Joel Kotkin, America’s leading urbanologist, predicted last year that by 2023 Houston “will be widely acknowledged as America’s next great global city.” Kotkin noted that Houston, “the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse metro area … is home to the world’s largest medical center and has dethroned New York City as the nation’s leading exporter.”

Houston? In the movie A Man For All Seasons, Thomas More (with a sneer in his voice) asks a traitor who has sold out for a sinecure, “For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for Wales?” East and West Coast academic and media leaders tend to think of Houston in that way: Next great global city? Dethroned New York City? Sure, the energy boom is sending dollars there, but … Houston?

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