Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Travis County. Situated in Central Texas, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 16th largest in the United States. It is also home to the University of Texas at Austin. According to the demographer for Austin, the 2005 population estimate was 690,252. The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area with a population of over 1.5 million. Austin was selected as the #2 Best Big City in "Best Places to Live" by Money magazine in 2006, and the "Greenest City in America" by MSN.

Austin is situated on the Colorado River and on the Balcones Fault, which in much of Austin runs roughly the same route as the MoPac expressway.

Residents of Austin are known as "Austinites" and include a mix of university professors, students, politicians, lobbyists, musicians, state employees, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers, and white-collar workers. The city is home to enough large sites of major technology corporations to have earned it the nickname "Silicon Hills." Austin's official slogan promotes the city as "The Live Music Capital of the World", a reference to its status as home to many musicians and music venues. In recent years, many Austinites have also adopted the unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird"; this refers partly to the eclectic and progressive lifestyle of many Austin residents, but is also the slogan for a campaign to preserve smaller local businesses and resist excessive commercialization.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia listing for "Austin, Texas".