I grew up in a small town just north of Austin, and lived in town after college for a few years. If you aren't a big foodie or into live music, there's really not much reason to live there. Horrible traffic, surface-of-the-sun hot, wildly overpriced, geographically uninteresting, etc.

People are generally very friendly and it's a blue city in a deeply red state, which I personally appreciate, but I'd live in inner-loop Houston before moving back to Austin, and in turn I'd live in just about any other coastal state before moving back to Texas.