The Next Austin? How About Arkansas. Seriously.
Home to corporate behemoth Walmart, a rising state university, and awash in philanthropy money, this Texas neighbor is home to a new crop of urban hotspots.
Arkansas is beginning to look a lot like Austin.
Photographer: Justin Ford/Getty Images
Ambitious young college graduates are looking for an affordable home base where they can build their families and careers. Here’s a place that may not (yet) be on their list: Arkansas.
For the past decade, coastal metros like New York and San Francisco dominated the landscape for the upwardly mobile, but the main story became how to cope with the high cost of living in those cities. One solution was to move into lower-cost neighborhoods, further pushing up rents and home prices. Others moved to lower-cost metros that shared some of the characteristics of those high-cost places; Austin, Texas, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of that trend.