Last week, I had dinner in Café Annie's, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Houston.
I was in stimulating company: a university president, several influential business people, a few academicians and a former Secretary of State and his wife.
Seated at a table at the other end of the restaurant was another former Secretary of State and his wife. To be sure, it was a Texas dining experience.
While reluctantly sinking my teeth in a South Texas Antelope - I decided to save the rabbit and pheasant - I got an up-close impression of the Houston aristocracy.
The wife of a wealthy Houston-born businessman told me that, since she only arrived in Houston 41 years ago, she was still considered a newcomer. In Miami, she would have been more native than just about anybody else.
She also remarked that "all of their friends" would know whatever mischief her husband was involved in while in high school. Clearly, the city of Houston has an "old boys network" that is very different from Miami's more transient establishment.
People in Houston, and in Texas, in general, have a strong sense of local pride.
The latest issue of the popular magazine Texas Monthly features a cover story entitled: "How Texan are You? 50 Things Every Texan Should Do." (I am working on the Miami variant.)
It also contains a telling advertisement of Frost Bank, established in 1868, that includes a huge fold-out map of the Great State from 1837: "The history of Texas is the history of Frost Bank."
Houston started as a prosperous railroad town, back in the 19th century, some 50 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
After the completion of the ship channel and the deepening of the harbor in 1914, the town became connected to the Bay of Galveston. Coastal oil fields and natural gas and other minerals laid the basis for fast growth.
Despite its location on the Gulf of Mexico, its large Hispanic population - 23 percent - and its proximity to Florida, Houston is not a full-blown competitor of Miami.
The Houston port is in essence a gigantic petrochemical complex. It specializes in bulk cargo, especially oil. In terms of volume, it is enormous.
The Houston port is ranked first in the United States in foreign waterborne commerce, and overall it is the seventh largest port in the world.
Its leading trade partners by tonnage are Mexico, Venezuela, Algeria, Iraq and Norway, all oil-producing countries.
Houston has been excessively dependent on oil. The urban economy boomed as never before due to high oil prices in the 1970s. A decade later, the sky came falling down as prices spiraled downwards.
Oil is thriving again, but its contribution to the Houston economy declined from 86 percent in the early 1980s to 52 percent at the present. The days when local oil barons squired Arab sheiks around the city now seem a distant past.
Even locals would admit that the city is not what it used to be.
Houston is said to be going through an identity crisis. It is an old economy city in a new economy world.
Since the late 1980s, efforts have been made to diversify the economy and to stimulate the growth of high-tech and information industries.
But progress has been slow, certainly compared to cities such as Austin and Dallas.
As hurtful as it is to Houstonians, in Texas their city is held up as a city not to emulate. Maybe the psychological divide between a get-dirty, hands-on industry like oil and a cerebral industry like high-tech informatics is just too great.
Houston's predicament stands in contrast to Miami's more plentiful opportunities.
Manufacturing is not big in Miami and certainly its workforce need not be worried for being stuck with a "get-dirty, hands-on" mentality.
Compared to Houston, the city's economic base is more diversified and more stable. International trade, finance, tourism and services, will be with this city for a long time to come.
Miami is in a good position to venture into the new economy world.
Jan Nijman is Professor of Geography and Regional Studies at the School of International Studies, University of Miami.