Houston claims 19% of Texas’ new live-work-play growth

by the numbers

The Houston area added five live-work-play projects over the past decade, including Midway's The Laura. Photo via thelauraeastriver.com

In Texas, Houston is a big player in the live-work-play real estate movement.

A new 21-city analysis from coworking marketplace CoworkingCafe shows the Houston area added five live-work-play projects—mixed-use developments with residential, office and recreational components—over the past decade.

From 2016 to 2025, Houston accounted for 19 percent of Texas’ new live-work-play inventory, the analysis shows. Among the new local developments were Arrive Upper Kirby, St. Andrie, and The Laura:

  • Arrive Upper Kirby, which was sold in 2021 for $182 million, offers more than 61,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space adjacent to apartments and offices. The 13-story, 265,000-square-foot project was completed in 2017.
  • St. Andrie, a 32-acre, mixed-use community, was completed in 2019. The apartment-anchored development includes an H-E-B grocery store and 37,000 square feet of office space.
  • The Laura, spanning 110,000 square feet, was completed in 2023. Among the apartment complex’s amenities is a coworking space.

According to Northspyre, a software provider for real estate developers, live-work-play projects enable people to meet their needs, such as housing, workplaces, stores, restaurants, and recreation facilities, in a single place.

A total of 542 live-work-play developments opened between 2016 and 2025 in the 21 cities, with another 69 in the pipeline for 2026, CoworkingCafe says. Among major markets, New York City made up the largest share (119) of new live-work-play developments from 2016 to 2025.

The Houston area’s five projects were built in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024, and 2025, CoworkingCafe data indicates, with another project scheduled for completion next year. The Greater Houston Partnership recently highlighted four mixed-use projects taking shape in the region, but only one of them is scheduled to be finished in 2027. It can take two to five years or more to complete a mixed-use development.

Of the five Houston developments finished in the past decade, 56 percent of the space went toward multifamily units, 29 percent toward offices, and 16 percent toward retail, CoworkingCafe says.

As noted by the Houston-Galveston Area Council, economic development in the 21st century “is about cultivating quality live-work-play environments that attract, retain, and grow a diverse and skilled population. Employers and businesses are increasingly choosing to make long-term investments in places that connect and engage people to strengthen economic competitiveness and promote innovation.”

With eight completed projects, Austin led construction of live-work-play developments in Texas from 2016 to 2025, according to CoworkingCafe. Dallas, which welcomed five live-work-play developments during that period, tied with Houston. San Antonio data wasn’t available.

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Houston's coworking space is growing. Photo courtesy of The Cannon

Houston sees growth in coworking space, rises in national ranks for 2023

growing and flexing

Houston continues to grow its coworking space across the city — and the progress is notable just between the first and second quarters of 2023, a recent report shows.

When it comes to coworking space growth, Houston saw an increase of 16 percent between June and March of 2023, reports CoworkingCafe. This stat means Houston outpaced the national average, which is 10 percent. Houston, which now has a reported 208 coworking and flex office space facilities, edged out Boston in the overall rankings of cities based on number of coworking spaces.

Houston ranks No. 7 now behind Manhattan, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas - Fort Worth, and Atlanta, respectively.

When it came to the amount of space coworkers in Houston have, the Bayou City reported "an equally impressive expansion in terms of square footage," reads the report, "the market logged the highest increase in this metric and ended at more than 4,160,000 square feet of coworking space."

Nationally, coworking space totals 120 million square feet, which is a 6 percent increase between Q1 and Q2 and about 1.74 percent of the total office space nationwide.

While Houston saw growth in its coworking space, half of the top 25 markets for coworking have seen decreases in 2023 so far. Philadelphia, Seattle, the Bay Area, and Denver saw a decreased square footage average, but this trend isn't reflected when it comes to the number of coworking spots, which "likely equates to an increased focus on smaller coworking spaces across the nation," the report finds.

"With falling property values in some cities and rising interest rates, the commercial real estate industry is at a crossroads," says Doug Ressler, business intelligence manager at Yardi Matrix, in the report. "Many companies still aren't certain the number of employees who will be in their physical office space in the near or long term. That has led to firms doing smaller projects with startups, like pilot tests, instead of larger-scale purchases."

In January, Texas coworking company Common Desk announced its sixth Houston-area location. Common Desk also shared that it's expanding in the Ion last December, and that construction is ongoing.

The Cannon, a Houston-based coworking company, its latest locations in Fish Creek and The Woodlands, which is a partnership with Amegy Bank.

Both the city and state appear on a new report on best places for coworking. Photo via Getty Images

Report: Houston, Texas rank as top locations for coworking space

where to work

Attention all Houston-based remote workers, small business owners, and startups — if you're looking for flexible office space, you're in the right place.

Both the city and state have landed on CoworkingCafe's list of the best places for coworking in the country. With 652 reported coworking spots, Texas ranks as the No. 2 state — behind California 1,188 coworking spots and ahead of Florida's 629 and New York's 589 offices.

Houston ranks as eighth best metro for coworking with 208 coworking facilities. The Dallas-Fort Worth area ranked a few spots ahead of the Bayou City, coming in at No. 5 with 261 coworking spots. Austin also makes the top 2 with a reported 97 coworking spots, earning the No. 19 spot.

Data via coworkingcafe.com

According to the report, the area looked into included 15 cities within the Houston metro. The majority of the coworking properties —154 of the 208 identified — are located in Houston proper. Sugar Land has over 10 coworking spots, with the rest of the properties scattered across the greater Houston area in Katy, Spring, The Woodlands, etc.

Houston has followed the overall trend of increased remote workers, though not to the extreme other cities and states are seeing, according to the study. Per a Statista report, the number of people working in coworking spaces today has more than tripled since 2015. Houston's remote workers increased to 16 percent in 2021 from 4 percent in 2019.

"Even though Houston is already an established working hub with great job opportunities, it is also one of the cities with the lowest change in the share of remote workers," the report reads. "The change, however, still accounts for a notable outcome."

Earlier this year, a Seattle-based human resources company named Karat conducted their own report on the most attractive metros for remote workers within tech. In that 2022 study, Houston ranked No. 6 just ahead of No. 7 Austin. Last year, Houston ranked as No. 2 and Dallas at No. 9, but that North Texas metro fell off the top 10 for 2021. Pittsburgh maintained its top spot on this list year over year.

"Last year we took our first look at the rapidly expanding remote software engineer hiring landscape. As more organizations shifted to remote or hybrid working models we had started to see significantly improving candidate performance outside of the more-established tech hubs," writes Patrick Wu, data analyst at Karat, in a blog post. "Today, as even more top tech companies commit to hiring remote software engineers, we’re taking a look at how this landscape has continued to evolve."

The full ranking of CoworkingCafe's report is below.

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Houston museum showcases America's founding documents in rare exhibit

Experience History

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Houstonians have a chance to see rare documents from the founding of the nation. Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, presented by the National Archives Foundation, will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through Monday, May 25.

The collection includes a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence; official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton; a draft of the Bill of Rights; the Treaty of Paris, the documented that recognized America's independence from Great Britain; and the tally of votes approving the Constitution.

The National Archives specifically chose Houston as one of only eight cities in the country to host the exhibit as a means to help the documents reach a wider audience outside of the main hub of semiquincentennial events in New England and the Washington, D.C. area.

"One of the things we decided when we put the tour together because we wanted to be off the East Coast," said Patrick Madden, CEO of the National Archives Foundation, who was onsite for the exhibit's opening in Houston. "There's a lot of 250th celebration stuff happening in the original 13 colonies. How do we get it to major markets where larger numbers of people can see it? So in the case of Houston, obviously, [is a] major market in this part of the country, but also we've partnered with the museum twice before with National Archives exhibits, so we knew that they would be up to the task of handling the exhibit and the crowds."

The star of the collection is a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence. Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams commissioned 200 exact replicas of the document from engraver William J. Stone in 1823. Less than 50 now remain. Madden joyfully pointed out that there are errors in this document, a potent reminder that the men who forged a nation made mistakes.

"There's a couple of typos in it where they had to make corrections," said Madden. "So even the founders, you know, they're all human. That resonates because here these people are making this move against the most powerful nation in the world and putting their lives on the line for a country based on ideas."

Other impressive parts of the collection include official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, as well as one of the drafts of the Bill of Rights. Many states would not ratify the Constitution until certain rights were included in the document, leading to Washington going on a national tour assuring state leaders enshrining protections was first on the list. The draft copy on display specifically shows the First Amendment in progress.

Houston is the fourth stop on the exhibition's tour, which will take the documents to Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and Seattle through the summer. Freedom Plane is just one part of a larger patriotic celebration at the HMNS, which includes a film series celebrating American science and culture and general Americana decoration throughout the main hall.

Admission to Freedom Plane is free to the public, but separate from general admission to the museum. Space is limited, and passes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-members should expect long waits or the possibility that the day's passes are sold out. Only museum members can reserve passes for specific times. Flash photography is prohibited due to the fragile nature of the documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston quantum energy chip startup emerges from stealth with $12M round

seed funding

Houston-based Casimir has emerged from stealth with a $12 million seed round to commercialize its quantum energy chip.

The round was led by Austin-based Scout Ventures. Lavrock Ventures, Cottonwood Technology, Capital Factory, American Deep Tech, and Tim Draper of Draper Associates also participated in the round. The oversubscribed round exceeded the company’s original $8 million target, according to a news release.

Casimir’s semiconductor chips can generate power from quantum vacuum fields without the need for batteries or charging. The company plans to commercialize its first-generation MicroSparc chip by 2028.

The MicroSparc chip measures 5 millimeters by 5 millimeters and is designed to produce 1.5 volts at 25 microamps, comparable to a small rechargeable battery, without degradation and no replacement cycle.

“Casimir represents exactly the kind of breakthrough dual-use technology Scout Ventures was built to back,” Brad Harrison, founder and managing partner at Scout Ventures, said in the release. “This is based on 100 years of science and we’re finally approaching a commercial product … We’re proud to lead this round and support Casimir’s journey from applied science to deployed technology.”

Casimir says it aims to scale its technology across the ”full power spectrum,” including large-scale energy systems that can power homes, commercial infrastructures and electric vehicles.

Casimir's scientific work has been supported by DARPA-funded nanofabrication research and its technology was incubated at the Limitless Space Institute (LSI). LSI is a nonprofit that works to innovate interstellar travel and was founded by Kam Ghaffarian. Technology investor and serial entrepreneur Ghaffarian has been behind companies like X-energy, Intuitive Machines, Axiom Space and Quantum Space.

Harold “Sonny” White, founder and CEO of Casimir, believes the technology can power devices for years without replacements.

“Millions of devices will operate for years without a battery ever needing to be replaced or recharged because we have engineered a customized Casimir cavity into hardware capable of producing persistent electrical power,” White added in the release. “I spent nearly two decades at NASA studying how we power humanity’s future. That work led me to the Casimir effect and the quantum vacuum, where new tools have allowed us to build on a century of scientific knowledge and bring abundant power to the world.”

Houston leads the way in innovative brain research and more news to know

Trending Topics

Editor's note: The top Houston innovation news for the first half of May includes an initial round of brain research grants from Rice and FDA approval for clinical trial of a Houston startup's brain implant. Below are the five most-read InnovationMap stories published May 1-14, 2026:

1. Rice Brain Institute awards seed grants for dementia, Alzheimer’s research

The recently established Rice Brain Institute awarded 12 seed grants last month to support research on dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. The grants are part of the Rice DPRIT Seed Grant Program, which aims to help faculty members generate preliminary data, test and teams that would be supported under the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Continue reading.

2. Houston startup’s brain implant for depression advances to clinical trial

Houston-based Motif Neurotech has received FDA approval to move forward with its first clinical trial for its innovative way to fight treatment-resistant depression and other mental health disorders. The company has developed a brain-computer interface technology based on research from Rice University. The blueberry-sized, wirelessly powered implantable device known as the Digitally-programmable Over-brain Therapeutic (DOT) stimulator delivers electrical stimulation to brain circuits linked to depression. The DOT stimulator sits in the skull above the dura without touching the brain and is considered an alternative to transcranial magnetic stimulation, which requires multiple treatment sessions and can cause headaches. Continue reading.

3. Houston legacy planning platform secures $2.5M investment, adds to board

Houston-based Paige, a comprehensive life planning and succession software company, has secured a $2.5 million investment to expand the AI-driven tools on its platform. The funding comes from Alabama-based 22nd State Banking Company, according to a news release. Paige says it will use the funding to expand automation, AI-driven onboarding and self-service tools, as well as add to its sales and customer success teams. Continue reading.

4. 7+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events in May

Houston is living up to its nicknames as Space City and the Energy Capital of the World this month with a lineup of insightful talks, pitch days and industry conferences. Plus, there are opportunities to network over crawfish, learn about brain health and more. Continue reading.

5. Houston rises in 2026 ranking of best U.S. cities to start a business

Houston has reaffirmed its commitment to a business-friendly environment and now ranks as the 26th best large U.S. city for starting a business in 2026. The city jumped up eight places after ranking 34th last year. Continue reading.

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