Startup Houston

I was catching up on RSS feeds tonight after recovering my laptop from the depths of despair (blue screened twice today…arrgh!!!) and came across a post from a friend of mine. It references a post from the Houstonist regarding Joel Kotkin’s report to the Greater Houston Partnership about Opportunity Urbanism.

Overall I do not disagree with either position regarding how to bring Houston into the new economy. My issue is whether Houston is really ready for the shift. Here is an excerpt from The Local and Regional Economic Impacts of the Port of Houston, 2006 by Martin Associates:

    “The public and private marine terminals at the Port of Houston continue to be an economic engine for the Houston area, Harris County and the State of Texas. In the last six years the port activity has added 3,400 new direct jobs annually, and the salary of these job holders has increased from $41,560 to $48,730. The importance of the Port’s public and private marine terminals to the State is underscored by the fact that the total value of the economic impact of the public and private marine terminals is measured at $117.6 billion and 785,049 jobs in the State of Texas are related to the marine activity at the public and private terminals along the Houston Ship Channel.”

Maybe I am dense but wouldn’t Houston have been better served if the capital deployed to source and induce those old economy jobs were allocated to process improvement and technology deployment to streamline port activities? Just a thought.

What are yours?