate music industry." In the
following years, Austin gained a reputation as a place where struggling
musicians could come and launch their careers in informal live venues in
front of receptive audiences.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the city experienced a tremendous boom in
development that temporarily halted with the Savings and Loan collapse in
the late 1980s. The growth led to an ongoing series of fierce political
battles that pitted preservationists against developers. In particular the
preservation of Barton Springs, and by extension the Edwards Aquifer, became
an issue which defined the themes of the larger battles.
In the 1990s, the boom resumed with the influx and growth of a large
technology industry. Initially the technology industry was centered around
larger established companies such as IBM, but in the late 1990s, Austin
gained the additional reputation of being a center of the Dot-com boom.
In 2000, Austin became the center of an intense media focus as the
headquarters of presidential candidate and Texas Governor George W. Bush.
Ironically the headquarters of his main opponent, Al Gore, were in Nashville,
thus recreating the old Country Music rivalry between the two cities.
Geography
According to the 2000 United States Census Bureau, Austin is located at
30°18'01" North, 97°44'50" West (30.300474, -97.747247)1. The city has a
total area of 669.3 km˛ (258.4 mi˛). 651.4 km˛ (251.5 mi˛) of it is land and
17.9 km˛ (6.9 mi˛) of it is water. The total area is 2.67% water.
Demographics
As of the census2 of 2000, there are 656,562 people, 265,649 households, and
141,590 families residing in the city. The population density is 1,007.9/km˛
(2,610.4/mi˛). There are 276,842 housing units at an average density of
425.0/km˛ (1,100.7/mi˛). The racial makeup of the city is 65.36% White,
10.05% African American, 0.59% Native American, 4.72% Asian, 0.07% Pacific
Islander, 16.23% from other races, and 2.99% from two or more races. 30.55%
of the population are Hispanic American or Latino of any race.
There are 265,649 households out of which 26.8% have children under the age
of 18 living with them, 38.1% are married couples living together, 10.8%
have a female householder with no husband present, and 46.7% are non-families.
32.8% of all households are made up of individuals and 4.6% have someone
living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is
2.40 and the average family size is 3.14.
In the city the population is spread out with 22.5% under the age of 18,
16.6% from 18 to 24, 37.1% from 25 to 44, 17.1% from 45 to 64, and 6.7% who
are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 30 years. For every 100
females there are 105.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there
are 105.7 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $42,689, and the median
income for a family is $54,091. Males have a median income of $35,545 versus
$30,046 for females. The per capita income for the city is $24,163. 14.4% of
the population and 9.1% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the
total people living in poverty, 16.5% are under the age of 18 and 8.7% are
65 or older.
Famous Austin residents include cyclist Lance Armstrong, businessman Michael
Dell, tennis player Andy Roddick, actors Sandra Bullock and Matthew
McConaughey, and directors Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez. Former
residents include Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush
