I think Austin is the best because it has everything. The hill country is awesome, you get close access to a lot of outdoor activities by driving. Sixth street is the best night-life spot in Texas. It's also pretty clean and well-maintained. On the downside, it's a little bit small. I would rank Dallas and Houston as about the same. Dallas is more stuck-up but is more walkable and has nicer areas than Houston on the whole imo. Houston has nicer people and is more diverse. San Antonio I rank behind. Has nothing besides the River Walk.
Did you really just put Dallas in the same class as Houston? Then on top of that, you said Houston has NICER people?........I wouldn't say that myself. Either way, I'd rank it 1. Austin 1.5. Houston 2. San Antonio 3. Dallas
Ugh, another one of these threads. Can we just say every city in Texas offers something unique and different, and leave it at that? There isn't one right answer as it's impossible to rate Houston (a city with close to 6 million people) with Austin ( much smaller) and keep things equal. The only thing I think everybody can agree on is that Dallas is terrible. By the way, your reasoning behind putting Dallas and Houston even with each other is kinda weak. Rank them in terms of global importance, and all of a sudden "walkability" seems pretty inconsequential.
Asking this question around here is like asking "Who is better - Jeremy Lin or Chris Paul" in the GARM - you're gonna get a lot of homers. Having lived in Houston for 20 years and Austin for 11, I can honestly say that Austin is the better of the two in almost every regard (no Rockets) - and I can say this from experience, unlike most people voting in this poll. As for the other cities in this state: San Antonio is a dirty ****hole with no redeeming value outside of the Riverwalk. Dallas is like a watered-down, worthless version of Houston. Galveston is pretty cool. I mean, the beaches aren't great, but they're better than nothing (looking at you, Dallas) and the Strand is nice. Fort Worth is crap, Stockyards aside... Really, for me it's: 1. Austin 2. Houston 3. Who cares?
Diverse of foods/people, awesome skyline, low cost of living, plenty of jobs, hospitality, best medical center, short drive to the beach, parks, and so on. Houston has a lot of offer.
I used to like Austin back in the late 90s early 2000s. Now it's kind of a douche feel to it. The Hill Country is cool but if I have to be in Texas give me Houston
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/tGnUsl1Azms" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
You should have seen Austin back in the 70s. That's when the praise was deserved, but popularity killed Austin just like it kills most towns that become a place you want to live instead of a place you want to visit.
I'm in the Accounting/Finance field, so with Houston and Dallas I have abundant amount of options for my career growth. I would love to live in Austin for everything else besides the job market.Who doesn't like the 6th street, Lake Travis , outdoor activities , Hill country , music scene.
Houston and Austin both can make valid arguments. I enjoy both (and have lived in both). Including Dallas in the thread/poll makes this thread worthless. San Antonio? Seriously? They have a ditch running through the city. So there's that...
Which is why we have a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 5.3%. (my son graduated from an out of state school at the end of May, and starts a fantastic job Monday in software development, having turned 22 all of 2 months ago) Come on, Austin economically is humming along, real estate is nuts, with some areas getting multiple bids on homes for sale, like before the Great Recession, condo towers keep rising downtown, creating the synergy that is producing a vibrant center city with residents, theatres, clubs, bars, galleries, great places to eat fueled by folks actually living there. The music scene is still amazing. We still have the bedrock of the Austin economy, UT and state government, which prevents Austin from ever having a truly awful economy when things are bad nationally, like that Great Recession thing I mentioned. The biggest problem we have right now are the lake levels. Damn, we need a hell of a lot of rain in the right places again and again until levels get back to normal. I'm a native Houstonian, have tons of relatives and friends there, love the city and all the great things a great international city has to offer, but I started coming to Austin in the 1960's, and in 1980, we finally managed to move there. I wouldn't live anywhere else in Texas.