America’s Singapore

April 24, 2026

Doug Leyendecker

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

Where flowers bloom, so does hope.
–Lady Bird Johnson

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THINKING OUT LOUD

America’s Singapore
Who knew we had one?

There is a metropolis that sits on a flat, flood-prone coastal plain, baking under subtropical heat for most of the year, built around an engineered port that connects it to global energy and trade markets, and inhabited by one of the most ethnically diverse populations on earth. That place is Singapore, a unique city-state.

But the exact same can be said of Houston, Texas.

Laid side by side, the two metropolises share a set of characteristics.

Singapore occupies a low-lying island just north of the equator. It’s perpetually humid and prone to heavy rainfall and flooding. Houston sits at roughly 30 degrees north latitude but with a climate similar to that of a tropical area. It’s got brutal heat and humidity from June through October, a flat coastal plain barely above sea level, and an ever-looming seasonal threat of hurricanes that sometimes bring massive floods.

Both regions essentially dared their geographies and won. Neither should exist at the scale it does. They are monuments to the human will to build and endure.

Water made both cities possible, and water remains central to their economic existence. The Port of Singapore is the world’s second busiest container port, with an estimated one-fifth of global ships passing through annually. The Port of Houston is consistently among the top two or three ports in the United States by total tonnage and ranks first in foreign waterborne commerce.

The Houston Ship Channel—52 miles of dredged waterway connecting the city to the Gulf of America—is an engineering feat as audacious in its ambition as Singapore’s famous land reclamation projects. Both represent the same underlying idea that if geography won’t give you access, build your way to it.

Then there’s energy. Singapore is the third largest oil refining center in the world and the dominant energy trading hub for Asia, pricing and physically moving the hydrocarbons that power the Indo-Pacific economy. Houston is indisputably the energy capital of the Western hemisphere, if not the world.

Singapore is multiethnic by design, with Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian communities coexisting under a managed pluralism that the government treats as a strategic asset. Houston has arrived at something similar through a different path. With no single racial or ethnic majority, and with large Hispanic, Black, South Asian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Nigerian, Persian, and Middle Eastern communities that are not just present but economically integrated, Houston is arguably the most diverse major city in America.

About 145 languages are spoken in the Houston metropolitan area. The city’s medical center—the largest in the world by any measure—its energy corridor, and its port economy all draw global talent. Diversity in both urban centers defines who they are, culturally and economically.

Both regions also resist the hollowing-out that has afflicted many urban peers. Singapore punches far above its modest size in advanced manufacturing—petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and precision engineering—refusing to become a pure services economy.

And for several years now, Houston has been the largest manufacturing center in the US. Its industrial base along the Ship Channel is one of the densest concentrations of petrochemical manufacturing on earth. Houston manufacturers also make numerous oil patch and industrial products, and it is home to the third largest manufacturing plant in the US. It has recently been selected to build Texas’s first big pharmaceutical plant as well as the home to Apple’s main plant to make its Mac mini.

In recent decades, most major global cities traded factories for financial terminals, government offices, and anything having to do with consumption. The combination of trade and serious industrial production is unusual in the modern era. Houston and Singapore have both. It is part of what makes them structurally resilient.

There is even an overlap in governance, if not a total one. Singapore is famous for prioritizing economic competitiveness, making it attractive to capital and talent alike. Texas and Houston have a version of low taxes, a light regulatory hand, and a political culture that tends to subordinate most other concerns to economic growth.

Houston’s famous absence of formal zoning codes produces some of Singapore’s same chaotic energy. The city reshapes itself around economic activity rather than constraining that activity within pre-approved plans. By making it straightforward to build, operate, and generate profit, both places attract ambitious firms and individuals.

The analogy between Houston and Singapore has its limits. Though both regions prioritize growth through infrastructure investment, they arrive at it through starkly different means. Singapore has a highly centralized and heavy-handed government with little opposition, enabling straightforward execution of fifty-year infrastructure plans. Houston’s sprawling metro has fragmented authority that navigates the two-party system, yet it is still productive in making and executing long-term infrastructure development.

But the case still holds. Houston and Singapore are both improbable metropolitan regions, conjured from inhospitable climates; built on trade, energy, and manufacturing; home to immigrants from across the globe; and governed with focus on economic competitiveness. What Singapore achieved through intentional, state-directed strategy, Houston arrived at through the cumulative influences of individualism, meritocracy, markets, migration, and sheer will, arguably making it more impressive.

In a moment when so many blue cities and states are calling for more managed economies, Houston proves free markets and meritocracy can power a dynamic and globally important economy.

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