Austin is not like other places. 

The capital city of the Lone Star State, Austin is a singular blend of conservative and liberal political leaders, high-tech entrepreneurs and hard-charging environmentalists, famous and soon-to-be-famous artists and musicians, university students and working-class families, small business owners and corporate executives, intellectuals and roller derby queens.

Our home is as unique as we are.  

Across the city, historic homes mix with eclectic contemporary architecture; sprawling parks blend with dense New Urbanist neighborhoods; happening new bars and restaurants compliment legendary music clubs and BBQ joints.  

Downtown, the tallest residential tower west of the Mississippi is within walking distance of a spring-fed swimming pool known as the "Soul of the City." Just outside of Austin, you'll find glistening lakes in one direction, rolling hills in another, and expansive plains in still another.

All in all, as Billy Lee Brammer once said of Austin and its surroundings, "it is difficult to conceive of it all as one place."

But there is at least one unifying theme in Austin: creativity. Whether its application is political, social, spiritual, scientific, academic, entrepreneurial, or artistic, Austin deeply values innovation. In Austin, you get bonus points for breaking the old rules and delivering something fantastically new.

For example, Austin may be most well-known as the "Live Music Capital of the World," and on any given night you can enjoy live rock, folk, jazz, hip-hop, blues, Tejano, classical or experimental performances. We are exceptionally proud of our musical sons and daughters - people like Willie Nelson, Patty Griffin, and Alejandro Escovedo, and bands like Asleep at the Wheel and Spoon.

We are also home to epic music and multimedia events like South by Southwest and the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which takes its name from our legendary PBS series.

Austin is also quickly becoming a hub of creative filmmaking and other digital arts and entertainment. Thanks in part to Austinites like Rick Linklater and Robert Rodriguez, more feature films are being shot in and around Austin. So are many independent movies and TV shows, including NBC's "Friday Night Lights."   Our video game industry is also thriving, with some of the world's largest game developers and publishers expanding their Austin operations.

But our passion for music, film and other digital arts is just one expression of Austin's creative spirit. Perhaps the most valuable expression of our drive to create has been, and will be, in our entrepreneurial and environmental endeavors - and even more beneficially, in a combination of the two.

Austin has long been home to a robust high-tech industry. We built nearly two decades of growth and prosperity around computer manufacturing, semiconductors and software. With companies like Dell, Freescale, 3M, AMD, Samsung, Texas Instruments and IBM leading the way, Austin earned the nickname "Silicon Hills" and won a worldwide reputation as a center of technological innovation.

Today, while the global recession has dealt a blow to the tech sector, Austin remains well positioned to capitalize on the next generation of growth. One example: Samsung's $500 million expansion of its Austin chipmaking facility, which will become the largest in North America.

But with a new decade and new century come new frontiers for Austin.

It's clear that the defining challenge and opportunity of our time will be centered around energy and sustainability.  In the race to replace fossil fuels with reliable, renewable, affordable sources of energy like wind and solar, and to use energy and other natural resources more efficiently through new technologies and smarter infrastructure, there will be winners and losers.

Austin - with a legacy of environmentalism, a proven record of entrepreneurial know-how, and a culture of creativity - will be at the forefront of the global Green Revolution taking shape today.

The bottom line is this: what makes Austin different - and what positions us to enjoy continued growth and prosperity into the future - is a core value. 

Yes, we're a crazy cocktail of people, places, and philosophies.  We're part digital and part downhome; part think tank and part biker bar; part green collar and part redneck. But at the heart of it all, Austin is really about  a simple, unifying idea: that creativity, in all of its forms, is the lifeblood of a dynamic, thriving, future-oriented city.