random US city response, probably

Not random. You just described Houston, Texas.

not just any rando city, literally Austin https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin

what if we add another 7 lane highway that cuts right through the center?

That's hard to do now since we've run out of affluent African-American neighborhoods to build them through.

Even that headline image is Jesus Christ. Temporally closed ramp onto a packed full outer road from a freeway that's sitting squarely in the E rating. (Can't move without major effort)

I feel like for $7.5 billion they could build a city wide monorail system with tons of stops. Charge a few bucks a ride and it pays for itself. Or make it totally free and see what happens when your city suddenly has total freedom of movement. Bet it would have huge economic benefits for everyone. (So of course it'll never happen.)

significantly worse than other cities like Atlanta Philly and Baltimore

Wait. Atlanta resident here. There are cities worse than us?

You are so close to understanding ... as long as there are roads ... there will be traffic ...

The solution isn't build more roads and enable car culture more, the solution is to stop catering to cars and build less roads. Instead build more public transit. Literally stop catering to cars, make cars less viable as a transportation method by limiting how much space is available to them. Cities can work just fine without cars.

In terms of political strategy it's remarkably short sighted. By preserving their supermajority in Texas and Florida, Republicans assure that they will win both states in the electoral college... Which is the base case. There's no net improvement.

But to accomplish that, they've pissed off people who now have strong incentive to vote against Republicans and driven them away to other states -- including swing states. Diehard Republicans from other states are increasingly moving to Texas and Florida however, which further reduces their voter base in swing states. A voter base that is getting smaller by the day due to aging vs their opponent's base that's getting larger by the day, and a base that had preventable deaths from COVID had they not believed in conspiracy theories.

They're just shooting themselves in the foot to own tech workers and turn them against Republicans. This is one reason why I think Republicans couldn't win in 2022, and only managed to barely take the House and lose a Senate seat. The factors are piling up against them, to the point that they have a mixed election result, when the economy was rough and inflation was high and Democrats had a trifecta.

Fingers crossed, I think the crows are finally coming home to roost.

Journalism I guess. Would you say that he 'slammed' Austin?

Insider spoke to six workers in tech who recently left Austin or are trying to relocate ...

I assume being in Silicon Valley means you are around other tech startups and people in the tech industry. Half of being a startup is getting industry connections and getting your name in the paper.

Silicon Valley is where all the VCs are. They make a lot of their funding decisions based on whether they like hanging around with a founder or not. You're more likely to get money out of them if you're fun to drink beers with than if you have a great business plan.

A friend of mine in that area gets a ton of networking done in person, visiting mixers held by Google and Meta, etc. It hasn't worked for her mostly because she's... kinda bad at good ideas, but damn she's good at getting free tech interns and knowing a guy who knows a guy with endless wealth who will at least hear your pitch deck.

I'd say that would tip the scales for a tech startup over a remote one, although location alone isn't going to earn you those tech innovation bucks.