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Dallas, Texas
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Dallas is the third largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States.
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.
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.
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Dallas is the third largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States.
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.
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. 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).
History
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. 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. 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.
Geography
Dallas is the county seat of Dallas County. Portions of the city extend into neighboring Collin, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of it being land and of it (11.03%) water. Dallas makes up one-fifth of the much larger urbanized area known as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, in which one quarter of all Texans live.
Topography
Dallas and its surrounding area are mostly flat; the city itself lies at elevations ranging from to . The western edge of the Austin Chalk Formation, a limestone escarpment, rises 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 tall earthen levees to protect the city from frequent floods. 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 in length within the city, while the overall geographical land area addressed by the Land Use Plan is approximately in size—about 20% of the land area in Dallas.
Green space along the river will encompass approximately , making it one of the largest and diverse urban parks in the world.
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 Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, located on the lake's eastern shore. 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 reservoir located in an extension of Dallas surrounded by the suburbs of Garland, Rowlett, Rockwall, and Sunnyvale. 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. 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.
Climate
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 at times and heat-humidity indexes soaring to as high as . 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 to and normal nighttime lows falling in between and . A day with clear, sunny skies, a high of , and a low of 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 for up to a few days at a time and keeping daytime highs in a struggle to surpass . 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. 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 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 or that high temperatures fail to reach . 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 , though it will generally fall below about once every other year. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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 , while the all-time recorded low is . The average daily low in Dallas is , and the average daily high in Dallas is . Dallas receives approximately of rain per year.
Cityscape
Architecture
Dallas's skyline contains several buildings over in height. Although some of Dallas's architecture dates from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the notable architecture in the city is from the modernist and postmodernist eras. Iconic examples of modernist architecture include Reunion Tower, the JFK Memorial, I. M. Pei's Dallas City Hall. Good examples of postmodernist skyscrapers are Fountain Place, Bank of America Plaza, Renaissance Tower, JPMorgan Chase Tower, and Comerica Bank Tower. Several smaller structures are fashioned in the Gothic Revival style, such as the Kirby Building, and the neoclassical style, as seen in the Davis and Wilson Buildings. One architectural "hotbed" in the city is a stretch of historic houses along Swiss Avenue, which contains all shades and variants of architecture from Victorian to neoclassical.
As part of the Trinity River Project, Dallas is also seeing construction of a series of new signature bridges designed by Santiago Calatrava. The first one to be built, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, will reach a height of over 40 stories above the river basin.
Neighborhoods
Central Dallas is anchored by Downtown, the center of the city and the epicenter of urban revival, along with Oak Lawn and Uptown, areas characterized by dense retail, restaurants, and nightlife. Downtown Dallas has a variety of named districts, including the West End Historic District, the Arts District, the Main Street District, Farmers Market District, the City Center business district, the Convention Center District, and the Reunion District. "Hot spots" north of Downtown include Uptown, Victory Park, Oak Lawn, Turtle Creek, Cityplace and West Village.
East Dallas is home to Deep Ellum, a trendy arts area close to Downtown, the homey Lakewood neighborhood, historic Vickery Place and Bryan Place, and the architecturally significant Swiss Avenue. North of the Park Cities is Preston Hollow, home to Texas' wealthiest residents, as well as the most expensive homes in the state. The area is also characterized by a variety of high-powered shopping areas, including Galleria Dallas, NorthPark Center, Highland Park Village, and Preston Center. In the northeast quadrant of the city is Lake Highlands, one of Dallas's most unified middle-class neighborhoods.
Southwest of Downtown lies Oak Cliff, a hilly area that has undergone gentrification in recent years in neighborhoods such as the Bishop Arts District. Oak Cliff originated as a township founded in the mid-1800s and was annexed by the city of Dallas in 1903. Today, most of the area's northern residents are Hispanic. South Oak Cliff, on the other hand, became predominantly African-American after the early 1970s. Much of the southern portion of the city has struggled with high rates of poverty and crime.
South Dallas, a distinct neighborhood southeast of Downtown, lays claim to the Cedars, an eclectic artist hotbed south of downtown and Fair Park, home of the annual State Fair of Texas. The area, predominantly African-American, is arguably the poorest in the city. While Oak Cliff is mostly lower-income but fairly vibrant, South Dallas contains large numbers of boarded-up buildings and vacant lots.
To spur growth in the southern sector of the city, University of North Texas opened a Dallas campus in October 2006 in south Oak Cliff near the intersection of Interstate 20 and Houston School Rd. Large amounts of undeveloped land remain nearby, due to decades of slow growth south of Downtown. Further east, in the southeast quadrant of the city, is the large neighborhood of Pleasant Grove. Once an independent city, it is a collection of mostly lower-income residential areas stretching all the way to Seagoville in the southeast. Though a city neighborhood, Pleasant Grove is surrounded by undeveloped land on all sides, including swampland separating it from South Dallas that will in the future be part of the Great Trinity Forest, a subsection of the city's Trinity River Project.
Dallas is further surrounded by many suburbs and includes three enclaves within the city boundaries—Cockrell Hill, Highland Park, and University Park.
Culture
Politics
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. 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. Dallas County as a whole was split evenly, with 50% of voters voting for Bush and 49% voting for Kerry. 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.
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.
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.
Cuisine
Dallas is renowned for its barbecue, authentic Mexican, and Tex-Mex cuisine. Famous products of the Dallas culinary scene include the frozen margarita and the chain restaurants Chili's and Romano's Macaroni Grill. The French Room at the Hotel Adolphus in Downtown Dallas was named the best hotel restaurant in the US by Zagat Survey. A number of nationally ranked steakhouses can be found in the Dallas area, including Bob's Steak & Chop House, currently ranked #3 according to the USDA Prime Steakhouses chart behind Ruth's Chris Times Square and Bones Atlanta.
Arts
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. Current attractions include Gilley's Dallas and Poor David's Pub. 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.
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.
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.
Sports
Dallas is home to the Dallas Desperados (Arena Football League), Dallas Mavericks (National Basketball Association), and Dallas Stars (National Hockey League). All three teams play at the American Airlines Center.
The Major League Soccer team FC Dallas, formerly the Dallas Burn, used to play in the Cotton Bowl but moved to Pizza Hut Park in Frisco upon the stadium's opening in 2005. However, the college Cotton Bowl football game is still played at the stadium. The Dallas Sidekicks, a former team of the Major Indoor Soccer League, used to play in Reunion Arena, as did the Mavericks and Stars before their move to the American Airlines Center.
The Texas Tornado, three-time defending champions of the North American Hockey League, plays at the Deja Blue Arena in Frisco.
Nearby Arlington, Texas is home to the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League. Since joining the league as an expansion team in 1960, the Cowboys have enjoyed substantial success, advancing to eight Super Bowls and winning five. Known widely as "America's Team," the Dallas Cowboys are financially the most valuable sports 'franchise' in the world, worth approximately 1.5 billion dollars. They are also the second most valuable sports organization in the world. The Cowboys are only out-valued by Manchester United, a soccer club from England, who are valued at 1.8 billion dollars. The Cowboys currently play at Texas Stadium and are relocating in 2009 to their new 100,000-seat stadium under construction in suburban Arlington.
Also in Arlington is Rangers Ballpark, home of the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball.
NASCAR and other auto racing leagues have a presence in the area as well. Races are held every year at Texas Motor Speedway north of Fort Worth, a major stop on the NASCAR circuit. About halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, horse-racing takes place at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie.
Other teams in the Dallas area include the Dallas Harlequins of the USA Rugby Super League, as well as the Frisco RoughRiders, the Fort Worth Cats, and the Grand Prairie AirHogs—all minor league baseball teams. The Dallas Diamonds, the two-time national champions of the Women's Professional Football League, plays in North Richland Hills. McKinney is home to the Dallas Revolution, an Independent Women's Football League team.
Cricket is another sport that is popular among diaspora from South Asian countries. Local universities such as SMU and University of Texas at Dallas have their own cricket clubs that are affiliated with USA Cricket.
Major league sports teams in the Dallas area:
Recreation
The City of Dallas maintains and operates 406 parks on of parkland. Its flagship park is the Fair Park, which hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936. The city is also home to Texas's first and largest zoo, the Dallas Zoo, which opened at its current location in 1888.
The city's parks contain 17 separate lakes, including White Rock and Bachman lakes, spanning a total of . In addition, Dallas is traversed by of biking and jogging trails, including the Katy Trail, and is home to 47 community and neighborhood recreation centers, 276 sports fields, 60 swimming pools, 232 playgrounds, 173 basketball courts, 112 volleyball courts, 126 play slabs, 258 neighborhood tennis courts, 258 picnic areas, six 18-hole golf courses, two driving ranges, and 477 athletic fields.
To the west of Dallas in Arlington is Six Flags Over Texas, the original franchise in the Six Flags theme park chain. Hurricane Harbor, a large water park owned by Six Flags, is also in Arlington.
Media
Dallas has numerous local newspapers, magazines, television stations and radio stations that serve the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex as a whole, which is the 5th-largest media market in the United States.
Dallas has one daily newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, which was founded in 1885 by A. H. Belo and is Belo Corporation's flagship newspaper. The Dallas Times Herald, started in 1888, was the Morning News major competitor until Belo purchased the paper on December 8, 1991 and closed the paper down the next day. Other daily newspapers are Al Día, a Spanish-language paper published by Belo, Quick, a free, summary-style version of the Morning News, the Jewish community's Texas Jewish Post, and a number of ethnic newspapers printed in languages such as Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
Other publications include the Dallas Observer and the North Texas Journal, both alternative weekly newspapers, D Magazine, a monthly magazine about business, life, and entertainment in the Metroplex, and TRAVELHOST Magazine, local visitor information available in hotel rooms. In addition, the Park Cities and suburbs such as Plano also have their own community newspapers. Also, THE magazine covers the contemporary arts scene.
In terms of the larger metro area, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is another significant daily newspaper, covering Fort Worth/Tarrant County and other suburban areas to the west and northwest of Dallas. It also publishes a major Spanish-language newspaper for the entire Metroplex known as La Estrella. To the north of Dallas and Fort Worth, the Denton Record-Chronicle covers the city of Denton and its adjacent county.
Area television stations affiliated with the major broadcasting networks include KDFW 4 (FOX), KXAS 5 (NBC), WFAA 8 (ABC) (owned by Belo), KTVT 11 (CBS), KERA 13 (PBS), KUVN 23 (UNI), KDFI 27 (MNTV), KDAF 33 (The CW) and KXTX 39 (TMD). KTXA-21 is an independent station formerly affiliated with the now-defunct UPN network.
Sixty-three (63) radio stations operate within range of Dallas. The City of Dallas operates WRR 101.1 FM, the area's main classical music station, from city offices in Fair Park. Its original sister station, licensed as WRR-AM in 1921, is the oldest commercially-operated radio station in Texas and the second-oldest in the United States, after KDKA (AM) in Pittsburgh. Because of the city's centrally-located geographical position and lack of nearby mountainous terrain, high-power class A medium-wave stations KRLD and WBAP can broadcast as far as southern Canada at night and can be used for emergency messages when broadcasting is down in other major metropolitan areas in the United States.
Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation (HBC), the largest company in the Spanish language radio station business, is based in Dallas. In 2003, HBC was acquired by Univision and became Univision Radio Inc., but the radio company remains headquartered in the city.
Religion
There is a large Protestant Christian influence in the Dallas community, as the city is deep within the Bible Belt. Methodist and Baptist churches are prominent in many neighborhoods and anchor two of the city's major private universities (Southern Methodist University and Dallas Baptist University). The Cathedral of Hope, a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Protestant church, is the largest congregation of its kind in the world. The city is also home to a sizable Mormon community, which led The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to build a major temple in the city in 1984.
The Catholic Church is also a significant organization in the Dallas area and operates the University of Dallas, a liberal-arts university in the Dallas suburb of Irving. The Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe in the Arts District oversees the second-largest Catholic church membership in the United States, with 70 parishes in the Dallas Diocese. The Society of Jesus, a prestigious group of Catholic priests renowned for their ability to educate young men, operate a school in Dallas, The Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and are very active in the Dallas community. Dallas is also home to three Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.
Further, a large Muslim community exists in the north and northeastern portions of Dallas, as well as in the northern Dallas suburbs. The oldest mosque in Texas is located in Denton, about north of Downtown Dallas.
Dallas and its surrounding suburbs also have one of the largest Jewish communities in the United States. Most of the city's Jewish residents reside in North Dallas, particularly within miles on either side of Hillcrest Road. Temple Emanu-El, the largest synagogue in the South/Southwest, was founded in 1873. The community is presently led by Rabbi David E. Stern. For more information, see the History of the Jews in Dallas, Texas.
Dallas also has a large Buddhist community. Immigrants from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka have all contributed to the Buddhist population, which is concentrated in the northern suburbs of Garland and Richardson. Numerous Buddhist temples dot the Metroplex, including , Lien Hoa Vietnamese Temple of Irving, and and of Arlington.
Events
The most notable event held in Dallas is the State Fair of Texas, which has been held annually at Fair Park since 1886. The fair is a massive event, bringing in an estimated $350 million to the city's economy annually. The Red River Shootout, which pits the University of Texas at Austin against The University of Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl also brings significant crowds to the city.
Other festivals in the area include several Cinco de Mayo celebrations hosted by the city's large Mexican population, an Saint Patrick's Day parade along Lower Greenville Avenue, Juneteenth festivities, the Greek Food Festival of Dallas, and an annual Halloween parade on Cedar Springs Road. With the opening of Victory Park, WFAA Channel 8 has begun to host an annual New Year's Eve celebration in AT&T Plaza that the television station hopes will reminisce of celebrations in New York's Times Square.
Economy
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 ? 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.
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 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. 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.
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, Kimberly-Clark, Fluor (engineering), and Commercial Metals. 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. 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. 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 , and the world's single-largest column-free exhibit hall.
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Law and government
The city uses a council-manager government, with Tom Leppert serving as Mayor, Mary Suhm serving as city manager, and 14 council members serving as representatives to the 14 council districts in the city. This organizational structure was recently contested by some in favor of a strong-mayor city charter, only to be rejected by Dallas voters.
In the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the city's total budget (the sum of operating and capital budgets) was $2,344,314,114. The city has seen a steady increase in its budget throughout its history due to sustained growth: the budget was $1,717,449,783 in 2002-2003, $1,912,845,956 in 2003-2004, $2,049,685,734 in 2004-2005, and $2,218,345,070 in 2005-2006.
National and state legislators representing Dallas:
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which exercises original jurisdiction over 100 counties in North and West Texas, convenes in the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in the Government District of Downtown. The same building additionally houses United States Bankruptcy and Magistrate Courts and a United States Attorney office. Dallas also is the seat of the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas.
Crime and enforcement
Policing in Dallas is provided predominantly by the Dallas Police Department, which has 2,977 officers. The Dallas chief of police is David Kunkle. The Police Headquarters are located in the Cedars neighborhood of South Dallas.
According to the FBI, a city to city comparison of crime rates is not meaningful, because recording practices vary from city to city, citizens report different percentages of crimes from one city to the next, and the actual number of people physically present in a city is unknown. With that in mind, Dallas's violent crime rate (12.06 per 1,000 people) is lower than that of St Louis (24.81), Detroit (24.22), Baltimore (16.96), Philadelphia (15.62), Cleveland (15.47), Miami (15.09), Washington (14.48), Kansas City (14.44) and Boston (13.39). However, Houston (11.69), Los Angeles (7.87), and New York City (6.38) have lower violent crime rates than Dallas.
Fire protection
Fire protection and emergency medical service in the city is provided by Dallas Fire-Rescue, which has 1,670 firefighters and 56 working fire stations in the city limits. All Dallas firefighters are cross-trained as paramedics through the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The Dallas Fire-Rescue chief is Eddie Burns, Sr. The department also operates the Dallas Firefighter's Museum at Dallas's oldest remaining fire station, built in 1907, along Parry Avenue near Fair Park. In addition, the department operates in mutual aid agreements with several surrounding municipalities.
In 1995, the Dallas Fire Department Training Academy (now the Chief Dodd Miller Training Academy) began to host firefighter recruits from other Metroplex municipalities in its 22-week basic firefighter training school, effectively becoming a regional training center. The Academy is reverently known as "The Drill Tower" by instructors and graduates, referring to the facility's most taxing structure/activity, a six story tower whose staircase is routinely climbed three times in rapid succession by recruits in full gear and high-rise hose packs.
Demographics
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).
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.
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.
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. The median price for a house was $128,200.
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.
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. 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.
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.
Education
There are 337 public schools, 89 private schools, 38 colleges, and 32 libraries in Dallas
Colleges and universities
Colleges and universities in the Dallas city limits
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School is a medical school located in the city's Stemmons Corridor. It is part of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, one of the largest grouping of medical facilities in the world. The school is very selective, admitting only around 200 students a year. The facility enrolls 3,255 postgraduates and is home to four Nobel Laureates—three in physiology/medicine and one in chemistry.
Dallas Baptist University (DBU) is a private, coeducational university located in the Mountain Creek area of southwest Dallas. Originally located in Decatur, Texas, the school moved to Dallas in 1965. The school currently enrolls over 5,100 students.
Paul Quinn College is a private, historically black college located in southeast Dallas. Originally located in Waco, Texas, it moved to Dallas in 1993 and is housed on the campus of the former Bishop College, another private, historically black college. Dallas billionaire and entrepreneur Comer Cottrell, Jr., founder of ProLine Corporation, bought the campus of Bishop College and bequeathed it to Paul Quinn College in 1993. The school enrolls about 3,000 undergraduate students.
The University of North Texas at Dallas, currently located at a temporary site in South Oak Cliff along Interstate 20, is being built at a nearby location along Houston School Road. The school will be the first public university within Dallas city limits when completed.
Dallas Theological Seminary, also within the city limits, is recognized as one of the leading seminaries in the evangelical faith. Situated east of Downtown Dallas, it currently enrolls over 2,000 graduate students and has graduated over 12,000 alumni.
At the 2-year level, the Dallas County Community College District has seven campuses located throughout the area with branches in Dallas as well as the surrounding suburbs.
Colleges and universities near Dallas
Dallas is a major center of education for much of the south central United States. In addition to those located in the city, the surrounding area also contains a number of universities, colleges, trade schools, and other educational institutions.
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a private, coeducational university in University Park, an independent city that, together with the adjacent town of Highland Park, is entirely surrounded by Dallas. SMU was founded in 1911 by the Southern Methodist Church and now enrolls 6,500 undergraduates, 1,200 professional students in the law and theology departments, and 3,500 postgraduates.
The University of Texas at Dallas, part of the state public university system, is located in the city of Richardson, adjacent to Dallas and in the heart of the Telecom Corridor. UT Dallas, or UTD, is renowned for its work in combining the arts and technology, as well as for its programs in engineering, computer science, economics, international political economy, neuroscience, speech and hearing, pre-health, pre-law and management. The university has many collaborative research relationships with UT Southwestern Medical Center. UT Dallas is home to approximately 15,000 students.
The University of Dallas, in the suburb of Irving, is an enclave of traditional Roman Catholicism in the mostly-Protestant religious landscape of Dallas. St. Albert the Great Dominican Priory and Holy Trinity Seminary are located on campus, while the Cistercian Monastery and Cistercian Preparatory School are located just to the southeast. The Highlands School, a PK–12 Legionary school, is connected to the east by jogging trails. As a center for religious study, the Cistercian Monastery continues to be notable in scholastic developments in theology.
Dallas Baptist University located in south-western Dallas County is a premiere school for Baptists worldwide. It supports a student body of about 5,000, while offering undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees. The school also maintains a rigorous Intensive English Program for international students wishing to enhance their knowledge of the English language. DBU has a full assortment of degrees to offer, some of the more popular include Biblical studies, business, and music degrees. The school has also become nationally recognized in the past few years for its baseball team which has made several playoff runs.
Also in the nearby suburbs and neighboring cities are the University of North Texas and Texas Woman's University in Denton, as well as the University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington. Fort Worth also has two major universities within its city limits, Texas Christian University and Texas Wesleyan University. A number of colleges and universities are also located outside the immediate metropolitan area.
Primary and secondary schools
Public schools
Most neighborhoods in the city of Dallas are located within the Dallas Independent School District, the 12th-largest school district in the United States. The school district operates independently of the city and enrolls over 161,000 students. In 2006, one of the district's magnet schools, The School for the Talented and Gifted in Oak Cliff, was named the best school in the United States (among public schools) by Newsweek, retaining the title in 2007. Another one of DISD's schools, the Science and Engineering Magnet, placed 8th in the same 2006 survey and moved up to the #2 spot the following year. Other DISD high schools named to the list were Hillcrest, W. T. White, and Woodrow Wilson high schools. Woodrow Wilson was also named the top comprehensive high school in Dallas by local publication D Magazine.
A few areas of Dallas also extend into other school districts, including Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Duncanville, Garland, Highland Park, Mesquite, Plano, and Richardson. The Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District once served portions of southern Dallas, but it was shut down for the 2005-2006 year. WHISD students started attending other Dallas ISD schools during that time. Following the close, the Texas Education Agency consolidated WHISD into Dallas ISD.
Many school districts in Dallas County, including Dallas ISD, are served by a governmental agency called Dallas County Schools. The system provides busing and other transportation services, access to a massive media library, technology services, strong ties to local organizations for education/community integration, and staff development programs.
Private schools
There are also many private schools in Dallas, most notably St. Mark's School of Texas, The Hockaday School, Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Episcopal School of Dallas, Parish Episcopal School, Bishop Dunne Catholic School, Bishop Lynch High School, Yavneh Academy of Dallas, The Winston School and First Baptist Academy of Dallas. Many Dallas residents also attend The Highlands School in adjacent Irving, as well as Greenhill School and Trinity Christian Academy in adjacent Addison.
Libraries
The city is served by the Dallas Public Library system. The system was originally created by the Dallas Federation of Women's Clubs with efforts spearheaded by then-president Mrs. Henry (May Dickson) Exall. Her work in raising money led to a grant from philanthropist and steel baron Andrew Carnegie, which enabled the construction of the first branch of the library system in 1901. Today, the library operates 25 branch locations throughout the city, including the 8-story J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in the Government District of Downtown.
The former Texas School Book Depository, where according to the Warren Commission Report, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed president John F. Kennedy in 1963, has served since the 1980s as a county government office building, except for its sixth and seventh floors, which house the "museum of the assassination," known officially as The Sixth Floor Museum.
Infrastructure
Health systems
Dallas has many hospitals and a number of medical research facilities within its city limits. One major research center is UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Stemmons Corridor, along with the affiliated UT Southwestern Medical School. The health care complex includes within its bounds Parkland Memorial Hospital, Children's Medical Center, St. Paul University Hospital, and the Zale Lipshy University Hospital.
Dallas also has a VA hospital in the southern portion of the city, the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The center is home to a Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy (CMOP), part of an initiative by the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide mail-order prescriptions to veterans using computerization at strategic locations throughout the United States.
Other hospitals in the city include Baylor University Medical Center in East Dallas, Methodist Dallas Medical Center in Oak Cliff, Methodist Charlton Medical Center near Duncanville, Medical City Dallas Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital in North Dallas, and the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Oak Lawn.
Transportation
Like many other major cities in the United States, the primary mode of local transportation in Dallas is the automobile, though efforts have been made to increase the availability of alternative modes of transportation, including the construction of light rail lines, biking and walking paths, wide sidewalks, a trolley system, and buses.
The city is at the confluence of four major interstate highways—Interstates 20, 30, 35E, and 45. The Dallas area freeway system is set up in the popular hub-and-spoke system, shaped much like a wagon wheel. Starting from the center of the city, a small freeway loop surrounds Downtown, followed by the Interstate 635 loop about outside Downtown, and ultimately the tolled President George Bush Turnpike. Inside these freeway loops are other boulevard- and parkway-style loops, including Loop 12 and Belt Line Road. Another beltway around the city upwards of from Downtown is under plan in Collin County.
Radiating out of Downtown Dallas's freeway loop are the spokes of the area's highway system—Interstates 30, 35E, and 45, U.S. Highway 75, U.S. Highway 175, State Spur 366, the Dallas North Tollway, State Highway 114, U.S. Highway 80, and U.S. Highway 67. Other major highways around the city include State Highway 183 and State Spur 408. The recently-completed interchange at the intersection of Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway (Interstate 635) and Central Expressway (U.S. Highway 75) contains 5 stacks and is aptly called the High Five Interchange. It is currently one of the few 5-level interchange in Dallas and is one of the largest freeway interchanges in the United States.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is the Dallas-area public transportation authority, providing buses, rail, and HOV lanes to commuters. DART began operating the first light rail system in the Southwest United States in 1996 and continues to expand its coverage. Currently, two light rail lines are in service, the and the . The travels through Oak Cliff, South Dallas, Downtown, Uptown, North Dallas, Richardson and Plano, while the goes through Oak Cliff, Downtown, Uptown, East Dallas, Lake Highlands, and Garland. The and lines are conjoined between 8th & Corinth Station in Oak Cliff and Mockingbird Station in North Dallas. The two lines service Cityplace Station, the only subway station in the Southwest. DART has also begun construction on its and lines, which will serve DFW Airport, Love Field Airport, Irving and Las Colinas, Carrollton, Farmers Branch, the Stemmons Corridor, Victory Park, downtown, Deep Ellum, Fair Park, south Dallas and Pleasant Grove.
Fort Worth's smaller public transit system, The T, connects with DART via a commuter rail line, the , linking Downtown Dallas's Union Station and Downtown Fort Worth's T&P Station, with several points in between. As is happening in other cities around the country with high-speed regional train service, DART's rail system has skyrocketed land values in parts of Dallas and has led to a flurry of residential and transit-oriented development. Amtrak's Texas Eagle also serves Union Station, providing long-distance train service to Chicago, San Antonio and Los Angeles.
Dallas is served by two commercial airports: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) and Dallas Love Field (DAL). In addition, Dallas Executive Airport (formerly Redbird Airport), serves as a general aviation airport for the city, and Addison Airport functions similarly just outside the city limits in the suburb of Addison. Two more general aviation airports are located about north of Dallas in McKinney, and another two are located in Fort Worth, on the west side of the Metroplex.
DFW International Airport is located in the suburbs slightly north of and equidistant to Downtown Fort Worth and Downtown Dallas. In terms of size, DFW is the largest airport in the state, the 2nd largest in the United States, and 3rd largest in the world; DFW International Airport is larger than the island of Manhattan. In terms of traffic, DFW is the busiest airport in the state, 3rd busiest in the United States, and 6th busiest in the world. The headquarters of American Airlines, the largest air carrier in the world, is located less than a mile from DFW within the city limits of Fort Worth. Similarly, Love Field is located within the city limits of Dallas about northwest of Downtown, and is headquarters to Southwest Airlines.
Utilities
Dallas is served by Dallas Water Utilities, which operates several waste treatment plants and pulls water from several area reservoirs. The city's electric system is maintained by several companies, including Cirro Energy and TXU, whose parent company, Energy Future Holdings Corporation, has headquarters in the city. The city offers garbage pickup and recycling service weekly through its Sanitation Services department. Telephone networks, broadband internet, and cable television service are available from several companies, including AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon FiOS.
Places of Interest
Sister Cities
Dallas has the following sister cities:
- Taipei, Republic of China
- Brno, Czech Republic
- Dijon, France
- Giza, Egypt
- Monterrey, Mexico
- Riga, Latvia
- Cardiff, United Kingdom
- Kirkuk, Iraq
- Saratov, Russia
- Frederikshavn, Denmark
- Sendai, Japan
- Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Tianjin City, People's Republic of China
- Hyderabad, India
- Kolkata, India
See also
- The John F. Kennedy assassination
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Dallas, the TV series
Further reading
External links
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