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People forget this. They also seem to forget the whole "Space City" thing.
Houston's a lot more dynamic than people give it credit.
They also seem to forget a huge and still fast growing medical sector. They also seem to forget the seaport that deals with multiple commodities. They also seem to forget the fast growing technology field. Energy is what makes up most of Houston's economy, not oil and Houston is a big player in just about all energy related sectors.
From the stats one of the other Houston homers is throwing out, over 50% of the Houston economy is tied to the oil & gas corporations there, if that is not MOST of the population working in the oil industry, I don't know what is.
Being a one party city does not mean gloom and doom. Chicago hasn't had a republican mayor since the 1930's, I'd say they're doing alright. I don't think San Francisco has had a republican mayor in at least a couple of decades, but they seem to be prospering.
Silicon Valley is mostly based in San Jose, not San Francisco, and San Francisco has a very diverse economy and is in no way comparable to Houston.
I don't think the tech boom and Silicon Valley is really comparable to Oil & Gas. Oil&Gas are non-renewable energy sources, Silicon Valley exports technology, computers, programs, etc...not a physical commodity per se, two different animals here. Saying San Fran is closer to facing Detroit's fate than Houston is just pure lunacy.
If yoi are going to quote get it right.. i said 50% of houston ecomony comes from oil and gas and energy overall.. i did not say 50% of it employment comes from it...you are far more likey to meet someone in the medical feild than oil...you are also far more likey to meet someone in aerospace before you meet someone in oil and gas...i know dozens of nurses and docs ..i even know 2 or three contractors who work for nasa..i cant think of any who work in oil a
nd gas
I SERIOUSLY doubt this, especially since Berkeley, Stanford, and the other institutions of higher learning aren't going anywhere, and the Bay Area doesn't solely rely on tech. There are at least two very busy ports in the area and San Francisco is a major financial center as well.
It's still much closer than Houston to becoming the next Detroit. Houston one of the MOST major ports in the world that greatly dwarf San Francisco-Oakland, not to mention that it has one of the largest medical complexes in the country and is a major area for the aerospace industry. You can't replicate that anywhere else, unlike the technology industry which is getting outsourced to India. Once the barriers of trade break down and companies can move wherever without any restriction, believe me, San Francisco/San Jose will become the next rust belt. There's nothing keeping the technology industry there, and California really is collapsing at the seams. I can't say that I'd be sad if that happened.
It's still much closer than Houston to becoming the next Detroit. Houston one of the MOST major ports in the world that greatly dwarf San Francisco-Oakland, not to mention that it has one of the largest medical complexes in the country and is a major area for the aerospace industry. You can't replicate that anywhere else, unlike the technology industry which is getting outsourced to India. Once the barriers of trade break down and companies can move wherever without any restriction, believe me, San Francisco/San Jose will become the next rust belt. There's nothing keeping the technology industry there, and California really is collapsing at the seams. I can't say that I'd be sad if that happened.
With the widening of the Panama Canal, The Port of Houston is expecting at bare minimum a 15% increase in trade with Asia going on conservative estimates.
Now that doesn't seem like a whole lot, but when you factor in the billions of dollars flowing through the port each year it adds up pretty quick.
With the widening of the Panama Canal, The Port of Houston is expecting at bare minimum a 15% increase in trade with Asia going on conservative estimates.
Now that doesn't seem like a whole lot, but when you factor in the billions of dollars flowing through the port each year it adds up pretty quick.
Yeah, that sure as hell puts Houston in the Detroit camp over a place that is only increasingly relying on one industry and its sub-industries. Imagine if Tech didn't exist? How screwed would San Francisco be?
What I fail to understand why you keep making this an issue about race. Nowhere in my post did I imply anything about a certain race. That's the root of where your "disagreememt" with me falls flat.
It's a VERY well-known fact that Blacks made up the bulk of the migrants to Northern urban centers during the Great Migration. Who are you trying to fool dude? If I was off in this assessment, you would have quickly corrected me in my first response to that asinine statement. The fact that you did not demonstrates that I was correct and you were referring to Black migrants, which probably includes your ancestors.
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The fact is, the southern migrants, who were both white and black, who lived in both the city and suburbs of Detroit, when trying to merely attain those high paying assembly line jobs (as they couldn't earn a decent living any other way without an education) brought their reggressive and simplistic segregationalist culture (which also rooted from their poor access to education and also the fact that they were heavily influenced by the baptist church, thus their lack of open-mindedness in the way they thought) with them when they moved to Detroit , and because they made up a fair majority of Detroit's population, were able to (with their reggresive and simplistic way of doing things) dictate Detroit's evolution to now its detriment.
This is bananas. Pure bananas. I don't even know where to begin to counter such misinformation.
First of all, it seems that you don't know as much about your city's history as you think you do, especially if you think these migrants, who you are essentially blaming for trying to make a better life for themselves, were "simplistic segregationalists." The fact of the matter is that it was native WHITES in Detroit, and other Northern urban centers, that corralled Blacks into certain neighborhoods and sectors of the city. THEY were the segregationalists:
As Detroit’s black population skyrocketed during the Great Migration from the South, the city’s whites fought what they called the “Negro invasion” with every tool at their disposal. From 1945 to 1965 whites attacked at least 250 black families — usually the first or second to move into all-white neighborhoods — breaking windows, burning crosses and vandalizing homes.
When white Detroiters could not win by fighting, they fled to the suburbs. Indeed, for a half-century beginning in the 1950s, Detroit lost nearly half of its population, almost all whites.
By the 1940s Detroit already had a long history of racial conflict. Race riots had occurred in 1863 and as recently as 1941. By the 1920s the city had become a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization committed to white supremacy. The industrial plants provided jobs but not housing. White communities militantly guarded the dividing lines imposed by segregation throughout Detroit's history. As a result, the city's 200,000 black residents were cramped into 60 square blocks on the East Side and forced to live under deplorable sanitary conditions. Ironically, the ghetto was called Paradise Valley.
So this false narrative you're trying to push that says that Southern migrants to Detroit, mostly Black, were dumb, backwards, hateful, racists, etc. and the White natives were well-educated, enlightened, progressive, fair-minded, etc. is 100%, unequivocally, and blatantly unsubstantiated.
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As far as NYC and Chicago being on the skds as you claim, oh please l. Even during NYC's worst years, it was still the best and largest city in the country, population-wise as well as economically. Furthermore, Chicago has only lost 25% of its peak population while still having one of the strongest urban cores in the country as well as one of the largest metro GDP in the globe.The fact that you keep trying to compare those cities to Detroit is really a major logical fallacy. I'd take Chicago and NYC's "skids" any day over what Detroit has skid to. Besides all of that, bith of cities had riots as well, but yet they were able to recover from them as we can see.
You are intentionally distorting my argument because you can plainly see that it debunks your premise that Detroit's decline is primarily due to an influx of "uneducated, backwards, racist" mostly Black Southern migrants and the leadership of Black civic/political leaders (and I still have yet to see proof that they were uneducated as you claim). If that were the case, then what happened in Detroit would have inevitably happened in Chicago, NYC, DC, Philly, etc. because these cities also received substantially large amounts of Black Southern migrants. The fact that they did not, and also hit very low points at one point in their history (Chicago and NYC in particular), clearly disproves your theory.
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BTW, last I checked, Atlanta as a metro surpassed Detroit long ago population-wise and economically speaking. This can be attributed to the fact that Atlanta's population is more educated (which is a no-brainer, given all of tye major colleges in/around Atlanta) and the fact that the Atlanta simply had different expectations and values than Detroiters.
I swear this is getting tiring.
You CLEARLY said that Detroit's migrants weren't educated or progressive simply because they were Southerners--not because they didn't have access to institutions of higher learning (which would be a given). Once more, here are your OWN WORDS:
"They weren't progressive or educated enough (given where they came from, the Southern US) to see the impact their decisions would have in the long term on the city."
Atlanta alone clearly debunks that ignorant statement of yours--not to mention Houston and Dallas (and yes, they are Southern).
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Besides that, Atlanta has always been the center, or the living room so to speak, of the SE US (like Chicago is to the Midwest and NYC is to the NE).
No it hasn't. Atlanta only began emerging as the primary big city of the Southeast (excluding Miami) in the mid-20th century. Before that, NOLA was the region's largest city, and going back a few decades before the Civil War, it was Charleston. Again, the point is that it was native leaders primarily responsible for Atlanta's ascendancy--yes, those "dumb Southerners."
This entire exchange is just unbelievable on SO many levels.
Yeah, that sure as hell puts Houston in the Detroit camp over a place that is only increasingly relying on one industry and its sub-industries. Imagine if Tech didn't exist? How screwed would San Francisco be?
I don't think San Francisco itself would be in bad shape, but the southern half of the Bay Area around San Jose would face a pretty bad decline.
It's still much closer than Houston to becoming the next Detroit. Houston one of the MOST major ports in the world that greatly dwarf San Francisco-Oakland, not to mention that it has one of the largest medical complexes in the country and is a major area for the aerospace industry. You can't replicate that anywhere else, unlike the technology industry which is getting outsourced to India.
Of course this all can be replicated, to a certain extent. Oakland can develop land adjacent to the port for expansion; any place can build a large medical complex, as Nashville and New Orleans are doing (of course they won't be as big as TMC initially, but they will still be quite large in their first phases); and enough federal investment can make an area a hub for aerospace (after all, there's also Huntsville and Cape Canaveral).
Neither Houston nor San Francisco are closer to becoming the next Detroit. Again, this rests on the premise that overreliance on one sector was the primary cause of Detroit's failure, which is inaccurate. Of course that was part of it, but so much more went into it. I don't see the political structure of either Houston or San Francisco being like Detroit, I don't see enormously strained race relations, I don't see White/middle class flight on an epic scale, I don't see a failure to invest in transportation networks, etc.
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