We loved Austin, but now fled forever – my deceptively ordinary photo sums up why the city is doomed

For Alex Hannaford, one photo summed it up wrong with Austin – the Texas city he loved and called home for 20 years before fleeing in 2020.

It shows the rustic Old BJ Smith property from the 1850s, overshadowed by the construction of a concrete and glass office building that provided office space for the tech workers flocking to the city.

Hannaford50, says the image reflects how Austin has lost its quirky, offbeat charm and has come to resemble any other American boomtown with a population of about a million people.

“What else is different about it?” he told DailyMail.com.

“If you have fancy restaurants, private members clubs and chain stores, how is that different from any other city in the United States? When I moved here it was very different, low-rise and quaint.’

British writer Alex Hannaford lived in Austin, Texas, for almost two decades and says gentrification has ruined its charm

This photo of the Old BJ Smith Property standing in the shadow of the office buildings reflects Austin’s growing pains, Hannaford says.

Hannaford reveals in his book how he fell in love with Austin during a road trip in 1999 and moved there shortly after Lost in Austin – The Evolution of an American City.

At the time, it was a “weird, heady mix of border town, hippie Holland and indie mecca, with too many Mexican restaurants to count,” he writes.

“This was the city of reinvention: exciting, buzzing with opportunity and optimism – a kitschy, retro America-lite where you could forget the real world outside.”

In addition to beatniks and hipsters, Austin was home to free-thinking libertarians, iconoclasts, and even conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

Hannaford was working there as a freelance journalist when he met his Dallas-based wife at Austin’s music and film extravaganza, South by Southwest (SXSW), in 2003.

The couple bought a cute three-bedroom house and welcomed a daughter in 2012.

The book charts how Austin went from a melting pot of crusty artists and musicians to a gentrified hub for the tech industry, complete with high-rises, heavy traffic and skyrocketing real estate prices.

When Hannaford, then a 24-year-old from London, drove into town in a Pontiac Firebird, Austin had fewer than 600,000 people and local residents typically spent $180,000 on a house.

Today that number is nearly a million, and the average home changes hands for $550,000.

It is now plagued by unbridled development, environmental degradation, racism, the proliferation of weapons, water depletion and homelessness, the 240-page book said.

Locals embraced the mantra “Keep Austin Weird” and fought to preserve the city’s free-thinking spirit.

But for Hannaford, the madness was fading, and within a few years Austin became an enclave for the wealthy.

The Old BJ Smith Property dates back to the 1850s and is one of the oldest homes in Austin

Hannaford’s 240-page book Lost in Austin was released earlier this month

This eclectic taco restaurant closed its doors in 2020, another sign of Austin’s fading character

Actor Matthew McConaughey is one of Austin’s most famous residents, seen here at a book event in the city in May 2022

Hannaford and his daughter kayak on the Colorado River in Austin. Nearby waterholes have dried up in recent years due to climate change, he says.

Affluent residents included employees of newcomer technology companies Apple, Meta and Google, and celebrities from actor Matthew McConaughey to podcaster Joe Rogan and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.

The “hippie in flip-flops feasting on Tex-Mex while watching a blues band at some dive bar” was gone, says Hannaford’s book.

Now it’s a “guy in an ironed shirt, Patagonia vest, and Allbirds sneakers eating Japanese barbecue fusion in an air-conditioned new building.”

Hannaford especially laments the demise of Austin’s acclaimed music scene.

In the 1990s, open doorways along Sixth Street led to live clubs with raucous and eccentric bands.

But big bands and solo acts have displaced local musicians, and the beloved SXSW festival has been changed forever, he says.

Today, “working musicians can’t afford to park in town to unload their gear, let alone live there,” Hannaford writes.

“For older Austinites who helped cement their reputation as a music city, what Austin has lost is, as far as they are concerned, irreparable.”

Austin’s transformation mirrors the growing pains of America’s other artistic centers — from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco, Seattle and Brooklyn, in New York City, he says.

But Hannaford wasn’t priced out by Austin’s real estate bubble; he was a homeowner who watched his home triple in value as the city grew.

He says he was pushed away by Texas’ lax gun laws and his disgust over active shooter drills at his daughter’s school – which have become normalized in many parts of the US.

Country singer Lyle Lovett performed on Austin’s college campus in 2000, when Hannaford says the city had a more eclectic music scene

Podcaster Joe Rogan is another famous Austin resident, seen here at a UFC Fight Night event at Moody Center in June 2022

Austin has also been a meeting place for people with unorthodox views, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was seen in a courthouse here in August 2022.

Hannford first came to Austin on a road trip in a Pontiac Firebird in 1999

Hannaford and his family now live in upstate New York, where he writes, chops wood and tours his property on a riding mower.

The family was also displaced by climate change and increasingly common heat days in Central Texas.

In the early 2000s, Austinites could take short drives and swim in nearby rivers, lakes and watering holes, he says.

But the rapidly growing population and climate change were depleting groundwater supplies and causing some of the area’s natural beauty spots to dry up.

The family was essentially “climate refugees,” he says. So they sold it and moved nearly 2,000 miles to a town in upstate New York.

Hannaford writes books, his wife works remotely, and their daughter is in high school in a state with “more sensible gun laws,” he says.

The family enjoys the four seasons. Hannaford chops wood and honks around the property on a riding mower.

“Although we have left Austin and I think the changes have been too dramatic, I will always love this place,” he says.

“It’s where I met my wife and where our daughter was born.”