Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex

• 1. Introduction

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  The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex covers more ground than the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, and still has room to spare. Its population crossed 7.6 million at the 2020 census, placing it fourth among all metropolitan areas in the United States. By 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that number had climbed to 8,344,032 people. Yet the name most people use for this sprawling region wasn't born from a government committee or a planning document. It was coined by an advertising executive.

  What draws millions of people to this particular stretch of North Texas prairie? How did two rival cities, Dallas and Fort Worth, end up sharing a name and an airport code that became their joint identity? And how does a place this large hold together? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Word That Started It All

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  Harve Chapman, an executive vice president at the Dallas-based advertising agency Tracy-Locke, came up with the word that would define an entire region. His agency was one of three working with the North Texas Commission to find a way to market the area to the wider world. The problem they faced was real: surveys showed that only 38 percent of respondents could correctly identify Dallas and Fort Worth as part of "North Texas." Respondents just as often thought the Texas Panhandle was the northernmost region being described.

  Chapman blended "metropolis" and "complex" into "metroplex," and the North Texas Commission copyrighted the phrase "Southwest Metroplex" in 1972. The older label was quietly retired. Today the airport code DFW, for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, has become the region's other nickname, used by residents themselves to refer to their home.

• 3. Land, Prairie, and Shale

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  The U.S. Census Bureau measured the metroplex at 9,286 square miles of total area, of which 8,991 square miles is land and 295 square miles is water. The terrain varies sharply depending on which side of Interstate 35 you stand on. The eastern counties of Collin, Dallas, Ellis, Hunt, Kaufman, and Rockwall sit in the Texas blackland prairies, named for the fertile dark soil that defines them. Ranch land takes over to the west, in the Fort Worth Prairie, where the soil is thinner and rockier across Denton, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant, and Wise counties.

  Underneath much of that western ground lies the Barnett Shale, a large onshore natural gas field. Denton, Tarrant, and Wise counties are dotted with natural gas wells that tap it. South of the two central cities, a line of rugged hills runs north to south for about 15 miles, resembling the Texas Hill Country some 200 miles further south.

• 4. An Economy Built for Scale

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  As of 2022, Dallas-Fort Worth is home to 23 Fortune 500 companies, the fourth-largest concentration in the United States. Only New York City with 62, Chicago with 35, and Houston with 24 have more. The region's GDP reached just over $620.6 billion in 2020. By 2026, if the Metroplex were measured as a sovereign nation, it would rank 22nd in the world by economic output.

  The financial sector alone has grown large enough that Dallas-Fort Worth recently surpassed Chicago to become the second-largest financial services hub in the country, behind only New York. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity Investments all maintain significant operations here. AT&T, the second-largest telecommunications company in the world, is headquartered at the Whitacre Tower in downtown Dallas. American Airlines, which holds the title of the largest airline in the world, completed a $350 million corporate headquarters complex in Fort Worth. The airline is also the Metroplex's single largest employer.

  The technology sector has earned the area a second nickname: Silicon Prairie. Along US 75 through Richardson, Plano, and Allen, a stretch known as the Telecom Corridor houses Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Nokia, Cisco, Google, and dozens of other firms. McKesson, ranked ninth among Fortune 500 companies by revenue, is headquartered in Irving, as is Fluor, the largest engineering and construction firm in the Fortune 500. Toyota USA relocated its corporate headquarters to Plano in 2016.

• 5. Sports City

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  Major professional sports first arrived in 1952, when the Dallas Texans competed in the NFL for one season. They were followed in 1960 by the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL and a separate Dallas Texans franchise in the American Football League, a team that later relocated to Kansas City and became the Chiefs. Baseball arrived in 1972 when the Washington Senators moved to Arlington and became the Texas Rangers, named after the statewide law enforcement agency. Basketball followed in 1980 with the Dallas Mavericks, and hockey rounded out the four major sports in 1993 when the Minnesota North Stars relocated from Minneapolis to become the Dallas Stars.

  AT&T Stadium in Arlington is scheduled to host the most matches of any venue during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The Metroplex also hosts two annual PGA Tour events: the AT&T Byron Nelson and the Colonial National Invitation Tournament. Texas Motor Speedway hosts a NASCAR Cup Series race each year. The area is one of only 12 U.S. metropolitan areas with a team in each of the four major professional leagues.

• 6. A Changing Population

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  At the 1970 census, the metroplex held 2,974,805 people. By 2010 that figure had more than doubled to 6,371,773, and the 2020 count added more than a million beyond that. In 2016, the region posted the highest annual population growth of any metropolitan area in the United States.

  The 2020 census found the racial composition to be 42 percent non-Hispanic white, 29 percent Hispanic or Latino, 16 percent Black or African American, and 8 percent Asian. From 2010 to 2017, the Hispanic and Latino population grew by an estimated 38.9 percent. In 2015 alone, an estimated 101,588 foreign-born residents moved to the Metroplex, drawn from Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. During the 2020 American Community Survey, 18.5 percent of the population was found to be foreign-born.

  The region's religious profile is the largest Christian metropolitan statistical area in the United States, with 78 percent of the religious population identifying as Christian. Methodist and Baptist communities anchor two of the area's major private universities: Southern Methodist University and Dallas Baptist University. UT Southwestern Medical Center, located in Dallas, is home to six Nobel Laureates and was ranked first in the world among healthcare institutions in biomedical sciences.

• 7. Getting Around

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  Dallas Fort Worth International Airport sits between the two cities and covers 17,207 acres, making it the second-largest airport in the country and the sixth-largest in the world. It ranks as the third-busiest airport globally by aircraft movements and seventh-busiest by passenger traffic, handling 62.9 million passengers in the 2014 fiscal year. Dallas Love Field, in northwest Dallas, serves as the home base for Southwest Airlines.

  On the ground, the Metroplex has the second-largest number of freeway miles per capita in the nation, trailing only the Kansas City Metro Area. Interstate 35 is one of only two U.S. interstates that splits into branches and then rejoins as one road: I-35E runs through Dallas while I-35W passes through Fort Worth, the two branches diverging at Denton and meeting again at Hillsboro. The DART light rail network runs for 93 miles across the region. The Green Line, which opened in December 2010, covers 28 miles connecting Carrollton in the northwest to Pleasant Grove in the southeast. The Trinity Railway Express connects downtown Fort Worth to downtown Dallas, where passengers can transfer directly to the DART system, and a free airport shuttle connects the midpoint station at Centerpoint to DFW Airport.