[_delirium]

Interesting; I haven't seen an in-town movement in my social circles. If anything the opposite: big movement outwards, to areas that used to be considered way out but are now becoming part of the city in a huge exurban development boom. People who used to live inside Beltway 8 are moving to areas that I used to think of as farmland but are now apparently big growth areas, along the I-10 corridor towards Katy in the west, and along the I-45 corridor towards League City in the southeast. The "energy corridor" around the Westlake area in particular seems to be an center of activity pulling growth out along I-10 westwards.

[msandford]

It's happening both ways. The finance and finance-related things are all downtown and the inner-loop is gentrifying. So is the East End (in a BIG way).

BUT because the oil companies are moving their operations west (BP and others) and north (Exxon) people are also migrating those directions.

You would think this would mean that real-estate prices in the donut between the loop and the beltway would be pushed downward but it's not happening. The population seems to be growing faster than the "city" expands so prices are going up everywhere.

[saryant]

A number of the oil companies have left downtown in the last few years and moved to the Westlake energy corridor along 10. As a result, their employees have moved out to Katy, Sugarland, etc.

Shell and BP have both built huge new campuses in West Houston. BP even claims to have built the world's largest commercial research supercomputer in their Westlake campus.