Imagining a Manhattan-like Galveston

I came across this post on The Social Media Platform Former Known as Twitter last week, and it suggests an interesting thought experiment: 

Galveston was the largest city in Texas prior to the Great Hurricane of 1900. What if that storm had had never hit Galveston, and the city continued to grow? What if the Galveston Seawall was a proactive, rather than reactive, project to harden the island against natural disasters? Would the region's urban geography look completely different? Would Galveston have eventually developed into a dense, Manhattan-like urban core from which everything radiated out, leaving Houston as little more than a suburb on the northwestern edge of a hypothetical Greater Galveston Urbanized Area?

Fundamentally, Galveston lost out because a barrier island city will never be a major railroad hub. And when Houston built a port Galveston’s last economic advantage was gone.

— Christof Spieler (@christofspieler) September 26, 2023

Of course, as Christof's response indicates, there were factors working against Galveston that favored Houston, even before the 1900 hurricane hit. Transportation truly is destiny, and it did not favor Galveston Island.

Also, in the real (not "what if") world, the Hurricane of 1900 (and its almost-as-devastating counterpart in 1915) *did* happen, and completely devastated the city. This is because barrier islands like Galveston Island aren't well-suited for cities.  They are the first line of defense against hurricanes so they bear the brunt of their fury. While there are cities on barrier islands - Miami Beach, Atlantic City and Hilton Head all being examples besides Galveston - none of them have ever developed into being the anchor city of their respective metropolitan region. They're simply too vulnerable to hurricane-related devastation, so the core of urban development is inland. 

It's fun to think about an alternate universe in which Galveston developed into a dense island full of skyscrapers and subways that became the region's urban core, in which high-density development extended to Bolivar Peninsula, Texas City and San Luis Pass, in which development grew around the bay, in which Houston was an outlying industrial town. How different would everything be? Would the University of Galveston be a member of the Big XII or SEC? Would the Galveston Rockets play in an arena behind UTMB's campus? Would Scholes Field be a hub for United Airlines?

Of course, that's not what happened. I enjoy Galveston and I'm glad the city exists. But the city, especially before 1900, was in many ways a bet against nature. And in the end, nature always wins.