Houston's Makeover

"This city wants to look good on Feb. 1, when the Super Bowl brings TV cameras and an estimated 100,000 visitors to town... Rising from the steamy South Texas plains, the sprawling city of four million these days is best known for traffic jams, mosquitoes and the Enron debacle. In a 2001 profile, the Economist magazine bluntly called Houston ugly. Ten years ago, during the 1994 National Basketball Association finals, the New York Post said, in a headline: 'This place is a hellhole.' ...Stung by such criticism, the nation's fourth-largest city in recent years has begun investing in its appearance." [Editor's note: This article is available to non-subscribers through the link below for a period of 7 days.]