Tool Kit: Apps and Accessories Help Make the iPad a Scaled-Down Darkroom

Over the years, I’ve been in and out of relationships with dozens of film cameras, Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Minolta and others, as a result of my passion for photography.

In the late 1990s, after college, I snapped so many photos that I ended up building a 5-by-6-foot darkroom in the corner of my living room in Brooklyn. There, standing amid long, dark strips of film under the glow of a dim red light, I spent countless hours mixing pungent chemicals and developing and printing photographs.

I have since retired most of my film cameras. Now, my camera bag is all digital, and my darkroom is 7 inches wide and 9.5 inches long: an Apple iPad.

The chemicals I once used have been replaced by a tiny, white USB connector that allows me to transfer my photos from any digital camera into the iPad in a matter of seconds.

What inspired me to jump from film to digital was immediacy — or impatience, depending on how you look at it. In the old days, I’d have to finish a roll of film, get home, develop it, wait, then wait some more. With digital, you snap a picture and there it is, like magic, on the back of your digital camera. With the iPad as a darkroom, it’s also editable immediately.

Editing your photos on an iPad instead of a conventional laptop also means you can carry one device fewer on your travels. Although most applications on the iPad will shrink the size and therefore the quality of your images when you import them, there are apps that can deal with full-size images. You can even connect wirelessly to printers intended to work with the iPad.

For older iPads with a 30-pin connection, Apple sells the $29 Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. It comes with two connectors that plug directly into the iPad’s base. One has a USB cable slot, which works with almost any camera, and the other has a slot for SD memory cards.

There are also many less expensive third-party connectors, including a 2-in-1 Camera Connection Kit ($10) available from Amazon.

The cables for newer iPads, with the lighting connector, are overpriced, with each connector costing $30.

To transfer the photos from your camera, you plug a connector into the base of your iPad, connect your camera with a USB cord, then turn the camera on. The iPad will detect that the device is connected and allow you to select which images you would like to import. It’s quicker than a Polaroid.

The immediacy of digital has pushed photographers to want to edit their photos and then share them right away. A number of applications allow you to do this, some free and some costing as much as $20.

SnapSeed ($5) is an app made specifically for multitouch photo-editing. Sliding your finger up and down on the screen will allow you to alter the image, changing the contrast, brightness or saturation. A feature called Selective Adjust allows you to drag little adjustable pointers all over a picture to tweak the lighting in specific areas.

Apple’s own iPhoto application ($5) for the iPad also has some advanced features. You can apply filters, turning a color photo into a sepia or “vintage” image. If you’re in a rush, “auto-enhance” will try to improve the image for you. There are also brushes that pop out from the bottom of the screen, making your iPad feel like a painter’s palette. These can be used to remove red-eye and soften or sharpen an image.

Adobe, the big maker of graphics and photoediting software, offers two photo-specific iPad applications. Photoshop Express, which is free, has some limited editing features, like adjusting tint, saturation and exposure, but it’s really for novices. Advanced users will want to try Photoshop Touch ($10). This application offers similar controls to Adobe software on a standard computer — layers, curves, the ability to add text, and other advanced features. But be warned: the app is somewhat confusing to navigate, and you will have to take some time with its tutorial before jumping in.

For photographers who want to take iPad editing to another level, there are more advanced — and expensive — options.

Jeff Carlson, author of the book “The iPad for Photographers,” sometimes bypasses the iPad camera connection kit in favor of an EyeFi SD card and an app called ShutterSnitch ($16). EyeFi cards, which range from $40 to $100 depending on speed and memory size, can connect directly with your iPad wirelessly. Mr. Carlson said that although EyeFi offers a free app, ShutterSnitch is much faster and has a more advanced interface.

Mr. Carlson said he sometimes captures RAW images with his digital cameras. These are uncompressed and large files, often used by professional photographers because they preserve more of the image quality than standard JPEG files. To handle these files he sometimes uses the apps piRAWnha or Photoraw, both $10. But his favored application is Photosmith ($20) an advanced tool that can wirelessly transfer pictures to your desktop computer for printing or editing later.

The only question remaining is which iPad to use. The newer iPads with retina displays are the best choice for editing, as the screen is phenomenally crisp. But they are also expensive. Of course the iPad Mini is lighter, and a fraction of the price, so it might be a better option for vacation snaps. But if you’re someone who really wants to get into your digital photos, you might be disappointed with the Mini’s screen resolution and prefer the big version.

Although digital cameras have changed the way most photographers shoot, I haven’t retired all of my film equipment just yet. There is one area of photography that most app makers and digital camera companies seem to have neglected: black and white.

All of the apps mentioned in this article can strip the color out of an image like a scene from the movie “Pleasantville,” but none have succeeded in recreating the authentic look of black and white photos. In most instances, shooting black and white on digital cameras can feel like making a pizza in a microwave: sure, it looks like a pizza, but it’s just not right.

So every once in a while I will still shoot a roll of 3200-speed black-and-white film on one of my old cameras. Then off I go to a darkroom to get it developed. Nowadays, while I sit waiting amid those pungent and familiar smells, I have my digital darkroom with me, and I edit photos on my iPad while the chemicals work their magic.

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Recipes for Health: Winter Squash and Walnut Spread — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

2 pounds pumpkin or winter squash, such as kabocha or butternut, seeds and membranes scraped away, cut into large pieces (if using butternut, cut in half crosswise, just above the bulbous bottom part, then cut these halves into lengthwise quarters and scrape away the seeds and membranes)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces/35 g) lightly toasted walnuts, finely chopped

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (about 1/3 cup)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil the foil. Place the squash on the baking sheet and rub or toss with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until tender, 40 to 60 minutes depending on the type of squash and the size of the pieces. Every 15 minutes use tongs to turn the pieces over so different surfaces become browned on the foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then peel and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse several times, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then purée until smooth.

2. Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Add a generous pinch of salt, turn the heat to medium low and cook, stirring often, until very tender, sweet and lightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the squash. Add the mint, nutmeg, walnuts, Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon olive oil and pulse together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve on croutons.

Yield: 2 cups

Advance preparation: This will keep for three to four days in the refrigerator and freezes well. It benefits from being made a day ahead.

Variation: Omit the Parmesan for a vegan version. If desired, blend in 1 to 2 teaspoons of light miso.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 35 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 15 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Winter Squash and Walnut Spread — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

2 pounds pumpkin or winter squash, such as kabocha or butternut, seeds and membranes scraped away, cut into large pieces (if using butternut, cut in half crosswise, just above the bulbous bottom part, then cut these halves into lengthwise quarters and scrape away the seeds and membranes)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces/35 g) lightly toasted walnuts, finely chopped

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (about 1/3 cup)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil the foil. Place the squash on the baking sheet and rub or toss with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until tender, 40 to 60 minutes depending on the type of squash and the size of the pieces. Every 15 minutes use tongs to turn the pieces over so different surfaces become browned on the foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then peel and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse several times, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then purée until smooth.

2. Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Add a generous pinch of salt, turn the heat to medium low and cook, stirring often, until very tender, sweet and lightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the squash. Add the mint, nutmeg, walnuts, Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon olive oil and pulse together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve on croutons.

Yield: 2 cups

Advance preparation: This will keep for three to four days in the refrigerator and freezes well. It benefits from being made a day ahead.

Variation: Omit the Parmesan for a vegan version. If desired, blend in 1 to 2 teaspoons of light miso.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 35 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 15 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Euro Watch: Spending Data Points to Continuing Woes in Euro Zone

PARIS — European consumers continue to cut back on spending, official data showed Wednesday, indicating that the region’s financial crisis and ailing job market were weighing on hopes of an economic recovery.

Retail sales in the 17-nation euro zone fell 1.2 percent in October from September, and were down 3.6 percent from a year earlier, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported Wednesday.

For the entire 27-nation European Union, sales declined 1.1 percent from September and 2.4 percent from October 2011, Eurostat said.

The big dip in retail sales was partly a result of front-loading of purchases before value-added taxes rose in some countries, said James Nixon, an economist in London for Société Générale.

The fiscal crisis in the euro zone and the austerity measures employed to combat it have made companies reticent about hiring, helping to drive the euro zone into recession in the third quarter. That has created a vicious circle, in which falling consumer spending is expected to weigh further on the economy.

A reading Wednesday on euro zone activity from a private data and analysis firm also suggested the economy continued to contract. Markit Economics’ composite purchasing managers’ index for November came in at 46.5. That was a bump upward from the 40-month low of 45.7 in October, but the 10th straight month below 50, a level that suggests shrinking output.

On Friday, Eurostat reported that unemployment in the euro zone rose to a record 11.7 percent in October from 11.6 percent a month earlier, and that the jobless rate among those under 25 years of age was 23.9 percent.

The European Commission on Wednesday expressed grave concern about the problem of youth unemployment, noting that just the immediate cost to governments — in terms of lost revenue and social outlays — worked out to an estimated €150 billion, or $196 billion, a year, or 1.2 percent of E.U. gross domestic product.

It recommended a new program to address the problem, with measures including job guarantees for young people, labor market changes to reduce obstacles to hiring across European borders, and further efforts to provide high-quality training and apprenticeship programs.

The European commissioner for employment and social affairs, Laszlo Andor, said in a statement that the cost of failing to help put young people to work would be “catastrophic.”

The European Central Bank and its British counterpart, the Bank of England, will hold policy meetings Thursday, and though signs of weakness would appear to give the central banks scope for action, neither is believed to be planning any major changes to current monetary policy.

Economists expect the E.C.B. to leave its main refinancing rate at 0.75 percent, while the Bank of England is expected to stand pat at 0.5 percent.

Action by the central banks has helped to calm markets and relieve the pressure on the euro, but conditions remain unsettled. As an indication of the stresses that have sent investors scurrying for the perceived safety of major sovereign bonds, yields on France’s 10-year sovereign debt fell on Wednesday to around 2 percent, the lowest level on record.

The dismal retail sales data came as the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone’s permanent new bailout fund, said it had issued about €39.5 billion in bonds to cover the recapitalization of Spain’s banking sector.

Euro zone leaders agreed in June to provide up to €100 billion to help Spanish banks, which have been battered in the aftermath of a property bubble collapse and economic dislocation caused by austerity measures. The funds were originally raised by the bloc’s temporary bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the transaction Wednesday represented an effective transfer of that money from the old facility to the permanent one.

The fund said that €37 billion would be handed over some time in December to the Spanish government’s own banking rescue fund, the FROB, to cover the needs of BFA-Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia. The FROB will use the remaining €2.5 billion to capitalize Spain’s “bad bank,” a company called Sareb that is being used to sift through soured assets.

The action Wednesday “is an important event as the E.S.M. has now started to actively fulfill its role as the permanent rescue mechanism for the euro zone,” Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, said in a statement.

Mr. Nixon, of Société Générale, predicted that the euro zone economy would shrink in the fourth quarter at an annualized 1.2 percent rate, but said he expected some of the northern European economies, including Germany, to start pulling away from the laggards in 2013.

“We may have reached a bottom,” Mr. Nixon said, citing an easing of tension in the market for sovereign debt and smoother financing conditions. “At least things aren’t getting worse any faster.”

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Changing of the Guard: How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession

BEIJING — “Thank you. I’m well. Don’t worry,” read the post on a Chinese social networking site. The brief comment, published in June, appeared to come from Ling Gu, the 23-year-old son of a high-powered aide to China’s president, and it helped quash reports that he had been killed in a Ferrari crash after a night of partying.

It only later emerged that the message was a sham, posted by someone under Mr. Ling’s alias — almost three months after his death.

The ploy was one of many in a tangled effort to suppress news of the Ferrari crash that killed Mr. Ling and critically injured two young female passengers, one of whom later died. The outlines of the affair surfaced months ago, but it is now becoming clearer that the crash and the botched cover-up had more momentous consequences, altering the course of the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership succession last month.

China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman. But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death.

According to current and former officials, party elites, and others, the exposure helped tip the balance of difficult negotiations, hastening Mr. Hu’s decline; spurring the ascent of China’s new leader, Xi Jinping; and playing into the hands of Mr. Jiang, whose associates dominate the new seven-man leadership at the expense of candidates from Mr. Hu’s clique.

The case also shows how the profligate lifestyles of leaders’ relatives and friends can weigh heavily in backstage power tussles, especially as party skulduggery plays out under the intensifying glare of media.

Numerous party insiders provided information regarding the episode, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities. Officials have investigated the aftermath of the car wreck, they say, including looking into accusations that a state oil company paid hush money to the families of the two women.

Under Mr. Hu, Mr. Ling had directed the leadership’s administrative center, the General Office, but was relegated to a less influential post in September, ahead of schedule. Last month, he failed to advance to the 25-person Politburo and lost his seat on the influential party secretariat.

Mr. Hu, who stepped down as party chief, immediately yielded his post as chairman of the military, meaning he will not retain power as Mr. Jiang did. “Hu was weakened even before leaving office,” said a midranking official in the Organization Department, the party’s personnel office.

Mr. Ling’s future remains unsettled, with party insiders saying that his case presents an early test of whether Mr. Xi intends to follow through on public promises to fight high-level corruption.

“He can decide whether to go after Ling Jihua or not,” said Wu Guoguang, a former top-level party speechwriter, now a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “Either way, this is a big card in Xi Jinping’s hand.”

Mr. Ling, 56, built his career in the Communist Youth League. At an early age, he secured the patronage of Mr. Hu, who led the Youth League in the early 1980s and brought Mr. Ling to the General Office in 1995. “Hu didn’t come with a lot of friends, but Ling was someone he knew he could trust,” said the Organization Department official. “Officials said that if Ling called, it was like Hu calling.”

Mr. Ling played a central role in moving Youth League veterans into high offices and undermining Mr. Hu’s adversaries. Mr. Ling also wielded leverage over Internet censorship of leaders’ affairs, and sought to use it to benefit his patron.

“Negative publicity, including untruths, about Xi Jinping were not suppressed the way publicity about Hu Jintao was,” said one associate of party leaders.

As his influence grew, Mr. Ling tried to keep a low profile. About a decade ago, his wife closed a software company she owned and formed a nonprofit foundation that incubates young entrepreneurs. The couple sent their son, Ling Gu, to an elite Beijing high school under an alias, Wang Ziyun. “Ling Jihua told his family not to damage his career,” a former Youth League colleague said. “But it seems it can’t be stopped.”

Still living under an alias, Ling Gu graduated from Peking University last year with an international relations degree and began graduate studies in education. One of his instructors said his performance plunged later in his undergraduate years. “I think there were too many lures, too much seduction,” he said.

Before dawn on March 18, a black Ferrari Spider speeding along Fourth Ring Road in Beijing ricocheted off a wall, struck a railing and cracked in two. Mr. Ling was killed instantly, and the two young Tibetan women with him were hospitalized with severe injuries. One died months later, and the other is recovering, party insiders said.

Ian Johnson and Edward Wong contributed reporting.

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Gadgetwise Blog: The Nabi Jr.: A Tablet for Kids

Coming next month, Nabi Jr. is a 5-inch, 8 GB $99 Android tablet that can do double duty as a baby monitor or a karaoke machine. Educational apps, games and videos are pre-loaded. It has a single rotating front and back camera.

The maker of the device, Fuhu, brags: No cartridges; no AA batteries and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. If the tablet is successful, it could mean serious competition for toy-based options from Leapfrog and VTech.

The Nabi Jr. has its own app store, with the promise of being able to side-load the Amazon app store. If so, this could be a major advantage; previous Nabi tablets have made it very hard to download mainstream apps that don’t go through the Fuhu toll booth.

Fuhu is also selling add-ons, and this is where things get interesting. The add-ons include an infrared night vision camera with a remote zoom for use as a baby monitor. When synced to Fuhu’s cloud server, you can use a second Android phone to have your own video baby monitor on steroids — with two-way communication abilities, a room temperature display, sound level meter and a low-battery alert. Other add-ons include a Karaoke Machine that plugs into your big screen through the HDMI cable, and a cash register simulator will be available in toy stores mid-December. Add $30 for the 16GB model. Accessories will be available in February 2013.

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Recipes for Health: Mediterranean Lentil Purée — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The spicing here is the same as one used in a popular Egyptian lentil salad. The dish is inspired by a lentil purée that accompanies bread at Terra Bistro in Vail, Colo.

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, minced or pureed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground coriander seeds

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds

3/4 cup brown or green lentils, washed and picked over

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 tablespoon plain low-fat yogurt (more to taste) or additional liquid from the lentils for a vegan version

Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

1. Combine 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic in a small frying pan or saucepan over medium heat. When the garlic begins to sizzle, add the spices. Stir together for about 30 seconds, then remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Place the lentils in a medium saucepan, cover by 1 to 2 inches with water, add a bay leaf, and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat and cook until tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Taste and adjust salt. Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the lentils. Transfer to a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

3. Purée the lentils along with the garlic and spices. With the machine running add the additional olive oil and the garlic. Thin out as desired with the broth from the lentils. The purée should be very smooth; if it is dry or pasty, add more yogurt, broth, or olive oil. Taste and adjust salt. If desired add a few drops of lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle the cilantro over the top if desired, or spread directly on croutons or pita triangles.

Advance preparation: This will keep for four days in the refrigerator. You will probably need to moisten it with additional yogurt, olive oil or broth, and you may want to warm it and drizzle on a little more olive oil before serving.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 31 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 milligram sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Mediterranean Lentil Purée — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The spicing here is the same as one used in a popular Egyptian lentil salad. The dish is inspired by a lentil purée that accompanies bread at Terra Bistro in Vail, Colo.

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, minced or pureed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground coriander seeds

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds

3/4 cup brown or green lentils, washed and picked over

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 tablespoon plain low-fat yogurt (more to taste) or additional liquid from the lentils for a vegan version

Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

1. Combine 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic in a small frying pan or saucepan over medium heat. When the garlic begins to sizzle, add the spices. Stir together for about 30 seconds, then remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Place the lentils in a medium saucepan, cover by 1 to 2 inches with water, add a bay leaf, and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat and cook until tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Taste and adjust salt. Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the lentils. Transfer to a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

3. Purée the lentils along with the garlic and spices. With the machine running add the additional olive oil and the garlic. Thin out as desired with the broth from the lentils. The purée should be very smooth; if it is dry or pasty, add more yogurt, broth, or olive oil. Taste and adjust salt. If desired add a few drops of lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle the cilantro over the top if desired, or spread directly on croutons or pita triangles.

Advance preparation: This will keep for four days in the refrigerator. You will probably need to moisten it with additional yogurt, olive oil or broth, and you may want to warm it and drizzle on a little more olive oil before serving.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 31 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 milligram sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Houston Is Booming, Pushed by, Surprise, Its Energy Industry

HOUSTON — Even first-time visitors here can tell that the city is growing rapidly. Construction cranes overhang office and apartment sites all along the Katy Freeway, a stretch of Interstate 10 that connects a string of booming submarkets west of the 610 Loop. This expanse includes the Westchase neighborhood and the Energy Corridor, home to an expanding cluster of energy companies.

The energy sector drives job growth and all manner of business activity here, with the greatest demand for office space concentrated in the west side where oil and gas companies are clustered, in the medical center just south of the central business district and in the Woodlands, a master-planned community 27 miles north of downtown.

“Houston is clearly a growth leader,” said Walter Page, director of office research at Property and Portfolio Research in Boston. “It was the first major economy in the U.S. to register more jobs than it lost in the recession.” Employment here is up 3.7 percent since August 2008, when it peaked before declining during the recession. That compares with New York’s gain of just 0.7 percent from its peak in April 2008 before declining, Mr. Page said.

The city’s office vacancy rate was 11.9 percent in the third quarter, down from 13.4 percent a year earlier, according to the CoStar Group, a real estate research firm in Washington. Developers are creating new space to meet that strong demand, completing 15 major office buildings in the first three quarters of this year alone. Of the 3.9 million square feet of office space under construction, more than 90 percent is in the western submarkets or in the Woodlands, Mr. Page said.

The energy sector accounts for 3.4 percent of the city’s employment, more than five times the national average of 0.6 percent, Mr. Page said. Despite that heavy concentration, the rest of the city’s economy is diverse and helps spread the wealth that energy brings into the community to other sectors.

Brisk commercial real estate sales reflect investor interest in the market. This year, an affiliate of the Houston-based Enterprise Products Company bought the Shell Plaza, a 1.8 million-square-foot office complex in the central business district, for $550 million, CoStar reported. The seller was a fund operated by Hines, a Houston-based developer that built the property in the 1970s. Last year, Shell renewed its leases for nearly 1.3 million square feet at Shell Plaza.

Hines developed much of the city’s commercial real estate. Today the company’s projects here include multifamily construction in the shadow of office buildings that it developed in the Galleria, a group of office towers, hotels and retail on the southwestern rim of Loop 610, with a skyline that rivals downtown’s.

Mark Cover, Hines’s chief executive for the southwest region, said that energy, the medical center and the Port of Houston are the three largest engines driving the economy here. “The global energy industry is headquartered here,” he said. “It’s not just oil and gas, it’s alternatives, too. Intellectual capital in the energy field is heavily concentrated here.”

In the only major city in the United States without zoning laws, developers can, in theory, build virtually anything, anywhere in the city. In practice, however, understanding and catering to local industries is a critical element in site selection, Mr. Cover says. “When you really get down to it, the city is market-zoned, because land prices are not based on zoning rights, they’re based on purely capitalistic, highest and best use value,” he said. “If you build the wrong product or build in the wrong place, the market is going to severely punish you.”

Market forces shape the city’s development in hubs, says Jim Knight, who heads land development in Texas for Bury & Partners, an Austin-based engineering firm.

Refineries and distribution centers cluster near the port, while energy companies and other major employers tend to establish a presence, either downtown or in a submarket, and stick to that area indefinitely.

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Iraq’s Latest Crisis Is a Standoff With Northern Kurds

Azad Lashkari/Reuters

Officials in Baghdad, including American diplomats, are trying to mediate a dispute with the Kurdish government in the north.

BAGHDAD — It was just the sort of episode that observers have long worried could provoke a serious conflict: when federal police agents sought to arrest a Kurdish man last month in the city of Tuz Khurmato in the Kurdish north of the country, a gunfight ensued with security men loyal to the Kurdish regional government.

Azad Lashkari/Reuters

Kurdish security forces, called the Peshmerga, have been in a standoff with the Iraqi Army near Kirkuk, a northern city claimed by Arabs and Kurds.

When the bullets stopped flying, a civilian bystander was dead and at least eight others were wounded.

In response, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, rushed troop reinforcements to the area, and Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, dispatched his own soldiers, known as the Peshmerga, and the forces remain there in a tense standoff.

Almost a year after the departure of the United States military closed a painful chapter in the histories of both nations, Iraq finds itself in a familiar position: full-blown crisis mode, this time with two standing armies, one loyal to the central government in Baghdad and the other commanded by the Kurdish regional government in the north, staring at each other through gun sights, as officials in Baghdad, including American diplomats and an American general, try to mediate.

Like bookends, Iraq is closing the year just as it began, with a major confrontation that has exposed sectarian and ethnic rifts that hundreds of billions of American dollars and thousands of lives have not reconciled. At the outset of the year, it was the sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis that was on vivid display when the government of Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, issued an arrest warrant on terrorism charges against the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi.

“The year started with the warrant against Hashemi and is ending with tanks on the edge of the Kurdish mountains,” said Sarmed al-Tai, a columnist for the newspaper Al Mada, which ran a story on Sunday on the anniversary of the American military’s departure, describing the exit as “leaving a large vacuum and a significant deterioration of the national partnership.”

As American troops left at the end of 2011, Mr. Maliki sent tanks to surround Mr. Hashemi’s home in the Green Zone of Baghdad. An arrest warrant led to Mr. Hashemi’s self-imposed exile, first in the Kurdish north and then Turkey; a trial in absentia followed, then the handing down of not one but two death sentences. Mr. Hashemi now lives in a suburban high-rise apartment in Istanbul, where he is protected by Turkish guards and remains defiant.

“Legally, I am still a vice president,” he said in a recent interview, adding, “I do have a lot of time to look after the future of my country.”

The latest crisis is an ethnic one, between Kurds and Arabs, and the consequences are potentially more serious because the Kurds, in contrast to the Sunni Arabs, enjoy a measure of autonomy in the north, control their own security forces and have longstanding ambitions for independence.

Tuz Khurmato, the city where the clash occurred, is of mixed ethnicity, where Turkmens, Arabs and Kurds compete for power. It lies in a region around the city of Kirkuk, an area of vast potential oil wealth that is at the center of a longstanding power struggle between Kurds and Arabs. As part of his brutal rule, Saddam Hussein moved tens of thousands of Arabs into the area, to dilute what was historically a Kurdish stronghold. After his fall, thousands of displaced Kurds demanded the right to return to the homes they had been driven from, creating tensions that have yet to subside.

The latest crisis began after Mr. Maliki sought to consolidate his control over security in Kirkuk, where Kurdish and Iraqi forces have shared responsibility for security, and it reached a critical stage after the gunfight.

“This is a red line for the Kurds,” said Joost R. Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group. “Maliki is essentially taking control of the police. And the Kurds will never give up the city.”

Efforts at mediation, backed by the Americans, have so far failed to reach resolution. On Monday, Mr. Maliki and Mr. Barzani sent more troops to the area, with each side accusing the other of doing so first. Mr. Maliki warned the Kurds of the “seriousness of their behavior” and warned of its “consequences.” A spokesman for the Peshmerga said, “Anything is possible.”

Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, and Duraid Adnan from Baghdad and Kirkuk, Iraq.

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