Thursday, April 10, 2008


The City of Dallas (pronounced [ˈdæl.əs] or [ˈdæl.ʊs]) is the second-largest (according to 2000 census) city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest city in the United States. The city covers 385 square miles (997 km²) and is the county seat of Dallas County.

History
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 385 square miles (997.1 km²)—342.5 square miles (887.1 km²) of it is land and 42.5 square miles (110.1 km²) of it (11.03%) is water. Dallas makes up one-fifth of the much larger urbanized area known as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex—about a quarter of all Texans live in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington metropolitan area.

Geography

Main article: Geology of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex Topography

Main article: Climate of Dallas, TexasDallas Climate

Cityscape
Dallas's skyline contains several buildings over 700 feet (210 m) in height and the city is considered the fifteenth-tallest city on earth while Houston, its intra-state rival is ranked 7th in the world.
Tallest structures in Dallas
See also: List of tallest buildings and structures in Dallas

Bank of America Plaza 921 feet (281 m)
Renaissance Tower 886 feet (270 m)
Comerica Bank Tower 787 feet (240 m)
JPMorgan Chase Tower 738 feet (225 m)
Fountain Place 720 feet (219 m)
Bank of America Plaza 921 feet (281 m)
Comerica Bank Tower 787 feet (240 m)
JPMorgan Chase Tower 738 feet (225 m)
Fountain Place 720 feet (219 m)
Renaissance Tower 710 feet (216 m) Architecture
The City of Dallas has many communities and neighborhoods. Major areas in the city include:
Central Dallas is anchored by Downtown, the center of the city and the epicenter of urban revival, coupled with Oak Lawn and Uptown Dallas, new urbanist areas anchored by dense retail, restaurants, and nightlife. Downtown Dallas has a variety of neighborhoods, 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, the Reunion District and Victory Park. North of downtown is Oak Lawn, a densely-populated area that contains parks along Turtle Creek and the popular Uptown area with LoMac, Cityplace and the West Village.
The east side of Dallas contains the community of east Dallas, home to Deep Ellum, a trendy arts area close to downtown, homey Lakewood, the historic Vickery Place, Bryan Place, and historically and architecturally significant homes on Swiss Avenue. Above the Park Cities is north Dallas, home to mansions as palatial as Versailles in Preston Hollow, strong middle and upper-class communities north into Bent Tree and Far North Dallas, and high-powered shopping at Galleria Dallas, NorthPark Center, and Preston Center. East of north Dallas and north of east Dallas is Lake Highlands, one of the most unified middle-class areas in the city, with the strongest definition—it is in the northeastern part of the city above White Rock Lake and east Dallas. Further east, above (north and east of) the Trinity River, is Pleasant Grove—once an independent city, it is a predominantly black collection of neighborhoods stretching to Seagoville to the southeast.
The city is further surrounded by many suburbs and encloses the following enclaves: Cockrell Hill, Highland Park, and University Park.

See also: List of neighborhoods in Dallas, Texas

Neighborhoods

Main article: Culture of Dallas, Texas Culture
Present-day Dallas as a singular entity can be seen as fairly moderate, exceptionally so relative to its position in what is seen as an extremely conservative area (The nearby suburb of Plano was ranked as the 5th most conservative city in America by The Bay Area Center for Voting Research). In 2004, only 25% of votes cast in the City of Dallas were cast for conservative candidates, while they narrowly won Dallas County as a whole.
In 2006, Republican Tom Leppert defeated Ed Oakley by a margin of 58% to 42% to become the Mayor of Dallas, though the city's elections are non-partisan.

Politics
Dallas is renowned for barbecue, authentic Mexican, and Tex-Mex cuisine. Famous products of the Dallas culinary scene include the frozen margarita and the restaurants La Calle Doce, Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse, Enchilada's, Mi Cocina, Bone Daddy's Barbecue, and The Mansion on Turtle Creek.

Cuisine
The Arts District in 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, The Dallas Children's Theatre. Venues under construction or planned include the Winspear Opera House and the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.

Arts
See also: U.S. cities with teams from four major 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.

Sports
The City of Dallas maintains and operates 406 parks on 21,000 acres (85 km²) of parkland. Its flagship park is the 260 acre (1.05 km²) Fair Park which was originally developed to host the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936. The city is also home to Texas's first and largest zoo at 95 acres (0.38 km²) — the Dallas Zoo, which opened in 1888.
To the west of Dallas in Arlington is Six Flags Over Texas. Hurricane Harbor, a large water park, is also in Arlington.

Recreation
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.
See also: Newspapers of Dallas, Texas, List of radio stations in Texas, List of television stations in Texas#Dallas/Fort Worth, and List of movies set in Dallas, Texas

Media
There is a large Protestant Christian influence in the Dallas community as the city is deep within the Bible BeltMethodist and Baptist churches are prominent in many neighborhoods and anchor the city's two major private universities. The Cathedral of Hope, an LGBT Protestant church, is the largest congregation of its kind in the world. as well as in Irving and other suburbs.

Religion
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 for the state of Texas and brings an estimated US$350 million to the city's economy annually. The Red River Shootout (UT-OU) game at the Cotton Bowl and other Cotton Bowl games also bring significant crowds to the city.
Other festivals in the area include Cinco de Mayo festivities hosted by the city's large Mexican population, Saint Patrick's Day parades in Irish communities especially along east Dallas's Lower Greenville Avenue, Juneteenth festivities, the Greek Food Festival of Dallas, and an annual Halloween parade on Cedar Springs Road.

Events
In its beginnings, Dallas relied on farming, neighboring Fort Worth's cattle market, and its prime location on trade routes with Indians to sustain itself. Dallas's real key to growth came in 1873 though with the building of multiple rail lines through the city. As Dallas grew and technology developed, cotton became its boon—by 1900 Dallas was the largest inland cotton market on Earth and led the world 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 ⅓ of the nation's cotton crop, and 31% of Texas cotton was produced within a 100 mile (161 km) radius of Dallas. In the 1930s, oil was discovered east of Dallas near Kilgore, Texas, and Dallas's proximity to the discovery put it at the center of the nation's oil market. Oil 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 as it was roughly the geographic center of all 5 regions. When combined with the 8 billionaires who live in Dallas's neighboring city of Fort Worth, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is one of the greatest concentrations of billionaires in the world.
See also: List of companies in Dallas, Texas
See also: List of foreign consulates in Dallas
See also: List of shopping malls in Dallas, Texas

Economy

Main article: Law and government of Dallas, Texas Law and government
Policing in Dallas is provided predominantly by the Dallas Police Department, which has 2,977 officers. The central police station is located in the Cedars, a south Dallas neighborhood near downtown.
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. [9] Also, most of the violent crime in a city is concentrated in a few bad neighborhoods. With that in mind, however, Dallas's violent crime rate (12.06) is lower than such major cities as St Louis (24.81 per thousand), Detroit (24.22), Baltimore (16.96), Philadelphia (15.62), Atlanta (15.54), Cleveland (15.47), Miami (15.09), Washington DC (14.48), Kansas City (14.44) and Boston (13.39). Dallas's violent crime rate trails such cities as Houston (11.69), Los Angeles (7.87) and New York City (6.38). [10]

Fire protection

Main article: Demographics of Dallas, Texas Demographics

Main article: Education in Dallas, Texas Education
Further information: List of colleges and universities in Dallas, Texas
Dallas is a major center of education for much of the South Central United States. The city itself contains several universities, colleges, trade schools, and educational institutes. Several major Universities also lie in enclaves, satellite cities, and suburbs of Dallas.
The University of Texas at Dallas, part of the public UT system, is located in the city of Richardson, adjacent to Dallas in an area known as the Telecom Corridor. UT Dallas, or UTD as longtime residents refer to it, 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. UT Dallas has many collaborative research relationships with UT Southwestern (see below). UT Dallas is home to approximately 15,000 students.
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a private, coeducational university in University Park, an enclave of Dallas. It 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 Dallas in the adjacent suburb of Irving, Texas is an enclave of traditional Roman Catholicism in the Protestant landscape of Dallas. St. Albert the Great Dominican Priory and Holy Trinity Seminary are located on campus. The Cistercian Monastary and Cistercian Preparatory School are located just to the southeast, and The Highlands School, a PK-12 Legionary school, is connected to the east by jogging trails. The Cistercian Monastery continues to be notable in scholastic developments in theology.
Also in the nearby suburbs and neighboring cities are the University of North Texas in Denton and the University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington.

Dallas Colleges and universities

Primary and secondary schools
The city of Dallas is mostly within the Dallas Independent School District, the twelfth-largest school district in the United States.

Public schools
There are also private schools in Dallas, most notably St. Mark's School of Texas, Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Episcopal School of Dallas, Bishop Dunne Catholic School, Bishop Lynch High School, First Baptist Academy, and The Hockaday School . Many Dallas residents also attend Cistercian Preparatory School and The Highlands School in adjacent Irving and Greenhill School in adjacent Addison. Ursuline Academy of Dallas, founded by a group of Ursuline nuns in 1874, is credited with being the oldest school in the city.

Private schools
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 raising money led to a grant from philanthropist and steel baron Andrew Carnegie, which enabled the construction of the first branch in 1901.


Libraries

Infrastructure
The city of Dallas has many hospitals within its bounds and a number of medical research facilities. One major research center is UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Stemmons Corridor, along with its affiliate medical school, UT Southwestern Medical School. The system includes Parkland Memorial Hospital and Children's Medical Center Dallas.
The city also has a VA hospital in south Dallas, the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Dallas is the home of 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 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.

Health systems

Main article: Transportation in Dallas, Texas Utilities

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