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Houston's Economic Diversity


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This is all fantasy.

if Houston was to expand areas of its economy, which areas would you like to see Houston expand in?

For me it would be:

1. Manufacturing. We are by far the top manufacturer in the state, and usually top 3 in the US but would love to see us diversified even more. SA AND DFW are already ahead of us in the auto manufacturing area. It would have been nice if we had made a play for the Volvo us expansion. The east side of the metro would have been an excellent location with all the empty space and the port being nearby.

2. Biotechnology. This would be an interesting niche area for midtown. A miniature TMC style biotechnology campus in Midtown would do wonders for midtown. Would like this to work closely with TMC, Rice and UHD, but separate from them.

3.Corporate expansions. With companies like GE looking to flee high tax states, what better city to host it than Houston. It would be the largest company in Houston being #4 on the fortune 500. Incidentally if we do get Exxon and Chevron too we would have 2, 3, 4 & 6 (exxon, chevron, GE AND Connoco)

4. Technology. Again DFW is ahead in the game along with Austin. It would be nice if we expand in this area. A tech district north west of UH would be nice.

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Agree with the biotech. I would like to see more consumer businesses here, that goes along with the car manufacturing.

What we really lack is art, creative, & design (graphic/advertising).

Financial institutions.

Tech. The days of Compaq are long gone. Although we do have engineering firms & technology, it's always directly tied to Oil & Gas.

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We have lost a lot of our financial institutions through mergers, buyouts and market crashes.

We still have Amegy, the southwest headquarters for WFS I believe, and a few smaller ones like woodforest.

SA has two huge financial institutions in Frost and USAA.

I would like to see more non O AND G tech.

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We have lost a lot of our financial institutions through mergers, buyouts and market crashes.

We still have Amegy, the southwest headquarters for WFS I believe, and a few smaller ones like woodforest.

SA has two huge financial institutions in Frost and USAA.

 

Amegy has been a subsidiary of Utah-based Zions Bancorporation since 2005. 

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I am all for homegrown expansion.  Much as I like Houston, useful transplants from other states are getting less and less likely the longer Harris County plays Russian roulette with its storm surge preparedness.  Cite Magazine has been covering this, most recently here.  If our primary economic engine of the Ship Channel can be shut down for months by any given storm season, and the residential areas flood like they just have even without a hurricane coming in, the administrators of any public company are going to want to avoid in advance the added risks of putting operations here.

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Since this is fantasy, I would like to see Houston take the lead in helping people with low or no skills into the economy to participate in honorable and interesting work.  Right now education is the mantra, and right now it seems that the process of learning is central to what's learned, like it would be different if you learned it a different order -- and also like the thing being learned needs to work its way into the crevices of your personality, not just sit on top of it like a smock.  

 

But soon research will be underway into whether and how we can use electronic means to acquire knowledge faster ("I know kung fu!", for instance) or, even more dystopian, perhaps, contribute our own processing power to a matrix a few hours a day, which might be far more pleasant (and so insidious) than doing intellectual work the sweatshop way we currently contribute it.  

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Nanotechnology

Banking (as much like nyc as possible )

Heavy manufacturing (a la south Korea )

All biosciences (we have TMC)

Environmental science (we have perfect testing ground for that)

We could use a few Automotive Manufacturing plants (Dallas and san Antonio have one each) since we have a huge port.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Education. We need UH to become a university on the level of UT and TAMU. We need Rice to keep doing what it's doing, but with at least 2-3k more students. 

 

^^^Do this and watch the money pile up. 

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