As cities like Austin cater to coastal transplants, their unique culture gets diluted, becoming more generic. Is cultural entropy inevitable, or is there a counterforce? As cities like Austin cater to coastal transplants, their unique culture gets diluted, becoming more generic. Is cultural entropy inevitable, or is there a counterforce?
The canary in the coal mine for me is the yuppie coffee shop (which admittedly I love). When you're in one of these shops - the ones with the $6 non-dairy cappuccinos, gorumet chocolate chip cookies topped with malden salt, in a room with lots of wood accents and pothos plants overflowing from their shelves, there's no way to tell if you're in Austin, or Williasmburg, or the mission district of SF or Shoreditch in London.
While the internet enable infinte diversity and microcommunities, physical spaces seems to be converging toward a monoculture. I imagine fueled by things like increased global travel and social media.
#DeepTakes