In recent years, urbanization has become a dominant narrative in American cities like Austin. Since the 1990s, Austin has touted the “smart growth” concept, which should have more people rushing to live centrally rather than in suburbs.
And downtown Austin is indeed a more popular place to live than ever. However, contrary to the popular narratives, Redfin Corp. finds that Austin homebuyers are actually moving farther from the urban core, rather than closer to it. That’s bad news for traffic, which is cited as one of Austin’s biggest problems.
The Seattle-based real estate brokerage and technology company recently released a report that found home sales in Austin are moving farther from downtown. The median Austin home sold in 2011 was 13.2 miles from the city center. Four years later, that distance had grown to 14.8 miles. Austin’s 12.3 percent increase was the second highest among the 31 U.S. cities studied by Redfin… Read more from the Austin Business Journal
In light of recent headlines regarding the Austin metropolitan area surpassing 2 million residents and earning the distinction as the fastest growing metropolitan area with a population of more than 1 million, will future residents continue the trend toward sprawl?”