NPR's Talk of the Nation: Changing Face of America

Live Town Hall: Austin, Texas
with special guests Louis Black & John Butler

Listen to the entire Town Hall Meeting

High-Tech Haven or Paradise Lost?
Austin is the model “technopolis” -- where the business, academic and government sectors work together to speed economic development and improve quality of life. It’s precisely that quality of life which drew most people to Austin beginning in the 1960s and helps high-tech companies recruit new employees to Central Texas.

In the 1970's migrants were mostly white, liberal escapees from the west and east coasts, and Texans in search of their own Berkeley. Many first showed up to attend the University of Texas or because they heard it was “a cool town” and twenty-five years later still haven’t left.

Austinites are protective of the Paradise they’ve found and fostered. Some say the good old days in Austin are in danger, because rising real estate costs discourage artists from living or working in prime locations. How does Austin maintain its identity as a livable, viable center of artistic creativity when high-tech workers are pricing the funk out of town? As University of Texas Professor Dave Gibson puts it, “How can Austin keep unbridled growth and greed from destroying the quality of life that gave birth to our technopolis?” And what about those Austinites who missed both waves, where are they? I-35 is this city’s “Berlin Wall,” separating working-class Blacks and Latinos on the east side from institutional Austin on the west.
Louis Black

Guest: Louis Black, founder and editor-in-chief of the Austin Chronicle (the free alternative weekly paper); founder and CEO of South By Southwest (SXSW) the annual music festival that is a huge boon to the economy each March. Black turns 50 this year, grew up in Teaneck New Jersey and attended UT’s film school. He is a founding father of the 70s alternative Austin creative scene. Like many baby boomers Black has grown up and matured along with Austin.

Immigrant Pioneers Ignite
Entrepreneurial America
Each new entrepreneurial success story confirms America’s belief in the ability of the individual to rewrite his or her destiny. This is most clearly at work in the year 2000 in the Lone Star State. Adventurers had sought success in cows and oil in Texas only to boom, bust and boom again.

Today’s oil is not out in the ground, but in computer and other high-tech opportunities. And one of the greatest needs of the high-tech industry is people -- talented, creative workers. The new immigrants coming to Austin were born abroad, but also hail from other parts of Texas and the U.S. According to longtime Austin resident John Butler, author of the soon to be published, Immigrant & Minority Entrepreneurship: The Rebuilding of American Communities, one out of eight self-employed people here is an immigrant. Right now UT has nearly 4,000 students from 115 countries across all fields of study, and if they are like their American classmates, four years in Austin will hook them for life.
John Butler

What repercussions does a constant influx of newcomers have on a town’s values, education, and identity? With all of these highly educated minorities coming in, what does that mean for the current Latino and Black population?

Guest: John Butler, author of the soon to be published, Immigrant & Minority Entrepreneurship: The Rebuilding of American Communities.

The Changing Face of America is an 18-month-long NPR series that tells the stories of regular, everyday Americans and the issues they face at a time of rapid and dramatic change in the U.S. This special series can be heard on NPR's Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered and Morning Edition. The Changing Face of America series is sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts.