Alumni Research: Andrew Busch publishes piece on gentrification in Austin

UT AMS grad Andrew Busch passed along an article that he published in the journal Southern Spaces at the end of the summer. Although sometimes our research can seem a little distant from us, Dr. Busch's essay, "Crossing Over: Sustainability, New Urbanism, and Gentrification in Austin, Texas" is one that, quite literally, deals with what's happening on the homefront. We've excerpted a section below:

In July of 2011 Bon Appétit named Franklin Barbecue of Austin, Texas, the best barbecue restaurant in America. As one of the flagship businesses in an area of the city undergoing significant redevelopment Franklin (which began as a food truck three years earlier) had recently moved into a building on East Eleventh Street, adjacent to downtown across Interstate 35. Franklin Barbecue helped enhance the city's wider reputation while locally it helped the reputation of the central Eastside. The white-owned Franklin took the former space of Ben's Long Branch Barbecue, an African American–owned business operating since the 1980s; African Americans had served barbecue at this site since at least the early 1960s. The corridor, formerly the hub of black commerce and social life during the era of segregation, fell into blight and disrepair in the 1970s and sunk into deeper trouble by the 1980s as residents of means and local businesses fled. In the 1990s the Austin Revitalization Authority (ARA) was formed as a non-profit to assist in the commercial development of the neglected neighborhood as well as to renew historic buildings and homes to maintain architecture consistent with the area's heritage. In 1997 the ARA declared the area a slum, making it eligible for Section 108 Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). After completing the Central East Austin Master Plan, which called for 140,000 square feet of mixed-use development, the ARA and the city acquired over $9 million in CDBGs to initiate revitalization. Almost all development took place along the Eleventh Street corridor.Although development in the East Eleventh Street corridor began slowly, by the mid-2000s the area's importance to the city's Eastside efforts and to the downtown was apparent. Eleventh Street is one of only two downtown streets that bridge I-35, the physical barrier between minority and Anglo neighborhoods since its completion in 1962. People coming from downtown to East Eleventh do not have to pass underneath the highway. Signs displaying the East End slogan "Local Spoken Here" invite consumption along the corridor. A gateway arch laden with the Texas Star welcomes traffic from downtown. The cityscape here appears more modern, newer, and cleaner than much on the Eastside. Multiple use zoning allows for architecture consistent with New Urbanism: higher density, mixed use, better public transport and bike lanes, historic districts, and heritage-based public spaces. The area has undergone significant demographic change as middle class whites and upscale businesses have moved in.

Submit to The End of Austin - Deadline May 15

For those of you who have some thoughts or feelings about Austin's changing identity over the past several years, we encourage you to consider submitting a piece to The End of Austin, one of our department's flagship digital humanities projects. See the call-for-submissions below.We are pleased to invite your submissions to the fifth issue of The End of Austin, a digital humanities project housed in the Department of American Studies that explores Austin’s changing urban identity.Our goal is to bring together different kinds of voices—academic, artistic, activist—to start an interdisciplinary conversation about life in the fastest growing city in the US. We are interested in original writing, photos, video, art, music—anything that illuminates how things are changing, ending, expiring, or collapsing in the midst of our growth-obsessed sunbelt burg. For additional information about the project, please see our press page.We encourage submissions from all disciplines on the following topics (and welcome other proposals):

• Traffic and transportation infrastructures (bus, urban rail, etc.)
• Cedar fever and air quality
• Droughts, floods, freezes, and weather issues
• The proliferation of festivals of various kinds (e.g. SXSW, ACL, FunFunFunFest, PsychFest, Ice Cream Fest, Eeyore’s Birthday)
• The Formula One track
• The turnover of businesses and concerns about chains versus local businesses
• Race, class, and gentrification
• Cultures of leisure
• Food culture and food trucks
• The “Live Music Capital of the World” moniker
• Weird anxiety and anxiety over weirdness
• The rapidly changing cityscape, skyline, and exurban sprawl
• The [administrative, pedagogical] future of the University of Texas
• Representations of Austin in film, television, and other forms of popular expression
• Drunk driving

Deadline for completed submissions is May 15, 2014. Please email inquiries and submissions to endofaustin@gmail.com.

Faculty Research: Dr. Randy Lewis Appears on Good Day Austin

We're always thrilled when American Studies projects hit the big time in the Austin community and beyond, so we're delighted to share some news about the End of Austin digital humanities project launched last week.This morning, Dr. Randy Lewis appeared on local Fox affiliate's Good Day Austin to talk about the project and the changes that confront Austin. Take a look at the full conversation here!