Dallas

Dallas (pronounced /ˈdæləs/) is the third largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States.[3]

The city, with a population of over 1.3 million, is the main economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex which contains 6.1 million people, and is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States and the largest in Texas.

Dallas is rated as a beta world city by the Loughborough University Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network.[4]

Founded in 1841 and formally incorporated as a city in February, 1856, the city's economy is primarily based on banking, commerce, telecommunications, computer technology, energy, and transportation. Dallas is the core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea.[5] The city's prominence despite this comes from its historical importance as a center for the oil and cotton industries, its position along numerous railroad lines, a strong industrial and financial sector, and its status as a major inland port (due largely to the presence of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, one of the largest and busiest in the world).
Before Texas was claimed in the 18th century as a part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain by the Spanish Empire, the Dallas area was inhabited by the Caddo Native Americans. Later, France also claimed the area, but in 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty made the Red River the northern boundary of New Spain, officially placing Dallas well within Spanish territory.[7] The area remained under Spanish rule until 1821, when Mexico declared independence from Spain and the area became part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. In 1836, the Republic of Texas broke off from Mexico to become an independent nation.[8] In 1839, four years into the Republic's existence, Warren Angus Ferris surveyed the area around present-day Dallas. Two years later, John Neely Bryan established a permanent settlement that later became the city of Dallas. The Republic of Texas was then annexed by the United States in 1845 and Dallas County was established the following year. It is uncertain whether the city was named after George Mifflin Dallas, the U.S. Vice President under James Knox Polk.
Dallas and its surrounding area are mostly flat; the city itself lies at elevations ranging from 450 feet (137 m) to 550 feet (168 m). The western edge of the Austin Chalk Formation, a limestone escarpment, rises 200 feet (61 m) and runs roughly north-south through Dallas County. South of the Trinity River (Texas), the uplift is particularly noticeable in the neighborhoods of Oak Cliff and the adjacent cities of Cockrell Hill, Cedar Hill, and Grand Prairie. Marked variations in terrain are also found in cities immediately to the west in Tarrant County surrounding Fort Worth, as well as along Turtle Creek north of Downtown.

Dallas, like many other cities in the world, was founded along a river. The city was founded at the location of a "white rock crossing" of the Trinity River, where it was easier for wagons to cross the river in the days before ferries or bridges. The Trinity River, though not usefully navigable, is the major waterway through the city. Its path through Dallas is paralleled by Interstate 35E along the Stemmons Corridor, then south alongside the western portion of Downtown and past south Dallas and Pleasant Grove, where the river is paralleled by Interstate 45 until it exits the city and heads southeast towards Houston. The river is flanked on both sides by 50 feet (15 m) tall earthen levees to protect the city from frequent floods.[11] Since it was rerouted in 1908, the river has been little more than a drainage ditch within a floodplain for several miles above and below downtown Dallas, with a more normal course further upstream and downstream, but as Dallas began shifting towards postindustrial society, public outcry about the lack of aesthetic and recreational use of the river ultimately gave way to the Trinity River Project, which was initialized in the early 2000s and is scheduled to be completed in the 2010s. If the project materializes fully, it promises improvements to the riverfront in the form of man-made lakes, new park facilities and trails, and transportation upgrades.

The project area will reach for over 20 miles (32 km) in length within the city, while the overall geographical land area addressed by the Land Use Plan is approximately 44,000 acres (180 km2) in size—about 20% of the land area in Dallas. Green space along the river will encompass approximately 10,000 acres (40 km2), making it one of the largest and diverse urban parks in the world.[12][13]

White Rock Lake, a reservoir constructed at the beginning of the 20th century, is Dallas's other significant water feature. The lake and surrounding park are a popular destination among boaters, rowers, joggers, and bikers, as well as visitors seeking peaceful respite from the city at the 66-acre (267,000 m2) Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, located on the lake's eastern shore.[14] Bachman Lake, just northwest of Love Field Airport, is a smaller lake also popularly used for recreation. Northeast of the city is Lake Ray Hubbard, a vast 22,745-acre (92 km2) reservoir located in an extension of Dallas surrounded by the suburbs of Garland, Rowlett, Rockwall, and Sunnyvale.[15] To the west of the city is Mountain Creek Lake, once home to the Naval Air Station Dallas (Hensley Field) and a number of defense aircraft manufacturers.[16] North Lake, a small body of water in an extension of the city limits surrounded by Irving and Coppell, initially served as a water source for a nearby power plant but is now being targeted for redevelopment as a recreational lake due to its proximity to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a plan that the lake's neighboring cities oppose.
Dallas has a humid subtropical climate, though it is located in a region that also tends to receive warm, dry winds from the north and west in the summer, bringing temperatures well over 100 °F (38 °C) at times and heat-humidity indexes soaring to as high as 117 °F (47 °C). When only temperature itself is accounted for, the north central Texas region where Dallas is located is one of the hottest in the United States during the summer months, usually trailing only the Mojave Desert basin of Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California.

Winters in Dallas are generally mild, with normal daytime highs ranging from 55 °F (13 °C) to 70 °F (21 °C) and normal nighttime lows falling in between 30 °F (−1 °C) and 45 °F (7 °C). A day with clear, sunny skies, a high of 63 °F (17 °C), and a low of 36 °F (2 °C) would thus be a very typical one during the winter. However, strong cold fronts known as "Blue Northers" sometimes pass through the Dallas region, plummeting nightly lows below 30 °F (−1 °C) for up to a few days at a time and keeping daytime highs in a struggle to surpass 40 °F (4 °C). Snow accumulation is usually seen in the city at least once every winter, and snowfall generally occurs 2–3 days out of the year for an annual average of 2.5 inches. Some areas in the region, however, receive more than that, while other areas receive negligible snowfall or none at all.[19] A couple of times each winter in Dallas, warm and humid air from the south will override cold, dry air, resulting in freezing rain or ice and causing disruptions in the city if the roads and highways become slick. On the other hand, daytime highs above 70 °F (21 °C) are not unusual during the winter season and will occur at least several days each winter month—roughly the same number of days each December, January, and February that low temperatures fall below 30 °F (−1 °C) or that high temperatures fail to reach 50 °F (10 °C). Over the past 15 years, Dallas has averaged 31 annual nights at or below freezing, with the winter of 1999-2000 holding the all-time record as having the fewest freezing nights, with 14. During this same span of 15 years, the temperature in the region has only twice dropped below 15 °F (−9 °C), though it will generally fall below 20 °F (−7 °C) about once every other year.[20] In sum, extremes and variations in winter weather are more readily seen in Dallas and Texas as a whole than along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, due to the state's location in the interior of the North American continent and the lack of any mountainous terrain to the north to block out Arctic weather systems.

Spring and autumn bring pleasant weather to the area. Vibrant wildflowers (such as the bluebonnet, Indian paintbrush and other flora) bloom in spring and are planted around the highways throughout Texas.[21] Springtime weather can be quite volatile, but temperatures themselves are mild. The weather in Dallas is also generally pleasant from late September to early December and on many winter days, but unlike in the springtime, major storms rarely form in the area.
Snow on the campus of Southern Methodist University in nearby University Park

Each spring, cool fronts moving south from Canada will collide with warm, humid air streaming in from the Gulf Coast, leading to severe thunderstorms with lightning, torrents of rain, hail, and occasionally, tornadoes. Over time, tornadoes have probably been the biggest natural threat to the city, as it is located near the heart of Tornado Alley.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture places Dallas in Plant Hardiness Zone 8a.[22] However, mild winter temperatures in the past 15 to 20 years have encouraged the horticulture of some cold-sensitive plants such as Washingtonia filifera and Washingtonia robusta palms. According to the American Lung Association, Dallas has the 12th highest air pollution among U.S. cities, ranking it behind Los Angeles and Houston.[23] Much of the air pollution in Dallas and the surrounding area comes from a hazardous materials incineration plant in the small town of Midlothian and from concrete installations in neighbouring Ellis County.[24] Another major contributor to air pollution in Dallas is exhaust from automobiles. Due to the metropolitan area's spread-out nature and high amount of urban sprawl, automobiles are the only viable mode of transportation for many.

The city's all-time recorded high temperature is 112 °F (44 °C), while the all-time recorded low is 1 °F (−17 °C). The average daily low in Dallas is 57 °F (14 °C), and the average daily high in Dallas is 77 °F (25 °C).[18] Dallas receives approximately 37.1 inches (942.3 mm) of rain per year.

In terms of voting patterns, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the third most liberal of the Texas metropolitan areas after Austin and El Paso. In contrast, 54% of Houston- and San Antonio-area voters and an even higher percentage of rural Texan voters are conservative.[30] Nonetheless, Dallas is known to many as a high-profile center of evangelical Protestant Christianity.

As a city, present-day Dallas can be seen as moderate, with conservative Republicans dominating the upper-middle class suburban neighborhoods of North Dallas and liberal Democrats dominating neighborhoods closer to Downtown as well as the city's southern sector. As a continuation of its suburban northern neighborhoods, Dallas's northern suburbs are overwhelmingly conservative. Plano, the largest of these suburbs, was ranked as the fifth most conservative city in America by The Bay Area Center for Voting Research, based on the voting patterns of middle-age adults. However, the city of Dallas (excluding its suburbs) generally votes for Democratic political candidates in local, state, and national elections.

In the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections, 57% of Dallas voters voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush.[31] Dallas County as a whole was split evenly, with 50% of voters voting for Bush and 49% voting for Kerry.[32] In the 2006 elections for Dallas County judges, 41 out of 42 seats went to Democrats.

By the 2008 elections, both Dallas County and the city of Dallas had become overwhelmingly Democratic. In Dallas County as a whole, 57% of voters chose Barack Obama, compared to the 42% who chose John McCain. By an even larger margin, the city of Dallas (not including the small portions of the city located in Collin and Denton Counties) favored Obama over McCain, 65% to 35%. When disregarding the city in Dallas County's results, Obama still squeaked past McCain by a margin of 0.7% in what was essentially a 50%-50% tie.[33]

In 2004, Lupe Valdez was elected Dallas County Sheriff. An open lesbian, she is currently one of only two female sheriffs in the state of Texas, the other being Sheriff Rosanna Abreo of Bastrop County. Despite controversies in her handling of county jails, she won re-election in 2008 with a 10-point victory over Republican challenger Lowell Cannaday.[34]

Bucking the city's Democratic trend, conservative Republican Tom Leppert defeated liberal Democrat Ed Oakley in the city's 2007 mayoral race by a margin of 58% to 42%. Had Oakley been elected, he would have become the first openly-gay mayor of a large U.S. city. Though candidates' political leanings are well publicized in the media, Dallas's elections are officially non-partisan. The city's previous mayor was Laura Miller, a liberal Jewish woman who had previously written for the Dallas Observer, the city's most popular alternative newspaper.
The Arts District in the northern section of Downtown is home to several arts venues, both existing and proposed. Notable venues in the district include the Dallas Museum of Art, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, The Dallas Contemporary, and The Dallas Children's Theatre. Venues under construction or planned include the Winspear Opera House and the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.[37][38] The Arts District is also home to DISD's Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a magnet school which was recently expanded.[39]

Deep Ellum, immediately east of Downtown, originally became popular during the 1920s and 1930s as the prime jazz and blues hot spot in the South.[40] Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, and Bessie Smith played in original Deep Ellum clubs such as The Harlem and The Palace. Today, Deep Ellum is home to hundreds of artists who live in lofts and operate in studios throughout the district alongside bars, pubs, and concert venues.[41] A major art infusion in the area results from the city's lax stance on graffiti, and a number of public spaces including tunnels, sides of buildings, sidewalks, and streets are covered in murals. One major example, the Good-Latimer tunnel, was torn down in late 2006 to accommodate the construction of a light rail line through the site.[citation needed]

Like Deep Ellum before it, the Cedars neighborhood to the south of Downtown has also seen a growing population of studio artists and an expanding roster of entertainment venues. The area's art scene began to grow in the early 2000s with the opening of Southside on Lamar, an old Sears warehouse converted into lofts, studios, and retail.[42] Current attractions include Gilley's Dallas and Poor David's Pub.[43][44] Dallas Mavericks owner and local entrepreneur Mark Cuban purchased land along Lamar Avenue near Cedars Station in September 2005, and locals speculate that he is planning an entertainment complex for the site.[45]

South of the Trinity River, the fledgling Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff is home to a number of studio artists living in converted warehouses. Walls of buildings along alleyways and streets are painted with murals and the surrounding streets contain many eclectic restaurants and shops.[46]

Dallas has an Office of Cultural Affairs as a department of the city government. The office is responsible for six cultural centers located throughout the city, funding for local artists and theaters, initiating public art projects, and running the city-owned classical radio station WRR.
In its beginnings, Dallas relied on farming, neighboring Fort Worth's Stockyards, and its prime location on Indian trade routes to sustain itself. Dallas's key to growth came in 1873 with the building of multiple rail lines through the city. As Dallas grew and technology developed, cotton became its boon, and by 1900, Dallas was the largest inland cotton market in the world, becoming a leader in cotton gin machinery manufacturing. By the early 1900s, Dallas was a hub for economic activity all over the southwestern United States and was selected in 1914 as the seat of the Eleventh Federal Reserve District. By 1925, Texas churned out more than ⅓ of the nation's cotton crop, with 31% of Texas cotton produced within a 100-mile (161 km) radius of Dallas. In the 1930s, petroleum was discovered east of Dallas near Kilgore, Texas. Dallas's proximity to the discovery put it immediately at the center of the nation's petroleum market. Petroleum discoveries in the Permian Basin, the Panhandle, the Gulf Coast, and Oklahoma in the following years further solidified Dallas's position as the hub of the market.[72]

The end of World War II left Dallas seeded with a nexus of communications, engineering, and production talent by companies such as Collins Radio Corporation. Decades later, the telecommunications and information revolutions still drive a large portion of the local economy. The city is sometimes referred to as the heart of "Silicon Prairie" because of a high concentration of telecommunications companies in the region, the epicenter of which lies along the Telecom Corridor located in Richardson, a northern suburb of Dallas. The Corridor is home to more than 5,700 companies[73] including Texas Instruments, Nortel Networks, CompUSA, Alcatel Lucent, AT&T, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, Rockwell, Cisco Systems, Sprint and Verizon Communications.

In the 1980s, Dallas was a real estate hotbed, with the metropolitan population skyrocketing and the concurrent demand for housing and jobs. Several of Downtown Dallas's largest buildings are the fruit of this boom, but over-speculation and the savings and loan crisis prevented any further additions to Dallas' skyline. Between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, central Dallas went through a slow period of growth and has only recently bounced back. This time, the real estate market in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has proven to be much more resilient than those of most other parts of the United States.

Dallas is no longer a hotbed for manufacturing like it was in the early 20th century, but plenty of goods are still manufactured in the city.[74] Texas Instruments employs 10,400 people at its corporate headquarters and chip plants in neighboring Richardson, and defense and aircraft manufacturing still dominates the economy of nearby Fort Worth.[75]

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex as a whole has the largest concentration of corporate headquarters in the United States. New additions to the list include AT&T, which announced plans in June 2008 to relocate its corporate headquarters to Downtown Dallas from San Antonio, and Comerica Bank, which relocated in 2007 from Detroit. Suburban Irving is home to four Fortune 500 companies of its own, including ExxonMobil, the most profitable company in the world and the second largest by revenue,[76] Kimberly-Clark, Fluor (engineering), and Commercial Metals.[77] Additional companies internationally headquartered in the Metroplex include Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, RadioShack, Neiman Marcus, 7-Eleven, Brinker International, id Software, ENSCO Offshore Drilling, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Chuck E. Cheese's, CompUSA, Zales and Fossil. Corporate headquarters in the northern suburb of Plano include Electronic Data Systems, Frito Lay, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, and JCPenney.

In addition to its large number of businesses, Dallas has more shopping centers per capita than any other city in the United States and is also home to the second shopping center built in the United States, Highland Park Village, which opened in 1931.[78] Dallas is home of the two other major malls in North Texas, the Dallas Galleria and NorthPark Center, which is also the largest mall in Texas. Both malls feature high-end stores and are major tourist draws for the region.

The city itself is home to 15 billionaires, placing it 9th worldwide among cities with the most billionaires.[78][79] The ranking does not even take into account the eight billionaires who live in the neighboring city of Fort Worth.

Dallas is currently the third most popular destination for business travel in the United States, and the Dallas Convention Center is one of the largest and busiest convention centers in the country, at over 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2), and the world's single-largest column-free exhibit hall.
U.S. Census estimates released in 2007 indicated that there were 1,240,499 people living in Dallas proper. According to Census data compiled between 2005 and 2007, there were 440,633 households and 257,339 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,623 people per square mile (1,398.8/km²). There were 510,591 housing units at an average density of 1,491.2 per square mile (575.8/km²).[94]

There were 440,633 households out of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.2% were married couples living together, 15.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.6% are classified as non-families by the United States Census Bureau. 34.4% of all households had one or more people under 18 years of age, and 16.4% had one or more people who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.65 and the average family size was 3.52.[95]

In the city the population was spread out with 26.6% under the age of 18 and 8.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32.1 years. 51.4% of the population was male and 48.6% was female.[96]

The median income for a household in the city was $40,147, and the median income for a family was $42,670. Male full-time workers had a median income of $32,265 versus $32,402 for female full-time workers. The per capita income for the city was $25,904. About 18.7% of families and 21.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 33.6% of those under age 18 and 13.4% of those aged 65 or over.[97] The median price for a house was $128,200.[98]

The racial makeup of Dallas was 56.9% White (30.5% non-Hispanic-White), 23.8% Black, 2.7% Asian, 0.9% Native American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.9% from other races, and 1.2% from two or more races. 42.4% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race.[99]

Dallas has historically been predominantly White, but its population has diversified as it has grown in size and importance over the 20th century to the point that non-Hispanic Whites now represent less than one-third of the city's population.[100] In addition, recent data showed that 26.5% of Dallas's population and 17% of residents in the Metroplex as a whole were foreign-born.[101][102]

Dallas is a major destination for Mexican immigrants, both legally and illegally. The southwestern and southeastern portions of the city, particularly Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove, consists of a mixture of black and Hispanic residents, while the southern portion of the city is predominantly black. North Dallas, on the other hand, is mostly white, though many enclaves of predominantly black and Hispanic residents exist. In addition, Dallas and its suburbs are home to a large number of Asian American residents—Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Arab all have large presences in the area, particularly in the suburbs of Garland, Richardson, Plano, Carrollton, Irving, Arlington, Haltom City, Frisco, and Allen.

About half of Dallas's population was born outside of Texas. Many residents have migrated to the city from other parts of the country, particularly the Midwest, Northeast, and other Sunbelt states such as California.

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