Saving the Springs: Urban Expansion and Water Quality in Austin - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 44

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1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

Figure 3.6
The exponential population growth of Austin from 1840 to 2000. Source : City of Austin
2007a.

2000, the Austin population grew at an average rate of 40 percent per
decade due to aggressive marketing by a consortium of university admin-
istrators, municipal offi cials, and local entrepreneurs (see fi gure 3.6). 31
IBM was the fi rst major high-tech company to move to Austin in 1967,
followed by Texas Instruments in 1969, Motorola in 1974, and numerous
others in subsequent decades. In 1988, Inc. magazine named Austin the
leading entrepreneurial city in the United States due to the large number
of new enterprises being created. 32 Companies were attracted by Austin's
affordable land, an educated and low-wage workforce, a university with
strong science and technology programs, access to growing southwestern
markets, and—perhaps most important—an attractive environment for
residential life. 33 The social and material conditions created a winning
formula for realizing “the good life” both at work and at play by embrac-
ing an “urban growth machine” strategy. 34
The urban growth machine narrative of Austin's development diverges
sharply from the green romanticism of the residents at Barton Springs.
The dissonance between these two interpretations of Austin's future would
serve as the crux of local political confl ict beginning in the 1970s that
pitted growth proponents against environmental preservationists. One