Houston is Becoming the Cultural Capital of the South

On any given day in Houston, you’ll find Jonathan Delgado peddling happiness from his two Popston carts on the campus of the Museum of Fine Arts. As visitors stroll through the Isamu Noguchi-designed Cullen Sculpture Garden, enjoy free concerts in the plaza or snap selfies from the rooftop garden of the Glassell School of Art—all areas that were recently redone as part of the museum’s historic $450 million expansion—Delgado helps brighten their day with colorful, all-natural popsicles that draw from his childhood memories of making fresh juices with his grandmother in El Salvador. In honor of his location at the museum (an opportunity he credits with “changing [his] life”), Delgado’s seasonal treats pay tribute to current exhibits and artwork: a chocolate-dipped-banana pudding and Nilla wafer concoction inspired by Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Column sculpture, for example, or a passion fruit-guava-mango-kiwi treat in honor of this year’s Van Gogh retrospective.

This intersection of arts, culture, cuisine and design is at the heart of what’s driving Houston these days and what’s elevating its profile on the international stage. Now the fourth-largest city in the U.S. and on track to become the third largest by the late 2020s with a diverse population of more than 2.3 million that might surprise outsiders—the south Texas metropolis feels like it’s coming into its own, finding its voice and expanding beyond its oil and gas roots. With growth in fields such as medical research, healthcare and tech, an influx of international travelers and new residents, and a dynamic culinary scene—just ask the James Beard Foundation, which announced its finalists from Houston this year—H-Town is enjoying what many locals are touting as its Golden Era.

People are unwilling to settle for the way they used to live.

“In the 1970s and ’80s, Houston was a place where people came to make money and leave—but some of us didn’t get the memo,” says John Breeding, president of the Uptown Houston District and administrator of the Uptown Development Authority. The two government-adjacent entities’ $500 million-plus in projects include everything from infrastructure improvements and adding futuristic transit hubs in the Uptown neighborhood to partnering with the Memorial Park Conservancy to redesign one of the country’s largest urban parks. The latter has enlisted such top talent as landscape designer Nelson Byrd Woltz, who also worked on New York’s Hudson Yards. (Once renovated, the park will be home to one of the only city-center PGA-level golf courses in the country, allowing the Houston Open to come back from the suburbs starting in October 2020.) “People started working on things they were passionate about in their own areas, be it art and cuisine or neighborhood planning,” says Breeding, “and now they’re bumping into each other. In the last five or so years, we’re suddenly being dubbed an overnight success. But it’s really due to 40 years of dedicated work.”

Breeding says that the key difference in Houston today is an improved quality of life. “People are unwilling to settle for the way they used to live. New arrivals, long-timers—we’re all mining ground that may have been overlooked.”

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