Next step: The city and its buildings

This is my third post, and I'm anxious to tell you about another fact that I has discovered in this wonderful trip in Austin. Now is the turn of the city planning. Before coming to the United States, I had an image on my mind of how the cities in the US look like. After three weeks living in Austin, I could see that some of the things are very similar to what I had imagined, but some others have amazed me.

The picture that came to my mind when I tried to imagine a standard city in the US involved high buildings, big shopping malls and wide urban roads. In these weeks in Austin, I could confirm that. In downtown Austin, I could observe many fancy, modern and large edifices. I have also gone to some shopping malls in the suburbs of the city, where I could buy a new cell phone and some clothes at a good price. In the same way, touring around the city and going to Houston and San Antonio, I enjoyed the well-designed highways and infrastructure of Texas.

Besides these three coincidences, my idea of the US contained cities full of buildings, very few houses and no green spaces. However, that's not what I found in Austin. There are several buildings in the city, of course, but most of them are concentrated in the city center. If you move to the suburbs, high constructions become unusual and the houses start to dominate the area. Finally, parks and squares are much more common than I had thought. Hippie Hollow Park and Zilker Park are two good examples of that. 

I'm not sure if Austin is the perfect example of a city in the US, but from now on, this is how I will consider medium-size towns in the US. Then, considering that the city where I live, Rosario, has similar size to Austin, I would like to compare the differences and similarities between the two cities. 

In general, both cities have the same structure. In downtown there are many nice stores, skyscrapers, luxurious towers and hotels. The difference could be that in Rosario the buildings aren’t as tall and gorgeous as in Austin. As a result, many people can live in downtown Rosario, even several students. In contrast, it’s impossible to live in downtown in Austin, unless you are an affluent person. In regards to the suburbs, the main difference I could observe is the distance between the houses. While in Rosario houses stand side by side, in Austin the houses have a lot of land, and are separated by 10-20 meter spaces.

To finish, I don’t want to leave it unmentioned the incredible growth of Austin. Wherever I have gone, I have seen a crane and a new building being constructed. It’s so noteworthy the number of cranes in the city that a woman said me the crane should be named the official bird of Austin.