Growth and the Quality of Life in the Houston Gulf Coast

All over the United States, hundreds of communities are struggling with issues of growth. They are being driven partly by the development of the global economy, in which the regions with the highest quality of life will have the competitive edge because of their ability to attract talent - the critical knowledge workers. Focus groups and polls show that two critical pieces of quality of life are health and the quality of the environmental background. The Houston region is widely perceived as very low in these characteristics, and way behind the patterns of reinvention that have emerged in other places. What are these patterns, and what can be done to move Houston into the 21st century as a healthy, competitive region?