By DC Cueva
While I have not been to Texas (or any other place east of the Pacific time zone except for two trips to New York), I've had some sort of fascination with the Lone Star State. And when out of town'ers travel to Texas, there seems to be something grand about the state. Or course, there's that saying "Everything is bigger in Texas," and rightfully so. It's the largest state in terms of size amongst the 48 continental states in the this country, and is the 3rd largest state in terms of population.
Already the country's largest land-locked metropolitan area, last year Dallas/Fort Worth surpassed rival Texas city to the south, Houston, to become not just the largest population center in the South, but also the nation's largest combined statistical area (metropolitan areas with one or more cities of significance in population) outside of the Big Three, with a population total of over 6.7 million people, placing it 4th behind the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas. It is presently the nation's 5th largest TV market, having leap frogged San Francisco and Boston in the past few years into the Top 5. There are 13 counties classified in the DFW area, and 13 cities have at least 100,000 residents, the largest, of course, being Dallas at 1.2 million, followed by Fort Worth at nearly 758,000.
In the grand scheme of things, one of the world's largest airports is in the DFW area. The Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is the busiest airport in the country, and is also home base for both American and Southwest Airlines (based at nearby Dallas Love Field). There's a larger concentration of corporate headquarters than any other U.S. city with many other top Fortune 500 companies & 10,000+ companies large & small calling the Metroplex home, including Exxon/Mobil, AT&T, JCPenney, Texas Instruments, GameStop and the Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group. American Airlines is the area's largest employer at over 22,000, followed closely behind by Wal-Mart at 21,000.
In pop culture, there's the prime time soap Dallas, with Southfork Ranch a popular tourist stop. In the sports scheme of things, it's one of 12 U.S. cities with a team in all four major sports: the Rangers, the Stars, and the Mavericks, led by controversial owner Mark Cuban. And of course, there's the Cowboys, whose appeal as America's Team and the NFL franchise that's both the most-loved & hated is undeniable. Their new stadium is now the model sports stadium of the 21st century, and their broad reach helped put a positive stamp on the area in the years after what happened 50 years ago next month. You can ask someone who lived through that November day in 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
Now, comes the question, why do locals refer to the Dallas/Fort Worth as "the Metroplex" instead of North Texas? When you get down to it, the term is a compound word: a combination of Metro as in "metropolitan" or "metropolis", and -Plex as in "complex". And its definition: per Wikipedia, "a contiguous metropolitan area that has more than one principal anchor city of near equal importance."
The North Texas Commission adopted, and then copyrighted, the term "Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex" in 1972 to replace the term "North Texas", for which studies found that it lacked identifiability outside the state. In fact, nearly 2 out of 5 people in a survey group identified the two cities as part of North Texas, with the Panhandle also receiving a correct answer to those questions, being the northernmost part of the state.
It's because of the "near equal" term defined in Metroplex that sees cities like New York, LA, Chicago, Houston and others not be considered metroplexes, though secondary anchor cities are generally found there. Other big markets that might also consider themselves metroplexes include the San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose), Minneapolis-St. Paul (aka the Twin Cities), Tampa-St. Petersburg, Baltimore/Washington, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale.
So, that's DC Blog's primer of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, better known as the Metroplex. And if you happen to go and see the BTT ladies at Redneck Heaven, tell me hello on behalf of them, will ya?
Stay tuned here to DCB as we cover sports, entertainment and some other things too. If you're a Real World/Challenge fan, check out my full coverage of Rivals II, with a season wrap up coming up soon, followed by RW Back to San Francisco. For now, thanks for reading and until then, have fun.
- DC
@DC408dxtr
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Got something on your mind? Let us know! But please be mindful and do not post spam or negative comments (due to that, all comments are subject to blogger approval... and we reserve the right to disable these sections if things get way out of hand).