Austin Contrarian

New look

I'm still fiddling with the colors.  But I like the 3-column format.  I switched fonts.  I'd gotten really tired of Trebuchet.

Good news on comments.  They're now threaded.  And you don't have to use captcha.

Facelift

I can not stand this blog's design.  I just can't look at it any more.  I will be giving it a facelift tonight.  Or reconstructive surgery.

Why help build someone else's web site for free?

Kevin Brass at the Chronicle has a piece questioning the start-up Austin Post's business model, which is, "Write for us for free in exchange for exposure."  Spike Gillespie, a professional writer, understandably takes exception: 

"If I want exposure, I'll hop up on the bar and take my shirt off, thank you very much," wrote Gillespie, the author of several books and a columnist with national credentials. "And how soon will the promised exposure net me invitations from still more websites willing to not pay me for my writing in exchange for still more exposure?"

I'm occasionally asked to write for other websites, and occasionally I agree.  And sometimes I agree but later regret it.

I'm not a professional writer (except when I'm writing for stuffy old judges), and I've never made any money off my blog.  I write just to be read.

So you might think that I view any exposure as good exposure.  I don't.  Exposure costs.  It takes time to write a piece -- sometimes, a long time.  Even if I'm doing little more than cross-posting, I have to rewrite my entries for the site's specific  audience.  The exposure has to be worth this cost.

The kind of exposure matters.  Obviously, the size of the other site's audience is important.  But it also has to have a bunch of readers who care about the type of stuff I write about.  Mine is a niche blog.

And exposure is not the end all and be all.  I want people to be exposed to the sum of my work, not a stray entry that they might scan for 15 seconds before the next click.  If I can't entice them to my blog with back links, I won't waste my time.   

It took me nearly three years to settle on these criteria.   But they have helped and will help me ration my time wisely.  They tell me that writing for free for a start up with a small circulation is a bad use of my time budget.    

If every blogger had my callous attitude, of course, there would be no start ups like the Austin Post.

Shrug. 

My new blog

Urban Returns.

I started Austin Contrarian to write about Austin land-use issues.  Land-use fights are bloodsport in this town; I enjoy writing about them and will continue to do so.  

But over the last three years, I've branched out.  I'm now as likely to write about urban economics, demographics, New Urbanism or some other topic that has nothing to do with Austin in particular.  Lately, I've been writing about these other things more frequently because development has dried up in Austin.

Today, about half of my readers are out-of-towners.  I don't imagine they care one jot about Austin's noise ordinance, the Waterfront Overlay Ordinance, the McMansion Ordinance or the VMU Ordinance.  On the other hand, I doubt most of my Austin readers care about the more esoteric economics or demographics I like to write about.  They started reading this blog for detailed coverage of zoning disputes.

It's gotten harder and harder to juggle these two audiences without alienating one or the other.  So I will divide my blogging.  In this blog, I will write exclusively about Austin -- zoning disputes, water rationing, city politics, congestion and all the other Austin-related topics I've covered over the years.  If an entry has a significant Austin angle, i will post it here.

At Urban Returns, I will write about everything else.

There will be some overlap.  If I think one of my Austin entries will interest out-of-towners, I will cross-post.  An example would be my entry on cul-de-sacs.  I will err on the side of cross-posting.

So:  If you read my blog for the zoning coverage or other local issues, don't go anywhere.  If you don't care about Austin zoning disputes or ponderous exigeses of the noise ordinance or the land-use code, go to Urban Returns.  You won't miss anything here.

If you're one of those who likes both, then you'll just have to add another blog to your feed reader.  Sorry.

You can subscribe to my Urban Returns feed here:

Subscribe in a reader

Or by e-mail here:

Subscribe to Urban Returns by Email

One bit of housekeeping:  I don't want separate comment threads when I cross-post.  When I cross-post I will close comments here and include a link to the cross-post at Urban Returns.  Urban Returns will have threaded comments, though (if the software is working right).  I hope that's some compensation for the inconvenience.

What does blogging crowd out?

Matthew Kahn wonders whether blog reading crowds out book reading.  He believes there are two types of blog readers:  the nerdy "Wikipedia" types who like variety and suffer from slight attention deficit order, and the "deep readers" who want to dig deep in a few subjects.  He speculates that books are substitutes for the Wikipedia nerds and complements for the deep readers.

I read more books since I've started reading blogs.  I don't buy more books, but I read more of the books I do buy.  I've always bought books on impulse but then let them sit on a shelf.  The real reason I read more books now, I think, is that I blog myself.  Books stimulate ideas for new posts, of course.  But, more importantly, I can only say the same thing a few times without getting bored.  I long ago exhausted my own stock of ideas so I have to rip off others'.  

What does my blogging crowd out?  Baseball.  Football.  I used to watch two or three baseball games a week.  I don't anymore.

Some TV, but, honestly, not that much.  My prime TV watching time has always started at 10 pm with the Simpsons.   I used to watch TV before 10, but I can't really remember what I watched, so I guess I'm watching TV more "efficiently."

Blogging crowds out some work.  I used to hustle harder for new business when I was slow.  I haven't sat down to estimate my lost earnings from blogging -- that might make me quit (blogging, that is, not work).  Still, work is work; there hasn't been too much to take from there.

I think my blogging has mostly crowded out dead time.  I don't know whether I used to just sit around staring blankly at a wall or what, but when I do the math, the time I spend on blogging and reading exceeds -- by a lot -- the time I used to spend on activities since crowded out.

My piece at Newgeography

Here.

My thesis:  Central Austin has a strikingly low percentage of families compared to the suburbs.  None of the usual explanations applies -- i.e., central Austin families (except for those in a few neighborhoods) have not abandoned central Austin because of crime, overcrowding, post-industrial blight, bad schools, or the flight of jobs to the suburbs.  The only explanation, I think, is that Austin's suburbs have better, bigger and cheaper housing.

I did not offer a prescription.  Anyone who reads this blog can guess, though.  We need more multi-family in central Austin to relieve the price pressure on single-family homes and to give households more options.  (Multi-family has many other benefits besides these, of course.)  And we need to make it easier to upgrade central Austin's generally older, smaller and inferior housing stock.   The McMansion ordinance did not cause this divide, but it certainly won't help.  (For those who don't know, the McMansion ordinance bans even relatively modest homes on some lots, homes no one would call a McMansion.)

I often experience buyer's remorse after writing a piece like this because I'm afraid my single friends will take it the wrong way.  I don't think families with children are more important or "better" than other households.  I merely think Austin's core must have a good mix of households to remain healthy.  (The suburbs would be healthier, too, if they offered singles or couples something other than inexpensive  housing in compartmentalized pods.)  Balance matters, if for no reason other than allowing us to continue using the expensive assets (like schools) already in place.  I don't think we have a good balance now.

For those interested, here is my previous piece at Newgeography.

Me on KUT

A couple of brief quotes.  Around the 1:54 mark.  

Thanks, Nathan Bernier, for not making me sound like an idiot.

KUT

I was just interviewed by KUT about my support for Chris Riley in the Place 1 race. I managed to garble my piercing insights, of course. Perhaps the reporter will be kind.

If my interview isn't left on the cutting room floor, a snippet will air next Monday or Tuesday during the morning show.

Kinney Oaks Court

My neighborhood of "urban homes" shows it is possible to build relatively affordable single-family homes in central Austin.  (Emphasis on "relatively" -- they start at $250,000-ish, which is a good deal for new, detached housing in 78704 but obviously not everyone's idea of affordable housing.)

Today's Statesman has a little article about my neighborhood that makes the same point:   

Driving through the quiet neighborhoods just south of South Lamar Boulevard and Kinney Road, you can often detect traces of an older, slower South Austin. There are no grid layouts here. The roads ramble, sometimes past tree-shrouded lots big enough to hark back to the days of cow pastures and farmhouses and pecan orchards.

Then at the south end of Kinney, you come upon a pocket of surprising density. Houses are snugly packed together and wrapped around a central green area, giving the feel of — dare we say it — a Northeastern town. In one small front yard, a mom and her baby rest on a narrow strip of grass, looking up at the sky.

This is Kinney Oaks Court, a compact development of 55 homes that broke ground a decade ago, and it feels like the South Austin of the future. In an era when we can't have it all, trade-offs must be made; will it be a big backyard, or a 78704 address within a bike ride of Barton Springs?

Ben Davis and his wife were the second family to move in here in 2000. "The main thing we got was a pretty nice big house in a really cool part of South Austin," Davis said. "And because the lot was small, it was affordable." Davis' son spends hours in the central green playing happily with pals; as in a city, kids without backyards all head for the one open space.

Across the green from the Davises, Rene Huey-Lipton and her husband, Lowell, and their two children are the latest to move in, and they already feel right at home.

"It's a great area with friendly neighbors," Huey-Lipton says. "We have teachers, artists, a City Council member — it's culturally diverse. And we're still close to downtown."

She left "influential bloggers" off her list, but then she's new.  (I don't think any City Council members live in our area.) 

View Larger Map

Really no point here other than that I'm a goober who gets excited about seeing his neighborhood in the paper.

I'm twittering

Hesitantly.  I'm not sure I want people to know how dull I am, but they've probably figured it out already.