When people think of suburbia, they think of homogeneity. That’s not the case in Sugar Land, Texas, about a 20-mile drive southwest of downtown Houston, where cultural diversity is a point of pride.
Sugar Land is the biggest city in Fort Bend County, and data shows that immigrants are thriving there more than almost anywhere in the country, with a median household income among them of roughly $100,000 and ample opportunities for education, entrepreneurship and community building.
The city was characterized as one of the most diverse in the country by J.H. Cullum Clark, director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and author of its December 2022 report on immigrants and opportunity. “The variety of people coming from all over the world is just amazing,” he wrote.
And locals seem to love that vibrancy: Almost one in three residents of Fort Bend County thought the best thing about living in the area was its diversity, according to an annual survey published last month by the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
Location: Fort Bend County, around 20 miles southwest of Downtown Houston
Population: 111,026 (2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimate)
Area: 43 square miles
Housing: 80 percent homeownership rate
The vibe: A former agricultural company town is now dense with planned communities, a popular central square and extraordinary cultural diversity
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