Austin Is So 2023

A little bit of macroeconomics here, noting that the lustre has faded for Austin. But Nashville is still on the rise. 

Interestingly, the author knows about FRED! The link to the data for the GDP of the Nashville metropolitan area, which is still somewhat smaller than that of Austin. 

FWIW: Salt Lake shows smaller than both in FRED, but this is misleading. I was not able to find GDP for what we call "up north" and others might call the Wastatch Front in FRED. Instead, what's in FRED is just Salt Lake County, which is fine, if you know there's a difference. But for us, "up north" is pretty much one continuous city from Santaquin to Tremonton, with tendrils going out to Logan, Park City, and Tooele. To get the GDP for that you have to look for Combined Metropolitan Statistical Area data (CMSA). This accounts for the fact that sometimes we want to count Provo or Ogden as part of Salt Lake, and sometimes we don't. When you get that data, Salt Lake shows as bigger than Nashville (which has a CMSA), or Austin (which only has a metropolitan statistical area, or MSA, because there are not other metro areas contiguous with it).

FWIW 2: Even these statistics are imperfect. I grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, and the data show Buffalo to be a lot smaller than it actually is. Buffalo is smaller than Salt Lake these days.  But it's CMSA only includes Niagara Falls. Even though Rochester, with its own MSA, and nearly the size of Buffalo ... is actually closer than Provo is to Salt Lake's downtown. In fact, Santaquin to Tremonton is a longer drive than it is to get from Buffalo to Syracuse ... another large MSA. And nothing counts the adjacent parts of Canada to places like Buffalo, Detroit, and Bellingham. On the Canadian side from Buffalo, it's pretty much one continuous city from Fort Erie (across from Buffalo) through Niagara Falls (Canada), St. Catherines, Hamilton, and in to Toronto and out the other side. Anyway, this is another reason that the "lights at night" images are so important macroeconomically ... it's politics that keeps Buffalo separate from Rochester separate from Syracuse ... separate from Canadian cities ... even though Highmark stadium is full of people from those places on game day.