Houston would be a perfect host location for U.S. World’s Fair bid
When, a few months ago, the United States lost its yearslong bid to host Expo 2027 in Minneapolis to Serbia, that defeat begged certain questions. Should we try again for another world expo — usually remembered here as the World’s Fair — and would the millions poured into its construction justify the investment? What exactly can a world expo do for us? And where should it be held?
Ask someone today about world’s fairs and, if they’re one of the postBoomer generations, the response you’re likely to get is “My grandmother went to that” or “Do they still have those?” We’ve collectively forgotten that every time you chew a stick of Juicy Fruit, zip up a piece of clothing, eat a hamburger, slip on nylon stockings, plug your phone into a wall socket, flick on a TV, lick an ice cream cone, ride an escalator or an elevator, drive on a superhighway, sweat on an exercise machine, pay at the pump for gas, tap on a QWERTY keyboard, or a touchscreen, you’re doing something that debuted or hit a tipping point at a world’s fair.
These events were not Macy’s Thanksgiving Day-style parades of material excess; they were matchsticks that lit societal change, including the advent of kindergarten, libraries,intellectual property rights, public health, women’s suffrage, religious tolerance, the Braille system and homeopathic medicine. The fairs were crystal balls glimpsing better times to come. At the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair, millions rode the conveyor-belt seats at the General Motors Futurama over a 35,000-square-foot model of a city soon-to-be. It was a promised land of 14-lane multi-speed interstate highways, with semi-autonomous vehicles passing by farms growing artificially produced crops (no more Dust Bowls) and rooftop platforms for those personal flying machines coming any day now. People emerged from Futurama with buttons on their chest, talismans confidently proclaiming “I have seen the future.”
But if the U.S. bids again for a world expo, where would it be held? The answer lies in something Carmen Bueno, a member of the Spanish delegation promoting the city of Malaga’s own bid for Expo 2027, said to me a few months ago: “America needs a big fair, not a small one because that’s what America is: big.” She meant that the 2027 World Expo will be a smaller, specialized fair that, according to the rules set down by the governing body of world expos, is going to be limited to 62 acres. Universal expos — like the recent one in Dubai — are unrestricted in size.
After decades of attending, studying and consulting with expos, my response is: What better place for a world expo with no set boundaries than Houston, in the state where, as the saying goes, everything’s bigger?
Texas’ history with world’s fairs dates back to the very first one: the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London, where the Lone Star State’s Gail Borden introduced a dried meat biscuit that carried off a gold medal. That history extends even further toward today: Back in the 1950s, Houston debated holding a world’s fair though it lost the bid. San Antonio’s expo, Hemisfair ’68, raised that city’s profile nationwide.
As arguably the most ethnically diverse city in America, Houston is the ideal setting for such an international event. Many of you might be wondering, “What’s in it for me?” Short answer: a lot. Long answer: After expos 2010 and 2020, both Shanghai and Dubai respectively realized enormous financial gains and improvements to their infrastructures. One year after the Expo 2020 Dubai closed, an analysis by Ernst & Young Global Limited estimated its lasting economic impact from 2013 to 2042 to contribute about $42 billion compared with a cost of up to $20 billion to build it. Minnesota’s bid for the smaller-scale 2027 expo included projections of 17,000 full and part-time jobs created in the state, as well as an influx of 13 million or more visitors who were expected to spend north of $2 billion.
Houston, already the most popular city in Texas for overseas tourists, could strike a proverbial gusher with a world expo. To actually build it in a fiscally responsible manner would take a mix of city, state and corporate contributions/sponsorships as well as advance ticket sales and a plan for generating revenue through digital media and intellectual property royalties. You have the resources, the diversity, and most importantly the think-bigger-than-big imagination to put on a show where, like at another world expo almost 85 years ago, millions will walk out in an optimistic glow, saying, “I have seen the future — in Houston.”