Urban Transformation: BBC Delves Into Houston, a 'City of the Future'

HOUSTON, TX — Exploding growth, dramatic increase in youth population, a strained infrastructure, and a growing gap between the rich and poor: Houston has all of that, and more, and a new BBC World Service report has put all that is the Bayou City in its spotlight.

Broadcast as part of the network's The Documentary program, "City of the Future" begins with this sentence, spoken by Catherine Carr, the episode's author: "In 30 years' time, experts predict the rest of America will look like Houston, Texas." (Listen to "City of the Future" here.)

Carr interviews Margie McHugh, director of the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigration Integration Policy, who says that Houston is "truly a ramshackle metropolis"

Stephen Klineberg , a professor of sociology at Rice University, who is also interviewed in the segment, provides an interesting fact: Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit would all fit in the city limits of Houston. He also says that Houston is "the blob that ate East Texas" and adds that the city is reinventing itself because of the way societal demands have changed. Younger people don't want to live in the suburbs that fueled much of the growth of the city; they want walkability and all the amenities and cultural opportunities great urban centers can offer.

In 1983, Houston lost 100,000 jobs, the result of collapsed oil prices. That's when things began to change, Klineberg tells Carr. Houston, he says, has been at the forefront of the fundamental transformations that have made the 21st century a different place.

Carr interviews teachers, workers, thinkers, doers, immigration activists, city planners, and others, and all of them are thinking about the future of Houston.

— Image courtesy Flickr/Kristopher Edwin