To the west of Everett was the Pacific ocean when I was there anyway.
Nope. First Lake WA, then another strip of land, then Puget Sound. The Pac. Ocean is about 200 miles away.
I've been there. It sits on a ridge top. Go down the ridge to the west and you have Puget Sound, part of the Pacific. Go down the ridge to the east and you have the Snohomish river bottomlands. The Snohomish river runs north to the east of Everett and enters Puget Sound just north of the city. The Cascade Mts are miles away.
>>>>>
Waterfront
View from Everett Yacht Club on Port Gardner Wharf
Situated at the mouth of the Snohomish River on Possession Sound, the Everett waterfront is home to Naval Station Everett, a sprawling Kimberly-Clark paper mill and the Port of Everett (est. 1918). The Port of Everett includes both a deep-water commercial seaport and a marina with over 2000 slips, which it claims to be the largest on the west coast of the United States.[10]
>>>>>
en.wikipedia.org
-----------------------------------
Yeah you can see them from Everett but they're quite a few miles away.
Around ten miles.
I guess it depends on what you define as the beginning of the mountains .... but if you want to say 10 miles, okay. Thats 10 miles that you could put a bunch of Everett's into. Confirming there is plenty of undeveloped land up there.
---------------------------------------
You're talking a few sq miles....this is a metro area of 3 million+ people. Going south you have to go 30 miles or ten miles South of Tacoma to find virgin land of any quantity.
Assuming your estimate that its 10 miles west to the Cascades from the cities Everett down through Seattle-Tacoma, that's hundreds of square miles of developable land.
Take a look at the map:
bing.com
There's a lot of land out there to the east of the cities along Puget Sound and Lk Washington ... before the really rugged land starts.
-------------------------------------
But the state gov't does make it unique.....that was my point.
You said it was a "model city" and "Most cities in TX would do well to grow as intelligently as Austin has." So intelligent means being a state capitol, having good scenery and lots of young people, nightlife, and quirky characters.
It is the place in TX most like San Francisco. Climate is better, probably. Higher percentage of college age girls compared to gays - that makes it better too.
Nope. This is what I was talking about:
Economy
"Thousands of graduates each year from the engineering and computer science programs at The University of Texas at Austin provide a steady source of young, talented, and driven employees that help to fuel Austin's technology and defense industry sectors.
Which is true of lots of other places in TX - ask CJ about Tx A&M, for example. There are many more.
>>>>>
The metro Austin area has much lower housing costs than Silicon Valley, but much higher housing costs than many parts of rural Texas. As a result of the relatively high concentration of high-tech companies in the region, Austin was strongly affected by the dot-com boom in the late 1990s and subsequent bust. The general consensus is that high-tech recovery is proceeding rapidly. Austin's biggest employers include the State of Texas, The University of Texas, the SETON Healthcare Network, Dell, IBM and Freescale Semiconductor (spun off from Motorola in 2004). Other high-tech companies in Austin include Apple Inc., Vignette, AMD, Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, Hoover's, Inc., Intel, Motive Inc, National Instruments, Samsung, Silicon Laboratories, Sun Microsystems, and United Devices. The proliferation of technology companies has led to the region's nickname, "the Silicon Hills," (Austin was originally "Silicon Gulch", but San Jose, California already had that distinction) and has spurred rapid development that has greatly expanded the city to the north, south, east, and west. Not only is Austin home to many high-tech companies, it is also headquarters for Whole Foods and Gatti's Pizza, a pizza buffet chain.
In addition to global companies, Austin features a strong network of independent, locally-owned firms and organizations such as the Austin Independent Business Alliance. The success of these businesses reflects the high level of commitment by the citizens of Austin to preserving the unique spirit of the city, and has been tied to the "Keep Austin Weird" campaign. Small businesses in Austin enjoy a lively existence gained by direct competition with large national and global rivals."
>>>>>
Austin area does have plenty of high tech companies but so does Houston and Dallas-Ft Worth. The above list of companies in Austin didn't include Texas Instruments, Compaq (now part of HP), EDS, BMC Software and much else .... that started in places like Houston and Dallas. |
