In Defense of Yuppie Fishbowls
In a booming city, luxury towers are the friend of urban neighborhoods
Written By Aaron Lubeck
I-35 has traditionally divided Austin in every way: rich from poor, downtown from neighborhood, white from non-white. As the city has boomed, “East Austin” and “gentrification” have become synonymous. But the story of Austin’s future doesn’t have to be one of displacement.
Rainey Street lies just west of this divide, on a development peninsula southeast of downtown. In a city marked by radical and fast transition, no corner of Austin has seen a more dramatic transition than here. Long following the logical path of development, it was (until recently) filled with small, residential bungalows. A 2005 rezoning allowed for flexible uses, which caused an immediate boom of creative restaurant and retail businesses shoehorning their commercial uses into these residential forms.
The boom was so fast, on such a scale, and so close to downtown that it attracted the interest of larger developers, who are now in the middle of a major skyscraper building boom of their own in the corridor. Seven are already built, and more are in the works; at the north end of the street will be the Waterline Tower, scheduled to be Texas’s largest.
Such brisk change and upscaling always garner a knee-jerk negative reaction (Displacement! History! Gentrification!). But this sort of transformation might actually be good—not only for Austin in general or the occupants of those (assuredly luxury) towers but for preserving lower-wealth East Austin as well.
The Yuppie Fishbowl (or fish tank, if you prefer) was a term coined by Noah Smith in a 2018 essay. His thesis argued that if wealth is present in your city, more is coming, and your city is growing; it is best to allow your city to develop housing options that cater to this niche.
If you do not, the holders of that wealth will inevitably find their own housing. Trying to stop the wealthy from obtaining housing is like trying to stop water from flowing downhill. You can make efforts to obstruct it, but eventually, it finds its way through.
If the high-wealth buyer’s only choice is to occupy older, existing housing, they will do that. Failing to enable new high-end housing is certain to accelerate the displacement of older housing and its lower-wealth citizens.
In short, the Yuppie Fishbowl provides supply and isolates demand for high-wealth housing. You can see its inhabitants. They can see you. The tower does not displace the remainder. Everybody wins. In other words, it might be the most desirable real-world housing solution we have.
The objection to this argument is that a city should be focused on providing housing not for the wealthy but for the rest of its citizens. But that line of thought is flawed on a few levels:
First, with rare exceptions, cities do not provide housing at all.
Second, builders build what is desired (via the market) and possible (legally and financially). New affordable housing is rarely financially viable, particularly in the South’s exclusionary regulatory regimes.
Third, affordability comes from light use. Affordable cars are not new cars. It’s the same with housing. So, for a metro to stay affordable, particularly a fast-growing one like Austin, newness must be perpetually built.
The receipts are in on this last point: Booming metros that have prevented new homes from being built simply make million-dollar homes out of shotgun shacks, ensuring the displacement of all but its wealthiest residents. The most extreme examples of civic moratorium, particularly in the Bay Area, have seen such a dramatic drop in minorities that some in the press refer to it as an “ethnic cleansing.”

So, what can we do to prevent radical displacement? The Twitter account @YIMBYLAND points out that the 450 homes provided by one proposed new building, Wilson Tower (to occupy the former site of Avenue Lofts), would house the equivalent of 60 blocks’ worth of residents in East Austin.
Let’s think for a moment. The total gentrification of 60 blocks? Or one super-tall tower? Faced with a real “either/or” scenario, which outcome is preferred?
The Yuppie Fishbowl is the better of the two choices. Is it perfect? No. Should an entire city be built of Yuppie Fishbowls? No. Is it the best of the immediately available alternatives? Absolutely.
Yuppie Fishbowls serve the clear and present need of housing the city’s wealthiest—efficiently and at little financial or social cost to everyone else. Rather than criticizing these towers, neighborhood advocates (yes, even defenders of the status quo) should be celebrating them.
Aaron Lubeck, Jacobs Columnist, is a new urban builder and land planner in Durham, North Carolina. He is the author of Green Restorations: Sustainable Building in Historic Homes, and a children’s book on Accessory Dwellings entitled Heather Has Two Dwellings, and host of the National Townbuilder Association’s “Townbuilder’s Podcast”. Follow Aaron at @aaron_lubeck
NOTE: The Wilson Tower, in the article, recently announced a reduction in height and units from 450 to 350 units, citing increased lending and construction costs. The principles still apply.