Good callout, but it's important not to fudge the numbers here. Using this source[0], it seems like the population doubled, not tripled, from 911K to 1.84M. If we use that 10% to 7.5% drop, the city's black residents went from 91K to 138k. Hardly tripled, in fact only a 50% increase compared to over 100% population size increase. So the comparative growth was half as fast. I'd still say thats notable to the article's cultural context, though it doesn't support the claim of people being forced out inherently.

None of these numbers will give information on who was forced out. You'll need migratory data for that.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22926/austin/population#:....

Difficult thing is sometimes you look up a source for a city's population and they will show you the exact population of the city limits and sometimes they will show you the population of the metropolitan area. The article rounded up the actual census data from 9.5% to 10% for the 2000 numbers, but left the 2017 number at 7.5% (fudging with precision).

At any rate, if someone moves from East Austin to Del Valle or Manor, are they 'forced out of Austin'? Even if that move affords their family a larger living space? These are satellite communities only a couple miles further out of the city center.

No doubt East Austin has gotten much more expensive in the past 10 years, as the article underscores. There's still quite a bit of low income housing, but it's certainly making up a smaller portion. As the downtown corridor jumps across I-35 and expands east, more and more high rises are being built in East Austin, where older ranch houses and traditional neighborhoods used to exist.

The thing is, many of these older ranch houses on the east side aren't even in great shape and don't really fit modern standards. They have character, sure, but raising a family in a small, wooden, 2/1 or 3/1 1950s ranch house with bad upkeep is not necessarily a desirable thing. Migratory data alone is not enough to interpret the story.

100% in agreement on the nuance here. I used metro area above rather than city limits, and that will 100% not capture some of that neighborhood level migration away from the cultural center of the city. I think that's important to capture and wish the article did with more detail, but I think this point was meant to be an aside to a more qualitative story. I have no doubt the gentrification story of Austin has been covered in nuanced detail before this, so I hope people don't write off the article due to this.

Manor, in fact, is I think where many of the Black (and perhaps Latino) residents have gone.

Yeah, I choose to live in the metro area, but not in the city limits, because the taxes are much lower.

According to US Census data [0], between 2000 and 2010, the City of Austin (meaning the city proper not the metro area)'s "African American (non-Hispanic)" population fell by 5.4% (a decline of almost 3,500 people). Over the same time period, its overall population grew by around 20% (from 657,000 to 790,000). That seems more consistent with what the article says than with the picture you are painting.

[0] https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Planni...

That's a good find, I'd like to see the 2020 census data but we're still waiting on that. At any rate, when you look closer at the data from 2000 to 2010, you see several trends:

- Black 18+ pop increased from 45.5K to 46.2K - Black children pop decreased from 18.7K to 14.5K - Hispanic pop increased from 200K to 277K (most significant demographic increase) - White, non-Hispanic percentage decreased from 53% to 49% - Asian percentage increased from 4.7% to 6.3%

Either black people in Austin had less kids from 1992-2010 than 1982-2000 (possible, given the stable adult pop numbers) or black families left for the suburbs or other cities entirely.

In 2010, Austin real estate was still quite affordable and the east side was not quite developed (article mentions a house could be bought for $100K there).

I hate to state the obvious, but it's been a decade since 2010, even if the stats aren't conveniently to hand.

It's also a silly point to dwell on. Black people are not being forced out, less affluent people are.

While it's valid to be against the gentrification of a neighborhood. We should not conflate it with other issues.

There is a real problem, and that is black people are under represented in the upper classes. If you fix that problem this one goes away. If you try to keep the black percentage high in this area without fixing the wealth gap, I'm not sure that you are achieving much.

You know who is less represented in the upper class than black people? Poor people. If you fix that problem this one goes away.

I'm not surprised. The article struck me as particularly amateurish, which is unfortunate because the situation is an unusually nuanced and interesting one on a topic that's constantly talked about.

I'm interested in the nuanced version. I'm not familiar with the event. The article painted a pretty clear and unsympathetic story: "these folks have been gathering in this spot to do this thing weekly for 25 years, an expensive apartment building went up, and some of the residents who moved in don't like the event and want it canceled, citing a variety of flimsy pretexts."

So what's the interesting and unusual nuance that makes this story more interesting?

Strip the subjectivity and emotion away from your analysis for a moment (not permanently), and it's easy to see both sides. Construct and add the same amount of emotion/bias in the other direction and you can construct just as "obvious" a one-sided story for the other side! Just for fun, you can construct a weak form from just the phrase you used:

"these folks have been gathering in this spot to do this [illegal] thing weekly... residents... want it canceled, citing [the law]"

I don't agree with this reductive view, but to me it's not clearly more so than the one-sided perspective you expressed. As I mention in another comment, I think the question of community rights and "the tyranny of bureaucracy" is a fascinating and complex one, and don't think the situation is covered by simply noting that the gathering is clearly against the law[1] and isn't victimless. I don't personally recognize adherence to every detail of every law as the highest moral good (a view that's clearly widespread, even implicitly, as evidenced by the PD's refusal to do anything about the plainly-illegal event thus far, as mentioned in the article).

But the question of where exactly acceptable, public lawbreaking starts and ends is a complex and interesting one. Where exactly does the line fall for where lawbreaking should be grandfathered in? What's the plainly-obvious equation for how to calculate when a group of citizens is entitled to break the law, and does that apply to all citizens equally? If so, how widespread is this legal bubble? If the law itself is irredeemably flawed, why not repeal it? If it hasn't been repealed, and implicitly has the support of our democratic system, on what basis do we determine that the exception being granted has the consent of society?

None of these are rhetorical. Laws can obviously be unjust, as can specific by-the-book applications of overall-just laws. On top of that, not all important communities are concretely well-defined and not all important norms are codified. But I'm really puzzled by the claim that it's trivial and unnuanced to draw lines between the rule of law and the (many! contradicting!) uncodified moral convictions that it's being claimed should transcend collective decision-making about society's norms.

[1] The article mentions consistent violation of ordinances. To the extent that the complaint is about the legal parts of the gathering, I agree that the topic isn't especially interesting.

And the article gives little attention to what looks like the most serious safety issue to me:

The rims pictured in the article are one of the most dangerous things you can do to a car (and are not legal as shown) and present a massive safety risk to pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers.

It's basically turning the vehicle into something that will cause amputations/maiming if you're ever near anyone, and other road users won't necessarily see your "spikes" to be able to avoid them, especially in a busier environment. You might as well just stick swords or axes sticking out from your rims, because that's basically what they'll do in motion to anyone you get a little too close to.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to a lot of car culture modifications, but that particular class of modifications should be zero tolerance, car impounded on sight.

That a short haired Karen doesn’t want the smoke killing the trees.

Millions of people get screwed by the healthcare system but when writing an article about what that looks like you've got to pick a few relatable cases to follow.

There's no unusual nuance in this case. That's the point. It's a very typical example of a pattern that's happening all over. Money shows up and destroys culture.

Texas Monthly has a strong political agenda over anything else. They don't do much serious reporting other than overly dramatic fluff stories.

That stood out to me too. I didn’t know the exact figures, but the peculiar wording of it felt like the author was trying to slip one by me.

It's more likely that author doesn't even understand what they are writing, and is just grasping at factoids to mock up an argument.

Facts don't matter for certain people. That being said, I'm sympathetic to the people who like to parade and show off their custom cars. I used to see that in California when I first moved here. No drag racing, or dangerous stunts, just people driving cars slowly down the street.

I'm sympathetic as well, but cool cars with no drag race is a bit like sex with no climax. When I was a teen, we would gather in a shopping center to show off our cars and talk shit, and then drive out to a rural area to run quarter miles for fun. Good times!

Interestingly, this change in demographics is also associated with a shift in voting from republicans to democrats.

And this is extremely common, pretty much sums up modern days journalism, or the lack thereof.

And the political side of journalism, but I think we should avoid derailing the discussion.