"New Towns of Technology: Energy, Economic Diversification, and Metropolitan Growth in 1980s Houston"

The economic and political upheavals of the 1970s encouraged, and sometimes forced, businesses to reinvent themselves; by diversifying, finding new avenues for investment, and working with government and public institutions in new ways. In Texas, a wide range of public and private actors responded to the energy crisis and its attendant “peak oil” narrative by focusing on diversifying state, regional, and metropolitan economies away from their traditional dependence on oil. And, somewhat ironically, they relied heavily on the energy industry to do this, by transforming surplus energy capital into new profitable economic sectors.
This paper explores the development of “New Towns of Technology” around Houston, focusing on The Woodlands, a large planned development financed by the Mitchell Energy & Development Corporation, a leading oil field development and hydraulic fracking firm. Owner George Mitchell planned the development as a New Town, a type of urban development popularized in the 1960s that included large multiuse facilities, diverse zoning districts, and large open spaces. While real estate had long been a favored outlet for surplus energy capital in Texas, The Woodlands was notable because it was also intended as a home for high technology, the preferred sector for diversifying the economy there. The development also housed the Mitchell-funded Houston Area Research Center (HARC), a consortium of high tech that brought together leading science and technology resources from Texas A&M, Rice, the University of Houston, and eventually the University of Texas.