Regional Growth and Landscape Change: The Austin-San Antonio Corridor

Regional Growth and Landscape Change:

The Austin-San Antonio Corridor

James Vaughan, Ph.D.Texas State University-San Marcos

Las Vegas – April 20, 2009

Austin San Antonio

1950 2000 % ChangeUSA 151,325,798281,421,906 86.0Texas 7,711,194 20,851,820 170.4Austin/San Antonio Corridor 813,126 2,842,146 249.5Austin 132,459 656,302 395.5San Antonio 408,442 1,144,554 180.2

East-West Dichotomy The Balcones

Escarpment and I-35Hill Country v. Blackland Prairie

Scenes from western Comal County (left) and Caldwell County (above and below)

Baron Otto von Meusebach - 1845

Hog Wranglers getting ready to drive hogs to market in Kerrville Sheep ranching in Blanco County

William J Young – family moved from Alabama to Bastrop County in 1838 .

Martindale Dam in Caldwell County – site of cotton gin

Above: Picking cotton in Williamson CountyBelow: the Bryson boys, Civil War veterans from South Carolina

Growth Rates 1980 - 2000

Income: Region

Persons

below Povert

y Level

House Value

House Size

(Based on houses with four or more bedrooms)

Isolation

Bandera County near Lost Maples

Tubing on the Guadalupe River

“Undulating cinematic beauty . . . not unlike a Scottish Moor . . . with lush grasses tall enough to tickle the underbelly of a mustang pony.”(as advertised by idealdestinations.com)

Expansion in scale of differentiation – (Ford 1995)Invasion and succession at a grander scale driven not by local conditions but by the global economy and consumerism (Park, Burgess, and McKenzie 1925)

New tract home development east of IH-35 near New Braunfels

Ahh ...…WOW!

Overwhelming Forces: the Power of Growth

Austin Tomorrow Plan overwhelmedProvision of infrastructure co-opted by

LCRA and MUDs; bond failureMotorola plant, change in City

Council, Barton Creek MallSan Antonio: no need for MUDsPlanning used to facilitate economic activity and growth, or as a form of Mandarinism playing “handmaiden to conservative politics” (Kravitz 1970)