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The Rice Thresher
6100 Main Street (MS-524)
Houston, TX 77005-1892

I was used to cities like San Francisco, places with downtowns, historical neighborhoods and civic identity. But all I saw on the drive from the airport was strip malls and billboards for churches and those so-called "gentlemen's" clubs. Even what they call downtown turned out to be strangely lifeless.

Houston, I concluded, was a suburb of itself, and I left it at that.

I soon found things to like, though: the oak-lined streets of the museum district, the old brick buildings on the northern edge of downtown, the mansions of River Oaks and the quirkiness of Montrose. But those are the remnants of an older city, the Houston that existed before air conditioning and freeways.

That, of course, is not what Houston is about. The city has been a commercial center for over a century (cotton drove the economy before the turn of the century, when oil was discovered in east Texas) but before the 1950s, Houston was still relatively small. The city didn't really boom until the 1970s.

When it did, virtually no urban planning was involved. That is actually an old tradition. Houston began as a bit of real estate speculation, by two brothers who tried to make a quick profit by promoting their land (somewhat inaccurately) as an excellent port on Buffalo Bayou.

This is the nation's largest city without zoning, and its people have voted repeatedly to keep it that way.

It's no wonder that I found the result disconcerting. What we have here is an entirely new kind of city.

To understand Houston, we have to abandon our preconceptions of what a city is. That cluster of high-rises to the north is not downtown, no matter what the freeway signs say. The high-rises may mislead you, but those are really a ghost of something that was, a reflection more of perceptions than of reality. They are there because Smith and Louisiana are still prestigious addresses, but no one goes there anymore except to work.

The real downtown is 6 miles west, at the corner of 610 and 59. Post Oak may look at first glance like a suburban office park, but that's just as deceiving as the downtown skyline. This place has all the functions of a traditional downtown: offices, hotels, retail and entertainment (like it or not, that's what strip clubs and singles bars are). If Houston has a center, this is it: More people come to the Galleria on a regular basis than go anywhere downtown.

All that's missing is the civic center. That's not surprising; civic and cultural institutions tend to reflect older values. One day, perhaps, city government will build its own office park and the Alley Theatre will anchor Galleria 5.

At second glance, it's quite familiar. Post Oak is a traditional downtown stretched out. Everything has gotten bigger. Loop 610 is the new main street. Instead of carvings and Corinthian columns, buildings use flashy glass to draw attention to themselves.

Gilded letters above the doors are replaced by garish three-story signs. Faux-Victorian street lights have become giant silver arches. But it's all serving the same purpose.

Looking at it that way, I feel more at home. I'm still not sure I like it, but at least it's rational.

I'm not altogether sure we're all comfortable with it, though. That might explain this city's distinct lack of civic pride (where else would a city erect billboards reminding itself to "expect the unexpected").

People like living in Houston, but they don't like Houston. We have yet to find a new form of civic identity to match this new form of city.

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the September 5, 1997 issue.