GEE, WHAT COULD BE DIFFERENT ABOUT TEXAS? Houston: America’s Opportunity City.

Urban aesthetes on the ocean coasts tend to have a low opinion of the flat Texas landscape—and of Houston, in particular, which they see as a little slice of Hades: a hot, humid, and featureless expanse of flood-prone grassland, punctuated only by drab office towers and suburban tract houses. But Wolff and Hightower, major land developers on Houston’s outskirts for four decades, have a different outlook. “We may not have all the scenery of a place like California,” notes the 73-year-old Wolff, who is also part owner of the San Francisco Giants. “But growth makes up for a lot of imperfections.”

A host of newcomers—immigrants and transplants from around the United States—agree with that assessment. Its low cost of living and high rate of job growth have made Houston and its surrounding metro region attractive to young families. According to Pitney Bowes, Houston will enjoy the highest growth in new households of any major city between 2014 and 2017. A recent U.S. Council of Mayors study predicted that the American urban order will become increasingly Texan, with Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth both growing larger than Chicago by 2050.

I wonder why other parts of the country aren’t growing as fast. Just bad luck, I guess.