From The Wall Street Journal, "Annise Parker: The Modern American Boomtown: Houston's mayor—an openly gay Democrat friendly to business—talks about why her city is the country's fastest growing and most diverse." by Matthew Kaminski:
Houston's recent track record is startling. For the calendar year ending in February, it saw the fastest pace of job growth (4.5%) among the country's 20 largest metropolitan areas. (With a population of 2.1 million, it's the fourth-largest U.S. city.) In 2011, the last year such data are available, Houston had the fastest-growing large metropolitan economy, at 3.7%.
Add to that a cost of living that is 7.8% below the U.S. average—New York is 53.4% above the average—and you can see the attraction for waves of new arrivals. Housing costs run a third less than the average in the 29 largest metro areas. Adjusting for these lower costs, Houston has the highest per-capita income of any city in the nation.*** The city has surpassed New York as the country's most racially and ethnically diverse, according to a study last year by Rice University. One in five residents was born outside the U.S. The city attracted the second-highest number of new, foreign-born residents in the first decade of this century, after the more populous New York. A Manhattan Institute report last year named Houston and Dallas the country's least segregated cities.*** No ethnic group makes up a majority, and Hispanics, whites, Asians and African-Americans are evenly represented. Houston's "melting pot" makes it "impossible for any one group to dominate another," says Fred Hofheinz, who was mayor in the 1970s. Leave the politics of ethnic and racial division to other places.
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