Despite its stature as the fourth-largest city in the country, Houston’s most defining characteristic may be that it doesn’t really have one. Its pluralistic culture and urban sprawl make its identity impossible to easily sum up—and so much the better. Houston makes you work to get to know it; time and exploration are required to reveal its riches. Growing up in North Houston, Features Editor Chris Hughes heard from outsiders about how ugly, flat, and monotonous the area was and spent most of his childhood dreaming of escape. But as he grew older and experienced other parts of the country, he realized how lucky he was to have been raised there.
“It embodies a culture that’s truly its own. Scratch beneath the surface, even lightly, and there’s real beauty there,” Hughes says. “Look behind those strip malls and find bayous shaded by weeping birches. Drive into the suburbs and find unparalleled diversity. Wander anywhere inside the 610 Loop and find some of the most dynamic restaurants and museums in the nation.”
Enjoying this article?When conceptualizing this Greater Houston Special Regional Edition—encompassing the shores of the Gulf Coast to the region’s northernmost suburbs—Hughes wanted to unveil the multiethnic, artistic, salt-of-the-earth, and visionary place that has given Texas so much. “I wanted to elicit the same surprise I feel every time I revisit the city that nurtured and shaped who I am,” he says. After reading Lauren McDowell’s encyclopedic guide to crawfish season, Paula Mejía’s look at Houston’s endearingly eccentric Art Car Parade, and Wes Ferguson’s profiles of artists inspired by the bayou, we’re confident you’ll find plenty worth exploring in the state’s most enigmatic city.
Emily Roberts Stone
Editor in Chief
