[0]: https://www.texascentral.com/project/
Edit: Whoops, wrong project. Still, the plans are there, we just need willing politicians.
Is this a state policy? It isn't necessarily a city one, see https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article2... and related which I've seen pop up in the news at time for decades. "The City Council has authorized the use of eminent domain 29 times in the past two years, the most the city has used the land grabbing tactic since 2013."
The people downvoting this have clearly never had government agents steal anything from them. Or believe that when they do, it’s always “for the greater good”.
Best private alternative I've found is Vonlane (https://vonlane.com/) - takes longer than flying but it's a business class bus so you can get work done.
Unless you have exceptionally fast and direct rail, the train is almost always slower than driving, even in Europe, when counted door to door.
This is in contrast with e.g. the "Northeast Corridor," where dense towns (sometimes denser than Texas's urban cores) line the roads and rail links between the major cities.
There's still a ton of farmland/open/rural space, but you pass a number of smaller cities along the highway (Waco, Temple, West, etc), and some of them have been exploding economically. Some are unrecognizable from how they used to look
I can't really compare it to the Northeast Corridor, though. I lived in NYC, but not long enough to really have a connection much beyond the city.
My place is inside the 610 in Houston. More precisely Third Ward/Museum District.
I think even most Texans wouldn't put Austin and Dallas in the same region. Dallas is radically different from Houston as well.
That said, if you look at what they are calling mega-regions, I think there are many departures from what people in those areas would think. For instance, most people in North Carolina would think of the Triangle as its own thing and Atlanta as another, separate thing. Here, they are saying that Atlanta and the Triangle are the same. Maybe because of people connections? Not sure? But that would strike people in the Southeast as strangely as looping Austin-Dallas-Houston into the same thing strikes Texans.
ETA:
Actually, now that I've looked more closely at the map, I'm not sure it lines up at all with what most people would think? I notice in the Midwest region, Columbus and Dayton are on the map in spite of Chicago's rail links to St Louis, Urbana-Champaign, and perhaps the most baffling omission on the map, Minneapolis? They got some serious economic firepower up there in that metro, and more commercial links between them and Chicago than anyone else in the region. Maybe because Minneapolis is thought to be its own thing? Whereas they don't believe Dayton or Columbus are their own thing?
It'd be interesting to read how these regions were determined? On the surface, yes, many of them seem a bit, off?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_Stat...
1. Pretty much all the cities in Texas are rather progressive now - like pretty much everywhere else it's an urban/rural divide now. Houston was the first city in the US with a lesbian mayor.
2. Austin is still the tech center, but I've started to see more companies (and people) move to Houston or Dallas as Austin has gotten ridiculously expensive.
3. You are correct about the wide expanses of nothingness in between the major urban/suburban areas, but I don't think that's quite critical to the author's thesis. That said, as Austin has gotten more expensive I lot of areas further out that I used to think of "nothingness" now have seen big booms. Lots of places between Austin and San Antonio in particular feel like they've exploded over the past decade.
4. One thing that I think that you're likely to miss from asking HNers is that, at least among people I know, there is much more "connectedness" among the cities between people and industries not in tech vs. those in tech. E.g. on the upper end folks I know in legal and banking travel fairly frequently between some of these cities, and on the lower end I know a bunch of Mexican immigrants that have friends and family spread out in San Antonio, Houston and Austin.
The big question in my mind is climate change. I've lived in Austin for a quarter century, and while our summers are always hot, last year was a new beast entirely - relentess week after week after week of 105-110 weather. I'm doing everything I can to get out of Austin in the summer now.
Plus, very few are even thinking of flying between the cities. Car ownership is high that flying to visit one of the other cities is definitely an edge case.
But more to your point, there are plenty of other sizable cities that are not part of the megaregions the author highlights, and I would agree that those cities are less dynamic and less engines of economic growth due to their isolation - places like Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, etc. The only difference I think is that it "feels" to me like there is an emerging megaregion on the eastern slope of the Front Range in Colorado, i.e. Ft. Collins-Boulder-Denver-Colorado Springs area.
However that someone in Dallas is more likely to choose a supplier in Austin than one in Boston is interesting - once you leave Dallas does the extra distance to Boston mean anything? I can come up with all kinds of weird ideas.
1. Distinctive set of demographic and economic realities
This is not a very compelling argument. Different places have different people. We should not be surprised by this observation.
2. Integrated economic system within a single state
Same article also cites other one-state megaregions like Florida, Southern California, Nortern California.
Much better than boring old oval megaregions.
Yeah, this also seems pretty unsurprising. California, Texas, and Florida are the three largest states by population, and Texas and California are second and third by area respectively. Florida does seem like a bit of an outlier here due to being much smaller, but because of Florida's shape, the majority of the state doesn't border any other, so this seems more like a geographic property of the megaregion rather than a political one.
[1] https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs4896/files/images/U...
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/02/university-texas-aus...
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/09/texas-legislature-ab...
Said it for years, thinking you're safe because you live in a comparatively liberal community or subculture within a state dominated by right wing zealots is foolish in the extreme.
They "came" for "immigrants," trans kids, gay marriage, women's rights, etc., and they're going for more.
I would never move there, I won't travel there, and my daughters sure as f--k won't apply to colleges there or take jobs there.
Not until Abbot and Paxton and Cruz and their ilk are gone forever.
If you were going to include Spokane, it isn't that much of a stretch to include Boise as well.
The author has several associations, but his official title on LinkedIn is: Director for Economic Growth at George W. Bush Institute https://www.linkedin.com/in/cullum-clark-09549159/
I feel like articles like this is mentally preparing the American public for a potential secession states forming post-election.