This popped out:
The Houston Chronicle reported that, at a conference last year, an official with local software company Datacert announced that the firm was struggling to recruit from places like Stanford and Princeton, largely because prospective employees were not happy with the idea of calling Houston home. The company’s solution was to allow telecommuting, ensuring that new recruits wouldn’t have to live anywhere near Houston (many of them chose to live in Portland, Ore.). “Houston will not make it if it’s perceived by people outside of Houston to not only be flat and hot for much of the year, but also ugly and dangerously polluted,” says Stephen Klineberg, co-director of Rice’s Kinder Institute. “The business community knows that, and there’s a business case for planting trees, cleaning the air and downtown revitalization.” So not only is Houston competing against the suburbs for a tax base, but it’s also in competition against big cities nationwide for a workforce. City leaders believe an urban push can help them win on both fronts.
As a result, in recent years, city leaders have proudly rolled out a seemingly endless list of programs and policies they say will make Houston denser and more “livable” in an effort to capitalize on the growing fascination with urban living. Planning officials here tend to avoid terms like “smart growth” and “New Urbanism”—long in vogue in the planning community but often saddled with political baggage. Yet those terms convey the spirit of what Houston civic leadership is trying to do.
