SXSW 2017
SXSW is a moving target, but Curbed Austin is locked on with news and updates about the best places to go and things to see while you're at the fests. All of them. Thirty years later, as I stood in a line 50-deep to enter a throbbing, McDonald?s-sponsored lounge complete with a virtual reality Happy Meal experience, I concluded that today?s SXSW?"South-by" for locals and regulars?is a very different beast compared to those humble beginnings.
"It?s like the goldfish that will grow as big as the container you put it in," says Catlin Whitington, an Austin native who has been designing that container as a planner for SXSW for a decade. "We work with numerous city agencies to determine our impact on public infrastructure and we have to figure out temporary solutions to this demand." That impact is massive. In 2016, an estimated 230,000 people swarmed the Texas city for SXSW. They included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, both featured as keynote speakers. An economic impact study says the festival booked nearly 60,000 hotel room nights in 64 hotels and brought in about $325.3 million for the city?about $8 million more than in 2015.
The phenomenon that transforms Austin for 10 days every March continues to metastasize, expanding into different neighborhoods, influencing city policy, and seemingly infiltrating every barbecue joint in the region. The festival may be temporary, but for three decades it?s been shaping the futur...
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