Full of Energy

Houston has welcomed a million newcomers in the past decade.
It's easy to see why

Perhaps nothing typifies the sprawling, unpredictable, and ultimately astonishing city of Houston more than the annual Art Car Parade. Each May, some 250,000 people line the south bank of the Buffalo Bayou to watch a lineup of bizarre, one-of-a-kind, custom-designed vehicles wheel their way down Allen Parkway. There are 250-plus entries every year, each one more outrageous than the last.

A newcomer, spying an outhouse on wheels or a space-age Cinderella pumpkin coach, may be prompted to ask why. "You spend so much time in your car here, it's a natural extension of your personality," says Stephen Bridges, director of the Orange Show for Visionary Art, which sponsors the event.

The Art Car Parade is an irreverent, colorful, no-holds-barred celebration of self-expression - proof that Houston, despite its distinction as the energy capital of the world, is no buttoned-down corporate city. Nor is it the hayseed cow town that some outsiders envision.

It's true that the nation's fourth-largest city still harbors a bit of the wild West, spurning planning and zoning to preserve the wildcat spirit that gave it birth. That spirit is alive and well in the ordered chaos of Houston's neighborhoods, where a beer can-covered bungalow can co-exist alongside a row of spiffy new townhouses. Not only does the beer can house exist, but it's been enshrined as a quintessentially Houstonian work of folk art.

A City of Many Cultures

There's no shortage of world-class art in Houston, one of the few cities to have resident professional performing arts companies in four disciplines — opera, symphony, ballet, and theater. The museum district, with 18 venues, is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the United States. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has doubled in size over the past decade and now holds a permanent collection comprising nearly 60,000 works.

Houston's embrace of the outsider is apparent not only in its art scene but in an explosion of cultural diversity. The city's vibrant Asian community, for example, was one of the factors that drew Rice University president David Leebron, whose wife is from China, to Houston. Raised in Philadelphia and educated in Boston, Leebron says he frequently finds himself debunking the prejudices of far-flung colleagues and associates. "For people from the northeast, California, or Europe, they're surprised when they see that, at the end of day, Houston is one of the most sophisticated cities in the country," he notes.

That's due in part to its world-class arts and museums. But Houston is also a cultural microcosm of the world, with large communities representing virtually every point on the globe.

That diversity is reflected in a vibrant restaurant scene, says Teresa Byrne-Dodge, founder and editor of My Table magazine. "This is a city that enjoys restaurants as a form of entertainment," she points out. Houston has changed considerably since Byrne-Dodge arrived in 1982, a time when she says sushi was still eyed with suspicion. Now there are dozens of sushi restaurants, and nearly every type of fusion cuisine imaginable.

A City of Health

True to its origins as the "petro metro" following the discovery of oil in 1901, Houston remains the nation's oil capital, but there's a growing focus on renewables like wind energy. The city's diversified economy has also built up, among other things, a huge research and technology sector. With the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, more than 14 colleges and universities, and the largest medical center in the world all making their home here, the synergy for innovation just keeps on growing.

"It's basically a city of health," says Richard Wainerdi, president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center. "Barbara Bush styled it as Houston's gift to the world."

The Texas Medical Center itself defies categorization. The massive engine of medical ingenuity encompasses 47 institutions, including 13 hospitals, 19 academic institutions, and 24 nonprofit organizations. When the $7.1 billion worth of projects now under way are completed in 2012, the center will rank as the country's seventh-largest business district - larger than downtown Los Angeles. That's just the main campus, conveniently located near Houston's thriving museum district and downtown. There's also a satellite hospital and clinic complexes throughout the Houston metro area and beyond, such as the three-hospital western campus under construction in the suburb of Katy. Of the 10 percent annual growth in patient volume at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, 80 percent has been in the outlying communities, driving the decision to open more hospitals. "This allows very sophisticated services to be done in a community setting, where most of the patients prefer to stay," says Memorial Hermann CEO Dan Wolterman.

A Mega-Metro in the Making

From leafy Shenandoah and The Woodlands north of the city to Galveston and Clear Lake on the Gulf Coast to the south, the 10-county area that comprises Greater Houston is laced with more than 500 miles of highway. But don't think of Houston in such large-scale terms. The city is a network of neighborhoods, each with its own personality and virtually everything needed to provide day-to-day sustenance.

"There's a menu of neighborhoods to choose from," says Mayor Bill White. "People can live in a vibrant downtown urban environment, or on the coast, or among the trees and forests, or on the Katy Prairie."
The suburbs are booming. Consider The Woodlands. This 28,000-acre planned community just outside Houston ranks No. 1 in Texas and fourth in the nation in new home sales and is now home to some 5 million square feet of retail space and more than 1,500 businesses and corporations. But you'd never know it cruising its shady, tree-lined avenues.

Then there's the Energy Corridor along I-10, which features the new $500 million, mixed-use City Centre; Kemah's buzzing boardwalk, one of the best in the country; and the gleaming Uptown district, built around the Galleria shopping mall. Downtown is also thriving, with a pulsating theater district, old jewels redeveloped into hip enclaves such as EaDo (the East Downtown warehouse district), and new projects like Houston Pavilions, home to attractions like the House of Blues and Lucky Strike Lanes and Lounge, an upscale bowling alley.

Perhaps the most important factor in the city's enormous growth is an intangible. "Houston has a different attitude than most cities," says Vicki Fullerton, chair of the Houston Association of Realtors. "It's a very young city as Texas goes, and we are a can-do city."

— Tracy L. Barnett