Houston Strategies

Is Houston good for smart people?

The Dallas Morning News recently ran yea/middle/nay head-to-head editorials on the question "Is Dallas good for smart people?". One of my favorite bloggers, Virginia Postrel, was the middle author, and she makes some very insightful comments here and here. I think much of what they say about Dallas is also applicable to Houston, although I also think Rice University gives Houston a bit of an edge over Dallas in the "intellectual climate" department. Her quote most applicable to Houston:

The funniest thing about the discussion in Dallas is how everyone assumes that the city should be good for intellectuals. (It's fine for "smart people.") Dallas is a city for normal people--people who focus on the reality at hand, not its deeper meaning; people who like their women pretty, their men successful, their children near at hand, their work productive, their religion inspiring. Intellectuals are weird. The only way to be an intellectual haven is either to have a very large population--large enough so that even a small percentage can constitute a critical mass--or to be a pretty strange city.

posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:23 PM