Where to live in Austin
Austin is 325 square miles and just over a million people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025, and the neighborhood decides more about an address here than any citywide figure does: which county and school district the tax bill is drawn on, whether the lot sits on clay or limestone or in a creek's floodplain, whether a commission reviews the front of the house, and which association writes the covenants. These are 20 neighborhood guides, filterable by area below.
Browse dedicated pages for Downtown and central Austin, East Austin, Mueller to Montopolis, South Austin, below the river, North Austin, Crestview to Avery Ranch, West Austin, beyond MoPac.
20 communities across the city
A start on a city of 961,855 people at the 2020 census whose own neighborhood planning areas cover only its older core. Filter by area of the city, then page through the rest.
Allandale
Larger ranch houses on larger lots between Burnet Road and MoPac, next to Crestview but further from the train and closer to Shoal Creek.
Avery Ranch
A golf course community in Williamson County that is inside the City of Austin but outside Travis County and Austin ISD, which changes the tax bill and the schools.
Bouldin Creek
An old grid of small lots west of South Congress, a walk across the lake to downtown, with South First Street's restaurants on the doorstep.
Cherrywood
Close-in bungalows east of the interstate between the university and Mueller, older and smaller than Mueller's houses and with no master association over them.
Circle C Ranch
A planned community in the southwest over the Edwards Aquifer, with a homeowners association, strict limits on paving and a long drive to anything central.
Clarksville
The freedmen's town west of downtown, where cottages on narrow lots sit a walk from Lady Bird Lake and the price is mostly the land.
Crestview
Postwar houses beside the Red Line's Crestview station, where the size of the lot is much of the price now that the City allows more homes on it.
Dove Springs
Southeast Austin subdivisions along Williamson Creek, cheaper than anywhere close in, where the flood map is the first thing to read.
Downtown Austin
The one part of Austin where the choice is a tower rather than a house, and the association's budget and reserve matter as much as the view.
East Cesar Chavez
The Mexican American barrio just east of downtown by the river, where new houses on split lots now stand beside the old ones.
Hyde Park
The streetcar suburb north of the university where the City reviews the front of the house, which is what keeps it looking the way it does.
Montopolis
The old community across the river by the Montopolis Bridge, nearer the airport than downtown, where new townhouses are going up among houses that have stood for generations.
Photographs: Downtown across Lady Bird Lake by Hensbread, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · South Congress from above by Hensbread, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · A Delwood duplex by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Sweet Home Baptist Church by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Crestview Station by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Dove Springs Recreation Center Austin by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Congress Avenue toward the Capitol by boklm, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · The Johnson and Johnson Grocery by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Hyde Park Presbyterian Church by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Baty Elementary School by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Showing 1–12 of 20 communities
The five areas at a glance
None of these five is drawn by the City. They are the names people here use, set on the three lines Austin already divides itself by: Interstate 35, Lady Bird Lake and the Colorado River, and MoPac. Where one area stops and the next begins is our judgment rather than a map anybody publishes.
| Area | Neighborhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown and central Austin | Clarksville, Downtown Austin, Hyde Park, North Loop | Downtown, Clarksville, Hyde Park and North Loop, between MoPac and the interstate, where the City reviews the front of many houses and downtown is a condominium market. |
| East Austin, Mueller to Montopolis | Cherrywood, East Cesar Chavez, Montopolis, Mueller, Windsor Park | East of I-35, from East Cesar Chavez and Montopolis to Cherrywood, Windsor Park and the former airport at Mueller: the part of the city that has changed fastest. |
| South Austin, below the river | Bouldin Creek, Circle C Ranch, Dove Springs, Travis Heights, Zilker | Below Lady Bird Lake, from Travis Heights, Bouldin Creek and Zilker out to Dove Springs and Circle C Ranch, where the creeks and the aquifer decide more than anywhere else. |
| North Austin, Crestview to Avery Ranch | Allandale, Avery Ranch, Crestview, North Burnet and the Domain | Crestview and Allandale's ranch houses, the Domain's towers and Avery Ranch across the Williamson County line, where the county and school district lines are the first check. |
| West Austin, beyond MoPac | Northwest Hills, Tarrytown | Tarrytown and Northwest Hills, west of MoPac on the limestone hills, where the ground under a house is steeper and steadier than the clay to the east. |
Where the neighborhoods come from. The City of Austin draws 65 neighborhood planning areas, but only across the older core of the city: Circle C, Northwest Hills and Avery Ranch are in none of them. It also keeps a Community Registry of more than four hundred neighborhood associations, homeowners associations and other groups, whose areas overlap and cover only the parts of the city that organized. So each guide here is a neighborhood with a boundary somebody official draws: a City neighborhood planning area where one exists, and a registered association's area where it does not. Each guide names which one it uses and what the name covers, and its population is the 2020 census count of the blocks inside it.
The five areas are ours. The City does publish divisions, and none of them is a way to choose where to live. Its ten City Council districts have each elected a member since 2014, are drawn by an independent citizens commission and were redrawn after the 2020 census, so they are electoral and they move. Its planning areas are the right size for a guide and far too many for a grouping, and Imagine Austin, the comprehensive plan, organizes the city by centers and corridors rather than by regions. The grouping here uses the names residents use instead, and which neighborhood lands in which area is our judgment.
What is not here. Round Rock, Pflugerville, Cedar Park, Leander, Manor, West Lake Hills, Rollingwood and Sunset Valley are separate municipalities with their own councils and their own tax rates, and none of them is covered on this site yet; Sunset Valley is surrounded by Austin on every side and is still not Austin. An Austin mailing address is not proof of a City of Austin address either: the postal city runs well past the city limits into unincorporated Travis, Williamson and Hays counties, where the bill carries no City tax and often a municipal utility district's instead. Inside the limits this selection still leaves real places out, and they come as the guides do.