Completely false that Austin has become a victim of its own success. Last time I was here was in 2004 for ACL Festival and the city has actually gotten better. The public transit is better, the protected bike lanes are more prevalent, there are more music festivals/venues and it is so successful the only thing people from Tulsa can do is retort to the "it's not the same anymore" debate and fill in excuses for why we are so far behind. Just my $0.02
Public transit in Austin is deplorable. Any other city Austin's size has considerably better transit, and for a city that is so 'alternative' and 'forward thinking' it sure isn't in many regards. Look at Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Charlotte, etc. all blow Austin out of the water when it comes to transit.
Now as far as our culture being a bland city - I think you need to cheer up a bit. A lot of it really has to do with point of view - if you go through life with the notion that the glass is half empty everything will seem negative, but a glass half full you'll see some of the better things. I'll admit, I used to have many of the same views about Tulsa, but I've really changed my mind set on the city over the last few years. There really is a lot to take advantage of here in terms of quality of life and that goes to entertainment from live music, festivals, sports, the general affordability of the city, and the ease of living here (when I was in DC the smallest task was a giant pain in the a**).
Compare Tulsa to Oklahoma City? If you really think we are less cultured than OKC from music to political thinking, there may not be much hope for ya (sorry). Things like when our council passed unanimously with no fight to adopt a fair housing policy that included LGBT. OKC? Well they almost voted it down, and passed 5-4 after a very public fight - that's just one minor example. Sally Kern is all I need to say when comparing the difference between OKC and Tulsa. What about Omaha, Little Rock, Des Moines, Wichita? For a city our size, we punch well above our weight in many areas. If you try to compare us to Denver, Portland, Austin of course Tulsa is many years behind, they are also metros that have generally been twice the size of Tulsa since the 20s so of course they have many things we don't. Comparing Tulsa to Austin is like trying to compare Austin to San Fran, NY, or somewhere much larger, it's not a similar comparison.
There's many distinct advantages Tulsa has in order for us to really become a draw for people. Not everyone wants to be in a large, very expensive city. That is how Austin became so popular in the first place. It was seen as an affordable city that had more cultural than its peer cities, so people who were tired of paying $600-700k for a house in LA relocated. Austin is now morphing into the very thing many of those people relocated to get away from. Austin is experiencing many issues at the moment, and to say it's not is blatantly ignorant (sorry). The city has some of the worst mobility issues anywhere in North America, mainly because it is the most car dependent major city in Texas - yes even more than Dallas or Houston. It's affordability has vanished rapidly in the last 3-4 years, it's now one of the most expensive cities between the coasts, and has some of the fastest growing rents in North America. To live downtown really isn't possibly anymore unless you make over $120,000, so unless you work for Google good luck - you'll be living out in Georgetown and driving an hour + to get to all those cool bars downtown. Even many of their 'cool' areas are being over run by these high priced condos/apartments - case in point is Rainey Street. They've had several instances where music venues are being bulldozed to make way for new developments and replaced with Shack Shakes, etc too.
Now is it doom and gloom for Austin? Of course not, and Austin has gotten a lot more dense and has some very amazing urban projects going on currently and has some pretty amazing events like SXSW, races at CoA, etc. It has some very major glaring issues that could very well cause it to have an exodus of creatives just like you've seen in other high priced and inaccessible areas of the U.S. That presents major opportunities for cities like Tulsa that are seeing some very interesting growth in their art and music scenes. There's not another city our size who can claim comparable scenes with venues like the BOK, Cain's, Brady, Woody Guthrie Center, Bob Dylan Collection, AHHA, Philbrook, Gilcrease, The Gathering Place, Turkey Mountain, River Trails, etc... I don't think OKC, Des Moines, Omaha, Little Rock, Tucson, Albuquerque, Birmingham can compete with Tulsa in that regard and that's our true competition in terms of positioning ourself to become a 'it' city.
If you are really unhappy with the progress Tulsa has made in the last few year, do one thing:
VOTE in June and make sure Dewey is not the mayor again. He has fought tooth and nail against transit and other things that would help push Tulsa into the next generation.
