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Sugar Land, Texas
Sugar Land is the largest city in Fort Bend County, Texas, United States, located in the southwestern part of the metropolitan area. Located about southwest of downtown Houston, Sugar Land is a populous suburban municipality centered around the junction of Texas State Highway 6 and Interstate 69/ U.S. Route 59. Beginning in the 19th century, the present-day Sugar Land area was home to a large sugar plantation situated in the fertile floodplain of the Brazos River. Following the consolidation of local plantations into Imperial Sugar Company in 1908, Sugar Land grew steadily as a company town and incorporated as a city in 1959. Since then, Sugar Land has grown rapidly alongside other edge cities around Houston, with large-scale development of master-planned communities contributing to population swells since the 1980s. Sugar Land is one of the most affluent and fastest-growing cities in Texas. Its population increased more than 158% between 1990 and 2000. Between 2000 and 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City (Texas)
Texas has a total of 254 counties, many cities, and numerous special districts, the most common of which is the independent school district. County Texas has a total of 254 counties, by far the largest number of counties of any state. Counties in Texas have limited regulatory (ordinance) authority. Counties also have much less legal power than home rule municipalities. They can only pass ordinances (local laws with penalties for violations) in cases where the Texas statutes have given them express permission to. Counties in Texas do ''not'' have zoning power (except for limited instances around some reservoirs, military establishments, historic sites and airports, and in large counties over "communication facility structures": visible antennas). However, counties can collect a small portion of property tax and spend it to provide residents with needed services or to employ the power of eminent domain. Counties also have the power to regulate outdoor lighting near observatories ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geographic Names Information System
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau. It is a type of gazetteer. It was developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to promote the standardization of feature names. Data were collected in two phases. Although a third phase was considered, which would have handled name changes where local usages differed from maps, it was never begun. The database is part of a system that includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps that confirm the feature or place name are cited. Variant names, alternatives to official federal names for a feature, are also recorded. Each feature receives a per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planned Community
A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ''ad hoc'' and organic fashion. The term ''new town'' refers to planned communities of the new towns movement in particular, mainly in the United Kingdom. It was also common in the European colonization of the Americas to build according to a plan either on fresh ground or on the ruins of earlier Native American villages. Planned capitals A planned capital is a city specially planned, designed and built to be a capital. Several of the world's national capitals are planned capitals, including Canberra in Australia, Brasília in Brazil, Belmopan in Belize, New Delhi in India, Abuja in Nigeria, Islamabad in Pakistan, Naypyidaw in Myanmar (Burma) and Washington, D.C. in the United States, and the modern parts of Astana in Kaza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edge City
''Edge city'' is a term that originated in the United States for a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional downtown or central business district, in what had previously been a suburban residential or rural area. The term was popularized by the 1991 book ''Edge City: Life on the New Frontier'' by Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for ''The Washington Post''. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown. Other terms for these areas include ''suburban activity centers'', ''megacenters'', and ''suburban business districts''. These districts have now developed in many countries. Definitions In 1991, Garreau established five rules for a place to be considered an edge city: * Has five million or more square feet (465,000 m²) of leasable office space * Has 600,000 squar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Municipal Corporation
A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local governing body, including (but not necessarily limited to) cities, counties, towns, townships, charter townships, villages, and boroughs. The term can also be used to describe municipally owned corporations. Municipal corporation as local self-government Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located. Often, this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter. A city charter or town charter or municipal charter is a legal document establishing a municipality, such as a city or town. Canada In Canada, charters are granted by provincial authorities. India The Corporation of Chennai is the oldest Municipal Corporation in the world outside the United Kingdom. Ireland The title "corporation" was used in boroughs from soon after the Norman conquest until the Local Government Act 2001. Under the 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Company Town
A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and recreation facilities. They are usually bigger than a model village ("model" in the sense of an ideal to be emulated). Some company towns have had high ideals, but many have been regarded as controlling and/or exploitative. Others developed more or less in unplanned fashion, such as Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, United States, one of the oldest, which began as a Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company mining camp and mine site nine miles (14.5 km) from the nearest outside road. Overview Traditional settings for company towns were where extractive industries – coal, metal mines, lumber – had established a monopoly franchise. Dam sites and war-industry camps founded other company towns. Since company stores often had a monopoly in company t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial Sugar
Imperial Sugar is a major U.S. sugar producer and marketer based in Sugar Land, Texas, with sugar refinery operations in California, Georgia, and Louisiana. The company was established in 1843 and has undergone ownership changes multiple times. The current name, Imperial Sugar Company, was established after a change in ownership in 1907. The company went through major expansion through acquisitions beginning in 1988, but filed for bankruptcy in 2001, emerging in the same year and embarking on a downsizing strategy. In May of 2012, the company was purchased by Louis Dreyfus Group of the Netherlands. History The company has been headquartered in Sugar Land since its inception. The city itself is named for the company and the company's crown logo is featured in the city's seal. The company was founded in 1843 by Samuel May Williams and passed through a series of owners until its purchase in 1907 by the I. H. Kempner family of Galveston. The company was later renamed the Im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brazos River
The Brazos River ( , ), called the ''Río de los Brazos de Dios'' (translated as "The River of the Arms of God") by early Spanish explorers, is the 11th-longest river in the United States at from its headwater source at the head of Blackwater Draw, Roosevelt County, New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico with a drainage basin. Being one of Texas' largest rivers,"Brazos River." Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11 Aug. 2018. academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/Brazos-River/16291. Accessed 27 Nov. 2018. it is sometimes used to mark the boundary between East Texas and West Texas. The river is closely associated with Texas history, particularly the Austin settlement and Texas Revolution eras. Today major Texas institutions such as Texas Tech University, Baylor University, and Texas A&M University are located close to the river's basin, as are parts of metropolitan Houston. Geography The Brazos proper begins at the confluence of the Salt Fork and Double ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudie, A. S., 2004, ''Encyclopedia of Geomorphology'', vol. 1. Routledge, New York. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods. Because the regular flooding of floodplains can deposit nutrients and water, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility; some important agricultural regions, such as the Mississippi river basin and the Nile, rely heavily on the flood plains. Agricultural regions as well as urban areas have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and fresh water. However, the risk of flooding has led to increasing efforts to control flooding. Formation Most floodplains are formed by deposition on the inside of river meanders and by overbank flow. Whereve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sugar Plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The crops that are grown include cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, opium, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located. In modern use the term is usually taken to refer only to large-scale estates, but in earlier periods, before about 1800, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America, with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northwards. It was used in most British colonies, but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There, as also in America, it was used mainly for tree plantations, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interstate 69
Interstate 69 (I-69) is an Interstate Highway in the United States currently consisting of 10 unconnected segments with an original continuous segment from Indianapolis, Indiana, northeast to the Canadian border in Port Huron, Michigan, at . The remaining separated segments are variously completed and posted or not posted sections of an extension southwest to the Mexican border in Texas. Of this extension—nicknamed the NAFTA Superhighway because it would help trade with Canada and Mexico spurred by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—five pieces near Corpus Christi, Texas; Houston, Texas; northwestern Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Evansville, Indiana, have been built or upgraded and signposted as I-69. A sixth segment of I-69 through Kentucky utilizing that state's existing parkway system and a section of I-24 was established by federal legislation in 2008, but only a portion is signposted. This brings the total length to about . The proposed extensio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas State Highway 6
State Highway 6 (SH 6) runs from the Red River, the Texas–Oklahoma state line, to northwest of Galveston, where it is known as the Old Galveston Highway. In Sugar Land and Missouri City, it is known as Alvin-Sugarland Road and runs perpendicular to Interstate 69/ U.S. Highway 59 (I-69/US 59). In the Houston area, it runs north to Farm to Market Road 1960 (FM 1960), then northwest along USS 290 to Hempstead, and south to Westheimer Road and Addicks, and is known as Addicks Satsuma Road. In the Bryan– College Station area, it is known as the Earl Rudder Freeway. In Hearne, it is known as Market Street. In Calvert, it is known as Main Street. For most of its length, SH 6 is not a limited-access road. In 1997, the Texas Legislature designated SH 6 as the Texas Korean War Veterans Memorial Highway. History Historic routes SH 6 was one of the original 25 state highways proposed on June 21, 1917, overlaying the King of Trails Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
