America's new industrial boom towns
David Peebles works in a glass tower across from Houston`s Galleria mall, a cathedral of consumption, but his attention is focused on the city`s highly industrialized ship channel 30 miles away. `Houston is the Chicago of this era,` says Peebles, who runs the Texas office of Odebrecht, a $45 billion engineering firm based in Brazil. `In the sixties you had to go to Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. Now Houston is the place for new industry.`
With upward of
$35 billion of new refineries, chemical plants and factories planned through 2015 for Houston and the surrounding Gulf Coast, companies like Odebrecht, which runs chemical plants and is working on a new freeway in the area, have converged on the nation`s oil and gas capital. They are part of the reason why the Texas metropolis ranks first on our list of the best large cities for manufacturing.
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