Dallas

As we indicated in the last article, solo automobile commuting reached an all time record in the United States in 2010, increasing by 7.8 million commuters. At the same time, huge losses were sustained by carpooling, while the largest gain was in working at home, which includes telecommuting. Transit and bicycling also added commuters.  This continues many of the basic trends toward more personalized employment access that we have seen since 1960.  read more »

Republican primary front-runners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are each basing a large part of their campaigns on their economic track records. So who is better when it comes to jobs and the economy — Romney or Perry?

Let’s put each of their states under the microscope to see what the data says. In this exercise we will use Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market analysis tool, to help us see the ins and outs of the Massachusetts and Texas economies.  read more »

Black population changes in various cities have been one of the few pieces of the latest Census to receive significant media coverage.  The New York Times, for example, noted that many blacks have returned to the South nationally and particularly from New York City.  The overall narrative has been one of a “reverse Great Migration.”  But while many northern cities did see anemic growth or even losses in black population, and many southern cities saw their black population surge, the real story actually extends well beyond the notion of a monolithic return to the South.  read more »

What cities are best positioned to grow and prosper in the coming decade?

To determine the next boom towns in the U.S., with the help of Mark Schill at the Praxis Strategy Group, we took the 52 largest metro areas in the country (those with populations exceeding 1 million) and ranked them based on various data indicating past, present and future vitality.  read more »

In the sixties and seventies, Dallas’s prime tourist attraction was an assassination site. The town seriously needed a new image. It got one in a soap opera that revealed a city besieged by blonds, big  hair and big homes. “Dallas,” which premiered in 1978, did for Big D what “Sex in the City” and “Seinfeld” did for New York: it painted a portrait of the city for the world.  read more »

Often best places lists reflect as much on what’s being measured, and who is being measured as on the inherent advantages of any locale.  Some cities that have grown rapidly in jobs, for example, often do not do as well if the indicator has more to do with perceived “quality” of employment.  read more »

Much has been made of the vaunted “back to the city” movement by “the young and restless,” young professionals, the creative class, empty nesters and others were voting with their feet in favor of cities over suburbs.  Although there were bright spots, the Census 2010 results show that the trend was very overblown, affecting mostly downtown and near downtown areas, while outlying ones bled population.  One culprit for this discrepancy seems to be that the intra-census estimates supplied by the Census Bureau were inflated – in some cases very inflated.  read more »

The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area (Note 1), which corresponds to the Dallas-Fort Worth urban area, provides a casebook example of expanding urbanization. Dallas-Fort Worth has been one of the fastest growing major metropolitan areas in the nation for decades. Dallas-Fort Worth was among only three US metropolitan areas adding more than 1,000,000 residents between 2000 and 2010. Only Houston's addition of 1,230,000 exceeded that of Dallas-Fort Worth, which grew by 1,210,000, a 23.4 percent growth rate.  read more »

With the release of results for over 20 states, the 2010 Census has provided some strong indicators as to the real evolution of the country’s demography. In short, they reveal that Americans are continuing to disperse, becoming more ethnically diverse and leaning toward to what might be called “opportunity” regions.

Below is a summary of the most significant findings to date, followed by an assessment of what this all might mean for the coming decade.

Point One: America is becoming more suburban.  read more »

If you want to get a glimpse of the future of the U.S., check out Fort Worth, TX. Never mind the cowboy boots, but you might want to practice your Spanish.

Texas is growing explosively and much of that growth is among Latinos.   The latest Census Bureau figures show the Lone Star State grew by 20%, to over 25 million people, recording about a quarter of the nation’s overall growth.  read more »