Houston The Next Great American City Essay

Geography impacts society, cultures, the economy, politics, and the environment around the world. To dig deeper and know why geography affects a variety of things the definition of this world should be known. Geography is the study of where things are found on Earth’s surface and the reasons for their locations. It is studied everywhere from countries in Asia to cities in The United States, such as Houston, Texas.

Houston, Texas is a city of more than 2.3 million people. The city once known for its ‘old cowboy hat image’ is now an area full of diverse citizens from all over the world. The article, “What Makes Houston the Next Great American City?” by Tony Perottet focuses on how Houston has developed from being “ an overwhelmingly Anglo[white]

metropolitan areas, with the greatest percentage of rich people living among the rich and the third greatest percentage of poor people among the poor”. The majority of the upper class are whites and Asians who have attended college, while the lower class is usually labor workers, such as Latinos. This has created not only an ethnic divide but also a class divide in the community. There are neighborhoods in the city that are run by drugs and crime, but there are also neighborhoods with nice houses and great schools. This leads to a main political problem…education. The article states, “...as long as a top-quality education remains a privilege of the rich, social inequalities will grow. ‘The public school system has largely been abandoned by middle-class white people,’ he says. ‘The question is, will aging Anglos be willing to pay to educate poor Latinos? If not, it’s hard to envision a prosperous future for Houston’”. One politician in Houston aims to focus on equal education for all. Better schools for lower-class kids can introduce them to the sciences, cooking, and even art, which make up Houston’s

The Station Museum of Contemporary Art’s director once said, “‘The only time this city hits the news is when we have a hurricane!’”. The director was upset because some people still label Houston as a “cultural wasteland”, but the city has art exhibits that pop up all over, restaurants that host multiple different types of foods from all over the world, and American fashion fused with Vietnamese style. And that is only to name a few! The diversity of the city allows for cultural diversity as well and shows how much cities can develop in only a couple of