What makes Austin TX significantly different than Penticton BC?

This is not a simple question for there are several significant differences, some blatantly obvious, others not so much.

a)
first and foremost, it is a city of parks — there are all kinds of green spaces, even some created and maintained by private interests and the people of the city are very proud of their parks — they encourage visitors to go walking throughout their city — not sure that Penticton’s City Council would even understand this concept!!

b)
the traffic is not fun, even on Presidents’ Day…the freeway into and through town seems to be always at a standstill and I’m not sure why more don’t use the by-passes — Penticton wins on this score

c)
the University of Texas main campus is located here and it is huge… I spent a good deal of time, this afternoon, after my meetings walking about — like the U of Alberta, the architecture is a mishmash of nuvo-americana-avec-continental-british remnants!! But again there is considerable green space throughout and the walking is easy although there are some hills and dales… there are two major landmarks: the Tower (which was the scene of a deadly shooting many years ago) and Darrell Royal Stadium (a colossal edifice to the sport of football — US College style and a former very successful coach), but there are many other sports locations — big basketball gymnasia, a soccer stadium that will hold thousands, baseball stadium as good as many the pros use in spring training, and a major swimming complex — there is also a mammoth fine arts centre. Of course there are seemingly dozens of engineering buildings and the McCoomb School of Business is huge. Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is located at the north end of the campus and is situated in a very pretty park-like setting — almost angelic, except for the strong presence of a semi-gothic chapel in the middle. The thing though that struck me most while walking the campus were the conversations of the students (there are lots of places to sit, eat, chat outdoors throughout the campus) — basically the same as every other campus (talking about profs, courses, the weekend parties, and dates) as well as in every other college era…made me feel at home!! It also made me think that Penticton should try harder to at least attract a satellite campus of some major university — maybe the U of Alberta, and if that doesn’t work, then the U of Texas would be a good fit (although they’d probably want to see a renewed commitment to more parks so as to make their students feel more at home!!)

d)
the one other interesting moment today was the awareness that most of the cars that I saw anyway in this city are Asian and German…I wonder how these Texans will react to a 35% surcharge when they go to get new ones — don’t panic though, there were lots of pickups on campus — just not as many in the area of downtown I was in for my breakfast meeting — I’d say it is a draw between Penticton and Austin in the distribution of vehicles both as to type and place of origin…

e)
Austin is the state capital — so that’s a bit more important than the location of a Regional District office. As well there is Austin City Limits which outdoes the current version of The Dream Cafe…

So, in the end, Austin can explain its greater population due to its better attractions — Penticton is not a little Austin…

g.w.