What to expect from the San Antonio-Austin mega-metro

In 1971, the area of North Texas that encompasses Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, and the like, didn’t have a unified identity, at least not an official one. The grouping of cities up at the top of Texas were organized under the banner of the North Texas Commission as the DFW Airport was being built, and the syndicate wanted a way to put forth that this new conglomerate of cities was ready to play with the big boys.

Sure, Fort Worth residents get their purple khakis in a bunch at the idea that they’re anything like people from Dallas, but if you live anywhere else in Texas, the DFW Metroplex is a monolith. It’s the Dallas Cowboys. It’s the State Fair of Texas. It’s the Red River and almost Oklahoma and everything way up there. And the economies of each city have benefited from their associations with each other.

As it appears now, San Antonio and Austin, two cities that could not be more different from each other, are preparing for their own inevitable metroplex. Once a tossed-off eventual inevitability, leaders in each city and the towns in-between — mayors, economic development folks, chambers of commerce — are having high-level conversations about the new region. In fact, they’ve been preparing for this since at least 1984, when the Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council formed, composed of city leaders and business-owners in both cities.

Even the jewel of San Antonio, the Spurs, played a couple “home” Austin games in 2023 — to the chagrin of everyone in San Antonio — and Gregg Popovich spilled the beans that the series will continue. Not to get all Brian Windhorst here, but why is that?

It’s because the San Antonio-Austin metroplex is coming soon, whether we like it or not.

It’s such a real idea that those who make these decisions are not even calling it a metroplex this time. Just as it was in 1971, for branding purposes, this region is already being touted as the San Antonio-Austin mega-metro, hyphenated and (for now) lowercase. 

In early July, San Antonio’s PBS station KLRN debuted a documentary on a subject that has been on our minds for a while at MySA. Titled San Antonio – Austin: The Emerging Mega-Metro — the synergy! — it is hosted by Henry Cisneros. The former San Antonio mayor interviews Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, President of the aforementioned corridor committee Ross Millow, and a slew of other leaders in the combining large cities space.

From the outset of the documentary, it’s apparent that the mega-metro is, well, kind of already here. Everyone’s just figuring out how to make it work before we run out of water or expire while waiting to merge on the I-35 superhighway. There are some brain-melting figures, too, each of which represents the lowest numbers they’ll probably ever be, like the 495 people that move to the 13-country region that encompasses the mega-metro or the upward of 150,000 vehicles that traverse the main highway between the two cities every day.

One of the producers of the KLRN documentary, Shari St. Clair, told me that she was amazed with how quickly the mega-metro is developing.

“We’re looking at millions of more people moving in here in the next 20 years,” she said. “It’s just astounding what’s happening. And we thought, this is just a story we’ve got to talk about. Lives will change because of this.”

My life changed because of the metroplex — err, mega-metro — too.

Not to get too existential, but this very idea of connecting the two metropolises is why they pay me to wake up every day and write stories about Austin for a website that literally has San Antonio in the name. The notion that San Antonio and Austin are already, kinda, sorta, a mega-metro means that my bosses guessed correctly. And it means that I have some more work to do in bridging the gap between readers in each community. It has to be all one, like Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps.  

For that reason, I have spent the last few weeks — and will continue to — reporting on just what the heck is going on when we talk about the Austin-San Antonio (or is it San Antonio-Austin) mega-metro.

Over the next few months, we’ll examine the Austin-San Antonio mega-metro from many angles. Through reporting with experts and city officials, we’ll break down what the Austin-San Antonio mega-metro means for transportation, jobs, culture, and more. How do we protect the Edwards Aquifer? Will there be high rises in downtown Kyle? Can Buc-ee’s stock enough beef jerky to handle the population explosion?

At the outset of our reporting, this was to be one article, but the smashing together of two of the 10 largest cities in America is a tall order. We’ll delineate what the mega-metro could look like from every conceivable angle for a more digestible look at the weighty topic.

Leading off is transportation. How could a mega-metro transform how we move around in the region? Is the infrastructure there yet? We’ll examine the I-35 of it all — and more — our next installment.