As I’ve been walking downtown in Austin each morning, I’ve often wondered the stories behind some of the building I see.
Austin has an interesting background in that 20 years ago the population was half what it is now. For me, that makes me wonder about life in the city just 20 years ago. When there weren’t 159 people moving to Austin every day.
In particular, I wonder about some of the buildings that have been around since before the 70’s. I wish so badly there was some way to just pick something to look at and rewind to see how it’s changed.
Sometimes I even picture buildings with personalities. Like these buildings that were built in the 70’s are talking about how they were here for so long and it was such a good life before all these young whippersnappers (the new shiny glass building of course) came into town and brought all the rabble with them.
Then there are the really old buildings that have been around since the early 20th century who just gave up on caring a long time ago.
What would these buildings say? What would life have looked like if you could have stood on top of one of those buildings from 1970 and see a time-lapse of the city from then till now?
One of my favorite pictures of this is a before and after picture of Dubai. Dubai’s growth-rate dwarf’s even that of Austin going from less than 300,000 in 1980 to now over 3,000,000 people. Complete insanity. I can’t even imagine living in a place like Dubai from sometime even in the 70’s. The amount of change you would see would just be out of this world.
I think this picture does all the talking I need though. So I’ll stop writing and let it do the talking.
