page_title: Geography of Houston
section_title: Cityscape
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of Houston / Cityscape
caption_attribution_description: English: Skyline of Uptown Houston
context_page_description: Houston, the most populous city in the Southern United States, is located along the upper Texas Gulf Coast, approximately 50 miles northwest of the Gulf of Mexico at Galveston. The city, which is the ninth-largest in the United States by area, covers 601.7 square miles, of which 579.4 square miles, or 96.3%, is land and 22.3 square miles, or 3.7%, is water.
  Houston is located in the Gulf Coastal Plain biome, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland. Much of the city was built on marshes, forested land, swamp, or prairie, all of which can still be seen in surrounding areas.
  The city's topography is very flat, making flooding a recurring problem for its residents. The city stands about 50 feet above sea level—the highest area within city limits being 90 feet. However, subsidence, caused by extensive groundwater pumping and resource extraction, has caused the elevation to drop 10 feet or more in certain areas. As a result, the city turned to surface water sources for its municipal supply, creating reservoirs such as Lake Houston and Lake Conroe.
context_section_description: When Houston was established in 1837, the city's founders—John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen—divided it into political geographic districts called "wards." The ward designation is the progenitor of the current-day Houston City Council districts—there are nine in all.
  Locations in Houston are generally classified as either being inside or outside Interstate 610, known as the "610 Loop" or simply "The Loop". Inside the loop generally encompasses the central business district, and has come to define an urban lifestyle and state of mind. Elizabeth Long, the author of the 2003 book Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life, wrote that most of the upper middle classes in the 610 Loop live in the southwestern part of the inner city in the areas near Hermann Park, the Houston Museum District, Rice University, and the Texas Medical Center, while some portions of northern Houston and Eastern Houston have been gentrified and also have upper middle classes.
  The outlying areas of Houston, the airports and the city's suburbs and enclaves are outside the Loop. Another ring road, Beltway 8 (also known simply as the "Beltway" or as the "Sam Houston Tollway"), encircles the city another 5 miles (8 km) farther out. Parts of Beltway 8 are toll roads, but for most of the route motorists can drive in the adjacent "feeder" or service roads at no charge. Farm to Market Road 1960 (FM 1960) forms a semicircle in northern Houston and is another dividing line. The third ring road, State Highway 99 (also known as the Grand Parkway), is under construction. Long stated that most of the wealthier Houston suburbs are west and north of the central city, while to the southeast the  Clear Lake/NASA "[represents] another burgeoning concentration of largely aerospace-related prosperity".
  Houston, being the largest city in the United States without zoning laws, has grown in an unusual manner. Rather than a single "downtown" as the center of the city's employment, five additional business districts have grown throughout the inner-city—they are Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, Westchase, and Greenspoint. If these business districts were combined, they would form the third-largest downtown in the United States. The city also has the third-largest skyline in the country (after New York City and Chicago), but because it is spread over a few miles, pictures of the city show—for the most part—the main downtown area. The growth of the Greater Houston area has occurred from all directions from the city core.
caption: Uptown Houston
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