New Chinatown began to expand in the 1990s when Houston-area Asian American entrepreneurs moved their businesses from older neighborhoods, especially the "Old Chinatown" on the eastern end of Downtown Houston, in a search for more inexpensive properties and lower crime rates.
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In 2004 Nancy Sarnoff of the Houston Chronicle described it as a westward shift for Chinatown.
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Much of the land of Chinatown Houston is owned by private entities, so there are relatively few public areas.
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The new Chinatown Houston is located within a residential area of single-family houses and apartments, and its spread-out nature differs from the East Downtown Chinatown Houston, which was in a relatively compact area.
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Businesses within the new Chinatown Houston include a mall, supermarkets, shopping centers, restaurants, and bakeries.
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Bellaire Chinatown Houston has many "retail condos, " shopping centers in which spaces are owned instead of leased.
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Lisa Gray of the Houston Chronicle stated that this Chinatown resembles newer Chinatowns that opened in automobile-oriented metropolitan areas in the United States such as suburbs in Greater Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley, as opposed to older, uniformly Chinese, pedestrian-oriented Chinatowns in New York City and San Francisco.
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Portion of Chinatown Houston is zoned to Revere Middle School and Wisdom High School .
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