[technofiend]

>Residents of Austin, TX have been complaining that the city changed or got too crowded shortly after they moved in

I've been told Austin's city council mulishly refused to see the growth trend and didn't annex the hills around the city when they had the chance. Austin waterways like Bull Creek went from summertime swimming holes to unsafe to enter due to septic tank runoff and high levels of coliform bacteria because city services - sewerage in particular - weren't extended to those areas.

People who lived there really hoped the usual waxing and waning of population in cadence with student university attendance would go on forever. But according to an aunt who lived there from the 1960s until property taxes priced her out a few years ago, too many people loved it and moved back after school or just never left and it sort of snowballed from there. Her anecdotal evidence was the cashiers at her Half Price Books stores she managed often had Masters degrees but chose to work there rather than move and find a better job elsewhere.

These days people running a cash register while holding an advanced degree is more of a cliche than remarkable evidence that some place is so special you'd rather be underpaid there than be paid better somewhere else.

But yeah to hear her tell it, in her forty years there every decade that passed brought some unwelcome change to Austin.