For
most of the eight million people in the New York City metropolitan area, the
Big Apple is, always will be the coolest city around. Sadly, Forbes Magazine
and Sperlings Best places didn’t get that message.
In a recent survey of cool cities, they actually designated Houston the coolest city in the USA.
The
Texas city ranked far, far ahead of New York City, which only nabbed number
ten, and outperformed Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and all the
happening places in the Pacific Northwest. They just barely bested several
other Texas cities.
When
the number-crunchers of Sperlings, a livability
rankings organization based in Portland, Oregon, were done, Houston had outperformed
every other place in a weighted average that considered job growth,
entertainment options, number of recreation and food venues, and green spaces.
Hey.
Hold on just a Texas minute.
First
of all, NYC and Houston are quite similar in some ways. The Texas city’s median age is 33 (drawing
from the same Sperlings statistics), while ours is 37 – hardly geriatric. True,
our largest single population group has a few years’ jump on theirs. Our
biggest demographic includes people from 35 to 44 years old, while their
largest slice of the population pie is made up of individuals between 25 and 34.
But that’s hardly revolutionary.
Houston
is unquestionably getting fatter, happier, and more prosperous every year. The
job growth, a booming oil and gas industry, and a wave of eager young
professionals are injecting new life into the city. But nothing can touch the sheer
opportunity, entertainment potential, cultural significance, and intellectual
stimulation of a New York City. With four times as many people as Houston, and
the virtue of a long and storied history, we have a uniquely inexhaustible
supply of things to do, see, and talk about.
And the best may be yet to come.
Thanks
to some amazing recent developments, New York City is poised to take imagination
and entrepreneurship to an entirely new level. Our very own Silicon Alley,
located between Broadway and Fifth Avenue between Union Square and Madison
Square Park, is catapulting the city right into the new century – and sprouting
new ‘mini’ Silicon Alleys in Queens and Brooklyn. New public-private
partnerships are giving web start-ups and genuinely running start. And those
exciting new businesses are attracting new professionals, new funding, new
opportunity, and the new housing that’ll keep our innovators comfy, cosy, and
close at hand.
Houston
may have its 2.6 job market growth rate, but New York posted a 28.7 per cent
increase in information technology jobs over the last five years; the stuff
that cool is built on. From Shelby.tv, to Tumblr, ETSY, Bit.ly, Foursquare,
Socialflow, Food52, and Reddit these places are not only more sustainable than
old-and-gas related multinationals, they are downright chill.
So
let’s be gracious and congratulate the Bayou City for topping the Forbes list
knowing that New York City, the place that gave cool its cache, won’t be
cooling its own heels for too long.
