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Copyright by Andrew M. Busch 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Andrew M. Busch Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Entrepreneurial City: Race, the Environment, and Growth in Austin, Texas, 1945- 2011 Committee: Jeffrey L. Meikle, Supervisor Steven D. Hoelscher Janet M. Davis Sally H. Clarke John Hartigan Entrepreneurial City: Race, the Environment, and Growth in Austin, Texas, 1945- 2011 by Andrew M. Busch, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2011 Dedication To Ellen and Mike, who loved me enough to let me go. Acknowledgements Those who have helped along the way are too numerous to name, but I am going to try nonetheless. As anyone who knows me can attest, I am of average intellect, wit, and humor. It is only my networks of friends and family that allows me good things in life, and for them I am eternally grateful. My most immediate thanks go to Jeff Meikle, who not only agreed to supervise what was at first a truly nebulous project, but also did so with verve, positivity, and friendship, and brought a keen understanding of Austin and how this work fits into the field of American Studies. He is truly a great mentor. Thanks also to the rest of my committee. Steve Hoelscher taught me to teach and encouraged me to think about geographic production and writing style, which have proven invaluable. Janet Davis brought ideas about consumption and culture and organizational tools for the project, and has never failed to be positive and generous with both time and ideas. John Hartigan brought a wholly unique perspective on urban culture that helped to think outside of an urban history box. Elizabeth Engelhardt literally saved the day, and has been a valuable mentor and friend to me. I consider myself lucky to have them as guides. The Department of American Studies at UT has been wholly supportive and has provided as stimulating an environment as imaginable during my time here. Thanks especially to Ella Schwartz, who has made sure all my T’s are crossed, and to Valeri Nicholas-Keller, Cynthia Freese, and Stephanie Kaufman who have supported me along the way. Thanks to all the faculty, but especially Mark Smith and Julia Mickenberg, who v have been great teachers and mentors. Elliott Tretter has been a positive influence as well. The staffs at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the Austin History Center, the Perry-Castaneda Library, and the LBJ Presidential Library were enormously helpful. At Illinois Wesleyan, Mike Weis and particularly Brian Hatcher stoked my curiosity and intellect and introduced me a world larger than I had previously grasped. At Purdue, Elliott Gorn and Susan Curtis introduced me to American Studies and to serious scholarship, and had faith that I could get through grad school. To those academics who I don’t know personally but admire: David Harvey, Allen Scott, Tom Sugrue, Arnold Hirsch, William Julius Wilson, Lewis Mumford, Lizabeth Cohen and many others, you have helped me to keep fighting a good fight. Among my colleagues at UT, Jason Mellard, Tony Fassi, Dan Gerling, Andi Gustavson, Gavin Benke, and John Cline deserve mention for informing my work and being good friends. I also wish to thank Hedstrom, O’Connor, Lisle, Ware, Wuster, Jefferson, Perlman, Nathan, Thompson-Hajdik, Wright, O’Sullivan, Kocurek, J. Smith, Jonesey, Onion, Kohlberg, D’Osongna, Bendele, Covey, Croke, Holland, Garza, Feo- Kelly, Powell, Cashbaugh, Cunningham-Kruppa, Gaughn, Gessler, Ronald, Grey, Quesal, and Underwood. Outside the department, Burns, Hardy, Evans, Young, Warren, King, Dean, Zachs, Hurt, and A. Mellard, have all truly enriched my life. At Purdue, many thanks to Hostetler, Fisher, Randolph, Deringer, Alex, and KDH. The IWU Mad Circle Crew made an indelible impression on me as a youngster; particular thanks to Tepavchevich, Smello, Jendras, Gabel, Rychener, Francis, Spear, and Washington. Also vi many thanks to the sporting clubs that helped me blow off steam here: Church of the Hardwood, Austin Basketballers, Rhetoric, Machine in the Garden, The Artests, and my friends at Bikram. Also many thanks to my family: siblings Eric, Betsy, and Maggie have needless to say been incredible throughout my life. My grandparents, Martha, Connie, and Dick, were always supportive. The dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Ellen and Mike, whose faith in me has truly never wavered, despite numerous examples of ineptitude, inconsistency, and general tomfoolery. Finally, no one deserves more credit or thanks than Renee Searfoss. She put up with an incomprehensible array of idiocy, lunacy, and foolishness during the production of this dissertation, and all with great humor and a humility that boggles the mind. She read and edited every word. She continues to be a calming, loving influence in my life, and I’m both humbled and ecstatic to call her my “little wing.” vii Entrepreneurial City: Race, the Environment, and Growth in Austin, Texas, 1945- 2011 Andrew M. Busch, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: Jeffrey L. Meikle The primary concern of this dissertation is to give historical perspective to the idea of the creative city and the creative, or “new,” “knowledge,” or “postindustrial” economy that has produced this new form of urban space. Austin, Texas, one of the developed world’s premiere creative cities, is used as a test case. Like many urban scholars, I focus on the manifestation of the city as a unique material expression of the capitalist order, and also on the city as a symbolic discourse that has helped to generate its material conditions, including consistent socioeconomic unevenness. In broad outline I am interested in the forces of capitalism that cause cities and regions to grow. I begin with a basic question asked by geographer Allen J. Scott: “How do competitive advantages (including capacities for creativity) of cities emerge, and how might they be enhanced by public action?” In the case of Austin, I argue that the city’s competitive advantage was engendered by an ethos that valued free market competition and a focus viii on the dual economic engines of technology and leisure which city and university leaders identified during World War Two. Austin’s economic ideology, which consciously eschewed fordist modes of production in favor of knowledge-based growth associated with the University of Texas, was poised to blossom when macroeconomic ruptures forced massive restructuring associated with globalization during and after the 1970s. The city’s inherent advantage as a site of surplus knowledge production for Texas and the Southwest created a highly paid, educated labor market that business people and politicians viewed as the core element of a non-industrial city. Even before the 1970s Austin was well on its way to economic growth through technological accumulation and modes of production that took advantage of skilled labor markets. The creative city thus has a history that must be understood before policy is adopted based on non-transferable conditions of growth. ix Table of Contents Introduction: Between “Creative City” and “Technopolis”……………………………1 Chapter One: “A Mighty Bulwark Against the Blind and Raging Forces of Nature” to “Nature’s City”: Water, Infrastructure, and Imagination, 1934-1966………25 “Harnessing the River” Before 1934…………………………………………..37 Imagining a Modern Austin and Central Texas………………………………..47 Water, Festivals, and Austin’s Vision of Pastoral Urbanism………………….76 The Environment and Austin’s Geography of Difference…………………….94 Chapter Two: Technopole Prototype: Entrepreneurialism, Research, and the Early Information Economy in Postwar Austin……………………………………..105 Public and Private Plans for the Postwar Era…………………………………116 Defining the Region: The Balcones Research Center, “Industry Without Smokestacks,” and the Origins of Human Capital……………………………127 J. Neils Thompson, the New Knowledge Economy, and Academic Capitalism at UT………………………………………………………………141 Postwar Geographies of Production…………………………………………..158 Defining the Future of Technological Production: TRACOR and Austin in Action………………………………………………………………………….163 Chapter Three: Natural City: The Unresolved Dialectic of Race, Economy, and Environment in Austin, 1955-1975…………………………………………...184 Regimes of Accumulation: Growing the Creative City in the 1960s…………193 Bifurcated City: The Physical and Mental Geography of Segregation……….202 Austin Tomorrow……………………………………………………………..235 Austin Tomorrow’s Legacy…………………………………………………..260 x Chapter Four: Technopolis: University-Corporate Entrepreneurialism and Neoliberalism is Austin, 1975-1995………………………………………...264 The Geography of Knowledge Industries and Agglomeration……………...271 Visions of Technopolis: George Kozmetsky, Competition, and the Role of the University in Entrepreneuship…………………………………………..286 MCC and the Centralization of Public Capital……………………………...300 Emergent Technopolis: Agglomerative Forces and Univeristy-Generated Wealth……………………………………………………………………….320 From Technopolis to Creative City: The Roots of Creativity and Military- Industrial-Academic Accumulation in Austin………………………………349 Chapter Five: Colonization Through Consumption: The Contemporary Creative Class, Race, and Progressivism……………………………………………...356 Downtown in Historical Context……………………………………………366 Geographic Reconciliation: Smart Growth, the Environment, and Centralized Investment……………………………………………………...370