The drawbridge mentality is increasingly common in major cities. A place was perfect when you moved there and fell in love. Any changes since then are but a fall from grace, an unwelcome change that destroys everything you love and insults your wonderful memories.

It's a deeply human and very understandable response. Of course, that isn't the same as making good policy.

There's a walking/hiking trail behind my house. One of my neighbors hates the fact that the trail has been 'improved' and now other people use it. He was used to it being 'his' trail.

Is this supposed to be an unreasonable opinion? I run all the 'bad' trails in my city because it's nice to be alone.

Just because something is a net gain doesn't mean some people don't lose.

The reason I bought that house in particular is because of the trail and green space. I think its funny(?) that he was complaining to (at?) me, and I'm part of the problem.

> Just because something is a net gain doesn't mean some people don't lose.

See also free trade. Consumers benefit, but some workers lose.

Eh I can understand it. In our society it really seems that nothing is sacred and it's really easy to empathize with someone who just wants one thing to go untainted by capitalism

It sounds like this person wanted the public to maintain a resource (trail and green space) but also maintain near-private access.

It's possible that improvements to this public good are capitalism in action, destroying something beautiful and wonderful. But, some might see this scenario as someone attempting to capture public resources (the trail and its maintenance) for their own gain, which is one of the worst expressions of capitalism.

It's perhaps less easy to empathize with that.

Yeah ... I don't think someone who celebrates a bit of mostly untouched nature in the city they live in represents "one of the worst expressions of capitalism".

I follow your line of thinking, but I think it's a bit out of context.

I understand how you feel. Untouched nature isn't one of the excesses of capitalism!

Yet, perhaps a government-maintained trail that someone feels entitled to treat as their private property is something less than a shining example of virtue.

I get perhaps a feeling of "wistfulness" for how things used to be, but getting angry or hateful that other people now enjoy something too seems like an unhealthy attitude.

Life is obviously about collecting positive externalities. ;)

Everyone is a newcomer. What it comes down to is if you add to the zeitgeist or detract from it.

Yup. We are the problem. We shouldn't have moved in. But we did, so we transformed the place. Deal with it.

you left out one little detail...

> When we arrived in Austin [in 1980]

It's not an important detail, particularly. The narrative is always "when we arrived, things were good, but these newcomers..."

The typical reasons why people moved to cities in 1980 are way different than the reasons why people are flocking to cities in 2018.

What Austin is experiencing is a severe case of what's happening to cities all over the country. For many this is uniformly good thing but for a place like Austin, with a strong identity and cultural history (and, since the 60s, a liberal enclave in a deeply conservative state), it has very specific costs.

This is nonsense. The world changes. You can't possibly keep it the way it was. Austin still has a very strong identity and cultural history -- it's just different now than it was 5 years ago when it was different from what it had been 5 years before that when it was different from...

A lot of what's happening in Austin is a result of public policy too, and it's been so for at least two decades. The city has actively pursued its transformations. Though even if it hadn't, Austin would still have been a huge draw for refugees from California and the East Coast.

It has very specific costs to exclude people who would benefit from being in an area, as well.

Far more specific than a vague sense of 'things changing'.

I tend to think it is an important detail. 1980 was nearly 40 years ago! It's hard to tag someone who's lived in a place for 40 years as a carpetbagger with a straight face. People put down a lot of roots over four decades.

I bet you could have found someone in 1980 decrying how much Austin had changed by then from 1940.

This is a game anyone can play.

What about NYC? Think it hasn't changed? It's changed a ton. Why not complain about that? How about L.A.? The whole world has changed, and will continue to change, and you can be as certain of this as of anything else.