Author: asoybel

South by SouthWHY? Why Locals Should Accept SXSW

asoybel

Now that the buzz from Austin’s “South By Southwest ” has calmed down a bit, lets reflect on the event in the context of population.

First of all, just what is South By Southwest? Well, sxsw.com explains that South By is “13 days of industry conferences, a 4-day trade show, a 6-night music festival featuring more than 2,100 bands, and a 9-day film festival with more than 400 screenings.” With those features, who wouldn’t want to attend, really? But, we’ll get to that later. Let’s focus on who does. In 2014, SXSW was said to bring in registrants from 87 countries and bands from 57 countries. This is an international event, all happening right here, in Austin, Texas.

With all of those people coming into our little, aforementioned “anti-growth” city, where does everyone stay? Well, 60,458 room nights were booked in over 70 official hotels, with a whopping 13,990 individual reservations booked!  And if you’re late on booking your room, or just want another feel for the city, you can always rent out some space at someones apartment! Thankfully, we have that kind-hearted southern charm to accommodate y’all! Well, some of us anyway.

Image by Forbes

Take a look at what  Number 9, Jacob, has to say about South By Southwest. His telephoto lens and sad puppy eyes tell a story that anyone who’s resided in Austin for more than a year knows too well. “When do I get my city back?” Well Jacob, you’ll get your “it’s-only-around-the-corner” line at Hopdoddy back soon enough, we promise. But is it really all bad, Jacob? We get it, I-35 is rough, you already can’t handle the traffic. We understand that the only reason someone would attempt 6th street is for the adrenaline rush of drowning among other humans. We know, really, we do.

Image from realityaustin.com

 

Hear us out though, lets take a look at some numbers, again. The total impact of South By Southwest in 2014 created  315.3 million dollars for the Austin economy in revenue in just those few, albeit, chaotic days. What does that mean? Do we really have to explain that money = good?  Just for a little modest comparison, the entire Longhorns Football season (almost half a year), only brought in a total revenue of 109 million (and we know how Texans just love football).

Lastly, don’t you as an Austinite want a tight grip on the title of “Live Music Capital of the World?” If so, and if you want what’s best for your city, you’ll grin and bear the beautiful chaos that is South By Southwest.

Photo by Jose Lozano

Photo by Jose Lozano

All data is from SXSW 2014, 2015 stats have not yet been published 

 

The head of Texas is feeling a little congested

asoybel

Forbes lists Austin, Texas as the 4th US city with the worst traffic, sandwiched between San Francisco at number 3 and New York at 5.  So just how is it that a laid back, eclectic, and fun-loving city like Austin has such an appalling case of congestion? We’re about to get into that.

Coincidentally, Forbes also lists Austin as the fastest growing city in the nation with a population of 1.8 million and a  growth rate of 2.8%! This is a heavily weighted factor in our dilemma of traffic jams for a few reasons.

First of all, as stated in this NPR article, Austin has long been a city opposed to growth and industrialization. The liberal atmosphere never allowed for mass growth and therefore, no infrastructure was erected in regards to that sentiment. The article continues stating that this mentality is one of a “If We Don’t Build It, They Won’t Come” idealization. However, this thought process has obviously failed any Austinite that has driven ( if you call 2 mph “driving”) along I-35 around 4:30-6pm. Actually, KXAN states that Austin drivers wasted a sum of 41 total hours stuck in traffic in 2014.

However, there is hope! Gov. Tech. explains the possibility of utilizing crowd sourcing for data on how to better improve traffic lights. This could potentially be a structural answer to the ever-lasting issue of traffic. Ideally, this smart-version of congestion control is something we could see being implemented in the next few years. Another structural solution is that of infrastructure like ideas such as Prop. 1 have  proposed. Unfortunately,  Austin’s residents seemed to think implementing a railway in a strange location would be an unnecessary waste of tax dollars.

Another phenomenon to observe is the course of housing costs and their correlation with traffic. Various residents often cite having to move complete locations in order to happily commute to work or leisure. Therefore, housing rates increase and make Austin a more expensive place to live.

Each of these occurrences, stemming from Austin’s desire to maintain it’s cool and quirky vibe have consequentially been it’s visible downfall. And unfortunately, if structural answers aren’t put into place, we might see this once lively, peculiar, city become a town full of angry motorists.

Lastly, If there’s one nice thought to have while you’re stuck watching the sunset on the capitol building as the hours go by, it’s that traffic has been shown to have a direct relation with economic health. So if you’re not doing well in the traffic, at least your city is!

I-35 photo by Deborah Cannon

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

asoybel

Okay, we’re not going to waste your time here *pun seriously intended*. But what we do want to do is talk about waste, and why it’s got us buzzing over here at Pop Pulse! Have you ever checked this out? With all of these people being added to the world on a daily – millisecond – basis, it’s hard to imagine how much waste we actually produce. So we’re going to break it down for y’all!

“Waste and wastes implies unwanted or unusable materials.”

Specifically, if we’re talking about a consumerist, capitalist, market economy, (like that of this glorious nation that we’re based in), we’re speaking in terms of supply and demand. This means that the consumers in the market are making the rules about what is being produced. And naturally, when man is able to pick and choose, the overbearing flaws any system are amounted to human error. In this case, I’ll compare it to the the ” eyes bigger than your stomach” effect.

Now, if you didn’t have grandparents like mine, I’ll break it down for you: Grandma bakes a pumpkin pie, I love pumpkin pie, so I go up and get three slices… Unfortunately my 12 year old stomach can only handle maybe one slice, so the other two contaminated pieces are thrown away (lets pretend my parents weren’t human garbage disposals). With that analogy in mind, it’s easier to understand why so much waste is produced in our country. But just how much waste are we talking? And why should anyone care? Well don’t worry, we’re getting there.

If we’re talking about one person and their day-to-day pumpkin pie struggles, along with product packaging and everything else that produces waste, well they typically produce 4.3 pounds of waste per day. So if we reference that population tallier from earlier, we’ve got about 1376000000 lbs of waste a day in the U.S. given that each individual balances that mass out for each other. That’s 3060 statues of liberty in mass, just for a bit of perspective.

So just where do we put all of that waste? Well, the majority of our nation’s waste is either distributed to landfills, or combusted. The problem with the former, is that we get air pollution and ground water pollution. As we should know by now, humans are a contributor to the issue of greenhouse gases — in particular, methane and carbon dioxide. These gases have harmful effects to the environment and climate.  Older landfills that were constructed before recent legal constraints lack liners to prevent chemicals from leaching into the surrounding groundwater – therefore contaminating drinking and crop water. Not to mention, landfills are visually displeasing.

So unless we change something… we obviously have a problem.