Keep Austin Peaceful

Eric, 20 September 2003

Note to Self:

You started this letter six months ago and never finished it, mostly because you were living in another hemisphere and found it difficult to fully engage from there. This day you find yourself in Austin. You've been here for three weeks, and will be here for three weeks more – six times the one week you pencil whipped for Austin on your travel itinerary. In fact, you're going to have to tear yourself from this magical place when you finally get around to leaving. The air here is saturated with consciousness – even the trees and squirrels and birds and geckos and turtles seem to know the obvious – Austin is a special place. You are not one of the old-timers, yet, but for over a quarter of your life, you’ve watched Austin grow and evolve. You asked a righteously chill cabbie who has lived here his entire life, how the vibe has changed in Austin over the past quarter century and he put it something like this: “Two kinds of people move to Austin – those who love it for what it is, and those who want to change it into something else. It comes in waves.”

In addition to the purple hair and “Peace” bumper stickers, you’ve seen a lot of new t-shirts around town reading "Keep Austin Weird." That's nice. That's much nicer than the endless battles over aquifers and cave bugs and national retailers like Wal-Mart and Border’s. Why the difference? Because in the one hand you give your power to everyone but yourself, while in the other, you give yourself unlimited power to create the Austin that you want – it is you who patronize the restaurants and stores and live music venues; it is you who fill the office buildings; it is you who enroll for a given course or professor. What to make of citizens and business people and stewards of land turning to external authorities to protect them from evildoers? What are they afraid of? The question is relevant. The very freedom that permits you to be weird is the very treasure that is thrown in jeopardy every time heavy handed tactics are used to impose one’s vision for Austin upon another. To wield the force of government against your neighbors is nothing short of threatening them with a loaded gun, because, taken to its conclusion, that’s exactly what it is. The spirit of Andy Griffith, sadly, seems to exist now only in re-runs.

The next time a perceived menace threatens Austin, make it clear to that undesirable, far in advance and in no uncertain terms, that if they come, against your wishes, the only sound in their impervious parking lot will be the chirping of crickets, and the only sound in their buildings will be the buzz of fluorescent lights, because you will not, in any form, direct your energy, financial or otherwise, to that entity. Have you an understanding of what a ten percent reduction in projected market size will do to the financial analysis of a large scale capital investement? It produces an effect similar to the effect that a big chunk of frozen water had on the Titanic.

A CEO or corporate real estate executive beholden to shareholders has both tremendous power and intense accountability for making profits. Compare that to a politician who is hamstrung at every turn by throngs of people seeking power where it does not exist. It is not the politicians’ fault – you dilute their power every time you put your responsibility on them. You do not need a politician to help you send an email to the one person who will most influence whether or not to move forward on a large scale capital project, that decision being driven almost exclusively in these times by financial ROI – all you need is his or her email address. With the untapped power of email, communicating this message to the appropriate party is virtually without financial cost, little time is needed, and no authority is required – you just send them an email – you and several hundred neighbors from within the “rooftop radius” calculated by someone just doing her job and feeding her family so that she too can enjoy living weird in Austin.

You tell them what will and will not be profitable in your community.

There will be casualties. The undesirables will not believe you at first – they will rely on every available statistic and market study that proves beyond all doubt that if they build it, you will come – and when you do not come, the undesirables will wither and something new will take their place. And once you have proven that you will stand by your convictions, no entity in its right mind will come here to feed. They will still come, but they will tread lightly, as partners and neighbors, and not as predators. For perhaps it is an enemy within orchestrating the fray unnoticed. The impervious cover of parking lots and the traffic congestion and the shuttering of local businesses under the weight of foreign competition, are caused by you who make it possible by officing in those places, by driving to those locations, and by directing your energy, financial and otherwise, into those establishments.

Austin will never stop developing – if it does, we are all in trouble. It will continue to change, for as one of your favorites so wisely interprets, “The Road Goes on Forever.” The question then becomes what road do you choose? Is it a road of grappling with your neighbors for the pistol of government, or a road of helping your neighbors realize their own pursuit of weirdness in whatever ways you can, such as helping them market their land to end-users that are compatible with Austin and harmonious with your own pursuits, with economics that reflect the true value to Austin of the asset managed under conscious stewardship. Or it could be as simple as putting your money where your mouth is. Once you have redirected the evolution of this city through nothing more than honest communication, you will have open lines to tell the people with the tools what you do want in your community. If you compensate them fairly, they will build you whatever you want. So, if you do not want X and you do not want Y, what do you want? Tell them and they will come.

Austin is already a leader in so many ways, and Austin will master this form of activism over the coming decade to the point that it becomes a shining example for other communities of the planet - communities that will appreciate the light. What do you think it costs to send an email? It's got to be less than what you just paid for this iced Chai at Mozart’s.

It’s good that Austin exists – very good. I hope you never change – and that you always change.

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