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7/26/2012 @ 4:29PM |507,401 views
Houston Tops Our List Of America's Coolest Cities
Houston is known for many things: Oil, NASA, urban sprawl and business-friendly policies. But the Texas city deserves to be known for something else: coolness.
The Bayou City may not be the first place you associate with being hip or trendy. But Houston has something many other major cities don’t: jobs. With the local economy humming through the recession, Houston enjoyed 2.6% job growth last year and nearly 50,000 Americans flocked there in response — particularly young professionals. In fact, the median age of a Houston resident is a youthful 33.
The result? Over the past decade, the dreary corporate cityscape has been quietly transforming. Stylish housing developments have popped up downtown, restaurants have taken up residence in former factories and art galleries like the Station Museumhave been inhabiting warehouses.
Combine that with a strong theater scene, world-class museums and a multicultural, zoning-free mashup of a streetscape and you have the recipe for the No. 1 spot on Forbes’ list of America’s Coolest Cities To Live.
Behind the Numbers
“Cool” is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “very good; fashionable.” Of course what, exactly, is good and fashionable is very much in the eye of the beholder. We sought to quantify it in terms of cities, ranking the 65 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas and Metropolitan Divisions (areas that include cities and their surrounding suburbs that are defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget) based on seven data points weighted evenly.
Sperling’s Best Places helped us calculate the number of entertainment options per capita in each metro area. We also ranked the cities based on other recreational opportunities, including the amount of green space, the cost and number of outdoor activities like golfing and skiing available, and the number of pro and college sports teams.
List: America’s Coolest Cities To Live
With the help of Sperling’s we tallied restaurants and bars per capita, weeding out chain establishments – Applebee’s has less sizzle than a local chef’s bistro.
We also looked at each city’s cultural composition using Sperling’s Diversity Index. It measures the likelihood of meeting another person of a different race or ethnicity. Increased diversity tends to lead to a larger assortment of interesting shops, restaurants and events.
Using the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we factored in median age, favoring places with a large young adult population.
We ranked the cities based on net migration (the number of people who relocated there in 2011) and also on unemployment rates, since a city’s offerings are only as good as the amount of people who want and can to afford to enjoy them. (No one likes to hang out in an empty bar, right?) We culled this data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Moody’s Analytics.
Comments
Houston #1
Dallas #4
San Antonio #11
Fort Worth #13
Austin #19
Doesn’t that make 5 out of the top 20 in the country Texas cities?
Being a native Texan, the four above Austin is just comedy plain and simple.
Houston is hands down the worst city in the state. Ungodly sub urban sprawl cookie cutter McMansions and strip malls as far as the eye can see.
Dallas is a city who’s population wants to be in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but can’t afford to live in either.
San Antonio isn’t as awful as the first two, but its not much better.
Fort Worth is Hicksville USA, which is really just the urban sprawl of Dallas over flowing to neighbor cities.
Look, a self hating Texan…so sad.
Austin is a good city for college students anbut everyone has to grow up one day. Houston is a business city with strong job growth.
Simply by stating that San Antonio is a better city shows your true colors. You obviously have no idea how to live in Houston and you probably never have.
An Austin snob obviously!
Agreed, exactly on target. Houston being “cool” must be from Bill Maher’s new monologue.
lol, what? Austin has an unemployment rate of 5.4%, Houston’s is 7.1%. Apple just signed a deal to open up another massive operations center in Austin, creating over 3 thousand new jobs. Austin is a huge job growth town – that’s why it’s the fastest growing city in America currently by FAR.
Hail doesn’t realize that Austin has it’s share of cookie cutters & strip malls. Ever heard of Round Rock & Georgetown?
The only thing close to accurate you’ve said is the comment about Fort Worth.
Austin is the most unfriendly city in the state with the worst traffic.
lol, what? Austin is a town compared to Houston. Houston is the 4th largest city in the USA if you hadn’t noticed. 3000 jobs for Apple, of course, Austin is an IT nerve center… But there are 1.3M more people in Houston than there are in Austin…
lol…imagine that
hmmm…just curious…what makes Houston the worst city in the state in your opinion?
If you think Austin has the worst traffic you have not spent time in any other Texas city. Traffic in Austin is 15 minutes of rush hour a day versus 24 hours a day in Houston. And Round Rock and Georgetown are no more Austin than Galveston is Houston.
He doesn’t COMPLETELY hate Texas, he likes Austin and probably lives there. To each his own.
EXACTLY! Texas has known forever that it’s the #1 state in the Union. It’s just about time everyone else realized it. :-p
Well said Hugo! Austin likes to think it’s bigger than it is, just because hipster style cities tend to get more attention, over places that quietly deliver jobs and affordable housing!
dallas and fort worth is basically one metropolitan area
Keep Austin Insular!
Austintude at it’s best here, folks.
Keep Austin Insular!
Gotta love it…
Yes but Austin is actually “cool”. And you called it, it is the IT nerve center, ergo, size isn’t everything, cowboy.
If there is a way to quantify “cool”, inner-loop Houston is every bit as cool as Austin… and then some.
The Austinites are going to be so angry they weren’t higher on the list. You can already see it here with their nasty comments here.
I lived in Austin for several years, let me tell you a few secrets about it (actually, not secrets to those of us who have lived there.) Unlike Houston, Austin has an EXCELLENT marketing team – they’ve been very successful with promoting the positives and hiding the negatives. Also, you can’t go into Austin chat forums or talk to Austin residents and say one negative thing about their city – you will be vilified or banned. No joke. They even like to make things up. After my experiences there, I thought their motto of “Keep Austin weird” didn’t fit… “Keep Austin insular” is much more fitting.
Austin: the most overrated city I’ve ever lived in. Houston: the most underrated city I’ve ever lived in.
Apple is not creating 3k new jobs in Austin. They are building a new center and moving the existing Austin work force in to the new facility. When it is all done Austin will gain less than 1k new jobs, but they will keep approx. 3k existing positions.
You pretty much nailed it. None of them are worth a bucket of warm spit but the folks who live there all originated in even worse places—so they think it’s paradise.
This is one of the worst comments on here. Dallas and Ft. worth are 2 distinct and completely different cities.
Hail has obviously never been or lived in Ft. Worth.
Austin is a great city, but so is every other Texas city on the list. I live in Houston and love it here!
Let me mythbust some stuff:
- It is not 90% strip malls – we do have our share, but also have some great “non-strip mall” retail.
- There are cool areas just like in Austin with locally owned shops, great bars and delicious coffee (example: The Heights – has all three types of things listed all over the place).
- The traffic is bad at rush hour (like any city!), but not all the time. Sure, there are areas to avoid at any time of day (no thank you 290! I will not sit in your perma-traffic!), but again, this is on par with other big cities.
- Not every home is a McMansion – those are mostly in our suburbs (like in Austin suburbs). We have a ton of diverse real estate here – bungalows, duplexes, tiny mom-and-pop owned apartments plus all the commercial stuff (big complexes, the aforementioned “McMansions”.)
My take: we’re all Texans and love where we live – let’s cool it on the “my dad can beat up your dad” city superiority!
Trich, that is completely incorrect. The new building is across the street from their current building – they’re expanding their campus, not moving. It is 3000 new jobs.
Houston is the worst example of ugly urban sprawl, lack of zoning, horrible traffic and wretched air quality in the South. And Morgan Brennan wouldn’t know “cool” if it hit her with a truck. She thinks it can be quantified according to a formula — about the least cool thing imaginable. For those capable of recognizing cool (hint: if you watch Fox, you can’t know cool), Austin blows every city in Texas away, except maybe for San Marcus and some of the funky little towns in the Chihuahuan Desert.
watch it…here comes el paso
And I’ll take Houston, the energy capital of the world, over Austin any day. Technology is a very faddy industry…you know. Like what’s hot now? Apple. Dell was it 8-10 years ago. Everything from plastics to medicicine is derived from oil. And with the building infrastrucutre, the price of gas will only rise within the next 3-4 years…I’ll take Houston.
And I’ll take Houston, the energy capital of the world, over Austin any day. Technology is a very faddy industry…you know. Like what’s hot now? Apple. Dell was it 8-10 years ago. Everything from plastics to medicine to gasoline is derived from oil. And with the building of infrastrucutre, the price of gas will only rise within the next 3-4 years…I’ll take Houston.
No, just self-aware. Nothing wrong with that!
I’m not a cowboy sweetie. I work in IT but at a company that actually employs real people that live here in Houston… not some call center in BFE. If Austin thinks they are THE technology center of choice they’d better think again. San Francisco and the NC research triangle got you beat every time. Austin doesn’t even have 1 single major league sports team…. get real.
Austin is waaay better than the cities above it. No way a huge city that has way more traffic, crimes, and annoying people is better than Austin. We are the Texas’s Capitol by the way. Stop hating.
Del, Hugo & Sara. Austin is VERY cool—because of it’s hipster cred. Whoever said that Austin has no major sports team–shove it! I don’t care! That doesn’t factor into ‘cool’ for me. PARTS of Houston ARE as cool as Austin. I’m a native Houstonite (like Austinite & Dallasite). However, there are factors all should know about the less cool aspects of Houston. This was in The Houston Chronicle, exactly one week ago:
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Segregation-by-income-in-Houston-is-among-the-3755755.php
I don’t want to citicize growth, but other factors must be considered.
Excusee my Francais but my answer is “Hell Yeah Bitches Texas Rules…5 cities!”
Dude, you’re just waaaay too cool for Houston so you might as well stay far far away! We don’t need people like you here. Face the truth- Houston is THE COOLEST. How can you disagree with Forbes?
Dallas believes it’s a country all it’s own … so it doesn’t count. Ask any cowboy fan!
Texas doesn’t even rate in the top 5 of standard of living. It does rank well for poorest educational system and most unhealthy.
Affordable housing is cancelled out in Houston by super high property taxes. Also, the job fields are super narrow and not better than many other cities that are more diverse.
Houston??? Really? Nothing says cool like endless sprawling suburban hell and strip malls. The person who wrote this list clearly has never visited any of these cities.