The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is located in the Southern Plains, far from America’s coasts and major river systems, and embodies the new trends in American urbanism.
In the past decade, North Texas has grown by around 1.3 million people to a population of nearly 7.7 million, making it the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country, based on new numbers from the 2020 census.
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Dallas-Fort Worth is now home to 24 Fortune 500 corporate headquarters in New York and Chicago. Among America’s 20 largest metropolitan areas, D-FW has the fourth highest net immigration rate, and demographers predict that north Texas will reach 10 million people sometime in the 2030s, overtaking Chicago to become America’s third largest metropolitan area.
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Rather than building on natural advantages, North Texas owes its tremendous growth to railways, highways, and airports, as well as an unusual level of economic freedom and affordability.
In the second half of the 20th century, business leaders built a world-class transportation network that focused on DFW International Airport but also included a leading national hub for ground logistics and a toll road system that could support rapid external growth. Thanks to DFW Airport, the twelfth largest airport in the world in terms of passenger numbers, travelers can reach every major city in the US and 66 non-stop destinations outside the US within four hours
Today, Dallas is withdrawing economically from the country’s long-established urban centers due to a pronounced political orientation: growth-friendly, with easier business regulation and lower taxes than long-standing urban centers in the Northeast, the Midwest or in California.
Only four of the 53 US metros with more than 1 million inhabitants surpass D-FW on an index from the SMU Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom. The index measures tax levels, government spending and labor regulations. Likewise, only five of these metros have more growth-friendly land use rules than D-FW, based on a dataset compiled by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
The location and cost advantages of D-FW have become strong points of attraction for companies. North Texas has been home to established companies such as Texas Instruments, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Kimberly-Clark and DR Horton for the past few years, and in recent years has quickly acquired California headquarters for elite companies such as Jacobs Engineering, Fluor, Toyota Motor North America , McKesson, Tenet Healthcare, CBRE and Charles Schwab.
Bob Pragada, chief operating officer of Jacobs, who moved to Dallas in 2017, said the high cost of living, especially housing, was making the Los Angeles area increasingly unaffordable for his 55,000-employee company.
“If you’re not a tech company, being in California is very difficult,” he said in an interview, adding that it is becoming increasingly difficult to convince employees to move there.
According to data from the World Population Review, the cost of living in Texas is about 10% below the national average, while that of California is about 50% above.
D-FW has also established itself as America’s third largest financial center. Comerica, Charles Schwab and First Foundation have moved their headquarters to Dallas in recent years, and State Farm and Liberty Mutual have opened large operations in the area.
The recent shifts in internal migration patterns are changing the D-FW area as well as the other major metropolitan areas of the thriving Texas Triangle region: Houston, San Antonio and Austin. From 2010 to 2020, D-FW recorded net immigration from other parts of the US of more than 500,000, more than any other US metropolis.
As a result, North Texas has a younger population than most areas. Many of these newcomers are from the coasts and the Midwest. Between 2012 and 2016 alone, the region received more than 100,000 migrants from the metros of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
According to data from the Census Bureau, foreign-born residents made up nearly 21% of North Texas residents aged 25 and over with a bachelor, college, or professional degree in 2017; that is 25% above the national average.
Over the past decade, according to demographer Wendell Cox, D-FW has expanded its foreign-born population by 30%, more than any of the seven US metros with more than 5 million people. The foreign-born population has essentially flattened out in New York, while it has declined in absolute terms in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Immigrants come for opportunities, but that does not mean that poverty, especially among newcomers and long-established minorities, does not persist. In contrast to the ethnically diverse suburbs to the north of the city, what appears to be insoluble poverty continues to exist in Dallas.
At the same time, D-FW is struggling to create more economic vitality in its vast, backward areas, particularly south of Dallas and south-east of Fort Worth, where concentrated poverty still prevails. As economic energy shifts north and west in the region, southern Dallas has become what Kelvin Walker, chief executive of the Dallas Citizens Council, calls the “big gaping economic hole” – “the giant elephant in space.”
Still, North Texas seems poised for future growth. Its economy, far more than that of Houston and most of the other metros, is remarkably diversified. For example, the D-FW economy was only slightly dependent on the energy sector and survived the effects of the decline in oil and natural gas prices in 2014-15 and again in 2019-20.
Counties of Collin and Denton are likely to more than double by 2050, and counties further north along the Oklahoma border are also set to become big engines of growth.
America’s most economically and demographically dynamic metropolises will continue to play a leading role in shaping the country’s urban geography, as it has always done. In the first half of the 20th century, New York was the setting. In the second half it was Los Angeles.
In 21st Century America, keep an eye on the Big D.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute.
Cullum Clark is the director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and an economics professor at Southern Methodist University.
This column is an adaptation of an article in the City Journal.
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