# Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/austin-next/austin-from-counterculture-to-culture-karen-blashek-austin-home-magazine
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/austin-next/austin-from-counterculture-to-culture-karen-blashek-austin-home-magazine.md
Podcast: [Austin Next](https://stenobird.com/podcast/austin-next)
Published: 2026-06-11T12:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/b68af396
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/b68af396/a4ac81a2.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/austin-next/episodes/austin-from-counterculture-to-culture-karen-blashek-austin-home-magazine
Duration seconds: 4559

## Resource

Austin's counterculture is still the ethos. The next chapter is what gets built on top of it. Karen Blashek, the editor-in-chief of Austin Home Magazine, took over a 21-year-old design publication with no editorial background and turned it into one of the city's most consequential platforms for naming what's already happening. We ask why Austin's design talent operates one neighborhood away from its tech talent and neither knows the other exists. What the city is telling people and the cultural infrastructure need to make it all compound: storytellers, convening spaces, named districts, and a patronage layer. Agenda 0:00 Austin Home as civic editing 4:22 Why Austin lives outside 15:04 Block parties and Old Sixth 21:02 Personality vs. values 27:07 Ground floors as infrastructure 32:10 The public space czar idea 37:01 Why Austin is a design capital 41:01 Naming districts that exist 45:07 Three roles every ecosystem needs 53:37 If you don't tell the story, someone else will 58:08 The patronage gap 1:03:37 Rising stars, the talent leak 1:09:50 Tech and culture flywheel 1:15:40 Naming what's already here Guest Bio and Links Karen Blashek Austin Home Magazine Groundup Ideas Cities and Ambition by Paul Graham The City That Lingers by Ryan Puzycki Tokyo is Reinventing the Downtown by Making More Than One by Richard Florida Karen Zabarsky Blashek is Editor-in-Chief of Austin Home Magazine, a Hearst publication covering the intersection of architecture, interiors, development, and culture in one of America’s fastest-evolving cities. She is also the founder of Ground Up, a creative studio for the built environment. Before returning to her native Texas, Blashek spent 13 years in New York where she led design for Kushner, one of the country's largest real estate developers with pro…

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