nucklehead

You should be banned for posting facts to nucklehead.

I really don't know how to respond to this post so I'll just take this time to discuss a matter I've been pondering lately.

Do you realize that a port is being built south of Dallas to help serve the Port of Houston? A container port built there a few years ago is doing far better than anyone ever could have imagined largely because of the events that effected the transportation infrastructure along the Gulf coast a few years ago. As you can make the argument that Houston is far safer than Galveston as a viable seaport because of its distance from the Gulf, you can also make a similar argument that the southern area of Dallas is more secure than Houston. As some of the business Houston received from New Orlean's misfortune will permanently remain in Houston, a lot of the business that one would have normally expected to be placed along the Gulf coast will now be repositioned in a more secure area of South Dallas.

As the port of Houston certainly benefits today from the practical destruction of the city of New Orleans, an argument can also be made that the area of south Dallas will likewise benefit because of the accumulative effects that both the Katrina and Rita hurricanes had on the overall transportation infrastructures of highways and railroads along the coasts of southeast Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. And figure that because of global warming in the future more powerful hurricanes will be spawned in the Gulf as water levels around the world continue to rise. All these factors make the port in South Dallas a smart decision.

As the city of Galveston was once the second best place to live in the United States with its second wealthiest citizenry per capitol, the city of Houston now serves in a similar fashion 50 miles further inland today. Still, Houston could easily suffer the same fate that Galveston never fully recovered from and as New Orleans most certainly will never recover from likewise. Do you realize that Houston is 50 miles closer to the coast than New Orleans is? Do you realize how massive the destruction would be if a hurricane hit Houston as it did New Orleans? Granted, Houston does have a higher elevation. Still, the destruction would be far more extinsive in the city of Houston if the eye of a Katrina-like hurricane travelled up Galveston Bay.

In conclusion, as the port of Houston benefits as the seaport of the DFW area, it also serves as its seaport.

But that's the difference between Houston and Dallas. In Houston, when vacancies grew and rental rates flopped, we stopped spec building. Downtown Dallas has a glut of office space. City-wide vacancy rates in the Big D are generally over 20% and have been for years. Now is NOT the time to be throwing up a bunch of spec office towers. All of the shiny new towers in Uptown Dallas are going to certainly push the dismal downtown office market down further.

Here are the facts according to Delta Associates for mid-year 2007 office markets.

Net Absorption of office space in 2nd quarter 2007

1,200,000 square feet in Houston

928,000 square feet in DFW

% of standing inventory available as sublease space

0.8% Houston

1.0% DFW

Overall Vacancy rate

11.3% Houston (under 10% in downtown Houston)

17.4% DFW (over 20% in downtown Dallas)

Under construction

5,000,000 square feet in Houston

6,900,000 square feet in DFW

Under construction not pre-leased

3,800,000 square feet in Houston

3,864,000 square feet in DFW

Class A lease rates

$23.44 in Houston

$21.82 in DFW

Growth in lease rates in 2007

15.9% in Houston

2.2% in DFW

The fact that DFW is building more office space at the moment despite lower lease rates and MUCH higher vacancy rates is irresponsible. These are not signs of a healthy market...

I agree. So either all these speculators are fools or they know the market of the area more intimately than outsiders. Look. Houston has no place like Uptown right now first of all. Uptown has reached such a critical mass right now that even an empty office building is a great investment there. A lot of developments in that area have been announced to start to match the expected opening date of the next phase of the Art's District. As that expected date becomes even more apparent to developers, expect lots more developments to begin. As I keep stating, the next phase of the light rail line and the phases of the Trinity River Project will be opening up during that time also to further enhance development.

The Real Estate in Dallas doesn't recover all at once. As there are some districts that never seem to suffer through a recession, like the little urban area of Preston Center, other districts never seem to recover during a recovery, like downtown. Developers realize that a recovery is under way in the area because statistics start improving outwardly from the successful districts towards the less successful districts. Areas like Las Colinas and North Dallas seem to recover over night when things turn around. Apparently developers think that is about to happen in Dallas.

As I have already mentioned, didn't new development in Houston skip out of town from the area of Uptown to the new area of Westchase after the city recovered from its severe oil depression? While downtown Dallas never seemed to fully recover after the 80 collapse, that similar area in Houston was not its downtown but the Uptown area.

Another bothersome aspect about the office market in Houston is how the oil companies never seemed to go through a belt tightening like other industries in the rest of the nation went through. In other words, even though the office vacancy is so low in Houston, things can change really fast. Take the Enron scandel for example. Boom! All of the sudden you have a whole industry either going bankrupt or fleeing from the city and you have millions of square feet of empty office space.

So cities like Dallas, Atlanta, New York City and Chicago don't play by the same rules as other cities. You have to blur your eyes when looking at the vacancy of their office market.

And don't forget, a lot more growth is expected in the next 20 years in DFW than in the Houston metro. According to the figures I've seen, the DFW population now stands at over 6.3 million people surpassing Philadelphia as the 4th largest area in the nation. Houston's metropolitan population is some 600, 000 behind at about 5.7 million. Because DFW has a lot more available land to expand, this figure is expected to grow by a few million in the next couple of decades. So you have to take this growth into account.

Uh, the biggest explosion of growth in Midtown has been the far Northwest corner right in the shadows of the Pierce Elevated (I-45).

2222 Smith, Post Midtown Square, The Rise, The Edge, Camden's new 4th Ward Apts, hundreds of metal condos, a new Spec's Superstore, etc...with 3 more larger scale developments in the immediate pipeline.

Yes. I had already mentioned that the fastest growth is spilling over from the Montrose area that is not inhibited by an elevated roadway. Look. Go ahead and live in denial. If Houston chooses to ignore the fact that elevated roadways slow down its development, then it is its loss. I bet when Uptown really explodes in the next few years it will wake Houston up just as the success of Dallas Light Rail helped Houston build its single light rail line.

I would agree DFW has a more diverse economy, but that actually makes them *less* volatile, and it doesn't necessarily mean they grow faster. It's like owning the S&P500 index instead of a few hot stocks. Energy will definitely be the driver in Houston, although the port, med center, and NASA help balance it out. As long as energy is hotter than the broad economy (and it definitely is right now, and seems like it will be for the foreseeable future), Houston will be hotter than Dallas.

If you look at the top tier US cities, many were built on one or two major industry clusters that drove them to that level: finance and NYC, tech and SF/SV, entertainment and LA, govt and DC, universities and Boston, autos and Detroit (which is falling hard now), mfg/trade and Chicago. Relatively fewer cities reach that level that are broadly diversified, like Dallas and Atlanta. Why would that be the case? Generally, as cities grow, the problems of growth get more and more overwhelming, like traffic, schools, infrastructure, taxes, and expensive housing. In cluster cities, employees and companies put up with it because they "have to be" where the action is in their industry. But if that cluster reason doesn't exist that "forces" them to be there (i.e. outweighs the problems), then growth will level off or potentially even reverse. Almost no companies "have" to be in Dallas or Atlanta. Those cities will continue to grow only as long as they are attractive places - their benefits (esp. the airports and affordable housing) outweigh their problems. I think the Metroplex is definitely still very attractive and doing well and will do so for a long time to come. I believe Atlanta is just starting to falter slightly (mainly from inadequate road infrastructure), and starting to lose growth to places like Charlotte in North Carolina.

Mainly because of the Lockheed plant in Fort Worth, more aircraft has been built in the DFW area over the years than any other place on earth. There is still a healthy aerospace industry present in the area with a good backlog of work. It has the healthiest airline industry amongst the big three which include Chicago and Atlanta. Finance has returned to the area big with Comerica relocating. Insurance is still based there. Retail stores such as Seven Eleven, Radio Shack, Blockbuster, Neiman Marcus, JC Pennys, Gamestop etc., lots of restarant chains got their start in the area, fashion. Don't forget that there are still oil and gas companies in the area. Fort Worth has become the headquarters site for the largest gas field in the continental United States. There are significant manufacturing. It just goes on and on. Lots of large private corporations and affiliated public corporations. Lots of billionaires and millionaires.

All this is the end product of a healthy diverse economy.

I don't agree with you about Atlanta either. Both the Atlanta metropolitan area and its economy is close to surpassing Houston's in size.

Downtown Dallas didn't empty out due to the dot.com or tech bubble bust. It emptied out because major employers kept moving to Irving (Las Colinas), Plano, and Richardson.

Downtown Dallas has been one of the worst office markets for quite awhile now. Building shiny new towers across the freeway certainly wont help fill the older towers in downtown proper! Several downtown employers have already announced their intentions to move to Uptown. That's BAD for downtown no matter how hard Big D Cheerleaders try to chant the opposite.

Figure in the future that the DFW area will attract at least 1 to 2 large corporations a year to relocate to the area. On top of this is the expected increase in employment back to the numbers of 120,000 to 150,000 jobs a year. How does one supply office space for such growth? It has always been difficult to do in the DFW area. They had years when the market was gobbling up 8 to 10 million square feet a year and then the bubble burst with it emptying back out.

Houston seemed to have just the opposite situation happen than Dallas. Uptown is the area that went stale after the 80's bust. There have been lots of development for sure, but nothing like it was back in the early 80s. Remember the blue 30 story building that sat empty for all those years in the Greenway Plaza development? How much more office space have they built in that area since then? How much in the Uptown area as a whole? How many years old is that William's tower now?

I think downtown Dallas will be doing fabulous during the next 5 years after the next phase of the Art's District opens, the next phase of the Light Rail opens and as phases of the Trinity River Project get completed.

Fort Worth is America's 18th largest city, yet most people think it's still in the 30's. That, or they don't think this city exists at all.....

Now I know alot of that is Fort Worth's own fault. Our city hasn't done much to become as well know as the other cities in Texas. We haven't tried that hard to attract big time companies, which my guess would be why we don't have a big time skyline. The only thing we're famous for is COPS and I'm pretty sure most of the city isn't too proud of that, and hey, that's our fault......

I can understand why you might not think Fort Worth is a big, progressive city (which it IS), but what's up with all the disrespect? And this is mostly coming from our neighbors to the east....

Look, Dallas and Houston may have it all, but that doesn't give ya the right to talk down on anybody. Every town has it's high points and low points, but no one can talk bad about a city. Give Ft. Worth the respect it deserves.

BTW, could you just concider the following....

• NO, Fort Worth is not a Dallas suburb
  
• The Texas Motor Speedway is actually in Justin, but concidered to be Ft. Worth. NOT Dallas.
  
• Ft. Worth is bigger than, Atlanta, Miami, Las Vegas, Memphis, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, St. Louis.....it goes on.... The point is, Ft. Worth isn't a small city. It's just not as well known.
  
• Dallas doesn't own Fort Worth or every other town in North Texas. So stop saying DFW when you mean Dallas. PLEASE!
  
• Ft. Worth isn't infested with backwoods, George Bush worshiping rednecks. We have those people, but they dont make up the whole city. And we're not the only city with rednecks, either.
  
• Some of the people here do have an inferiority complex... ok. I can't really explain that one, but I guess you would to if your city was constanly being called something else.
  
• Finally, I hear from some Dallasites that Dallas is the most disrespected city in America. Well Dallas, at least people think your the only city in the "Dallas Metroplex". And you've got sports teams...and a beautiful skyline...and world wide fame from two t.v. shows... AND you've got a new mayor, so stop complaining.
  

If there are any replies, please don't turn this into another Dallas vs. Houston thing. I'm in a school 30 miles away from Houston, where most of the students are either from Houston or Dallas, so I get enough of that down here.

The Dallas Fort Worth area has been discribed as a multi-polar regional metropolis (Check out the definition of the area in 'Skyscrapers.com'). As there is no argument that downtown Houston is the polar center of the Houston Metropolitan area, the argument as to what is the polar center for the DFW area is very competitive. Is it downtown Dallas? Is it North Dallas? Is it the DFW Airport / Las Colinas area? Will it one day become the fast growing area of north Fort Worth? The fact that Arlington will become even more of an entertainment center when the Cowboy stadium is completed and that downtown Fort Worth area is as impressive as it is, is positive for the whole metropolitan area.

In comparison, there really isn't an area in Houston that challenges its massive urban area. This area includes its downtown, uptown and its medical center and all areas in between. All of these areas are in close proximity to the other when compared to the large polar centers in DFW. Its growing uptown area where the Galleria is located at one time seemed positioned to challenged downtown, but it really hasn't done much since the city suffered the economic collapse of the 80s.

I do agree with you that Fort Worth is impressive. While parking at a shopping mall in west Fort Worth with my sons, we watched 2 F-16s take off from the Military Airport next door. We then visited the huge Lockheed factory based at the airport where they build them. Does the area of Fort Worth have a university? Yes. Does it have airports? Yes. Does it have its own medical centers? Yes. If you live in Fort Worth you certainly don't have to go to the Dallas zoo. Most think the Fort Worth zoo is better, in fact. You certainly don't have to go to the Art's District in Dallas either.

Although Fort Worth is indeed impressive in its own right, you still have to admit that downtown Dallas is developing an advantage with its light rail system in the competition to be recognized as the primary polar center for the metropolitan area.

So it really isn't that Fort Worth doesn't get recognized. The problem is that it gets recognized as just one of many polar core areas in the Metroplex. This creates competition in the area and works to the advantage to the whole area in the long run.

Hmmm. Note the top and bottom lines on this graph. Also note the diverging slopes of the two lines...

http://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2007/swe0702g.cfm

It is interesting that both the high tech areas of the Dallas Metro and the Austin one almost match each other. Houston is oil. If you think of Houston like a vehicle, it is just gone up in value the last 5 years. Still, I think Dallas has both the superior position, which is volatile, and diverse foundation.

If we want to get technical, agriculture has been building wealth and has been the foundation of empires for thousands of years, and it will continue to do so long after the last drop of oil is gone. So, in a way, nucklehead has a point, though I am not sure what it has to do with the Houston vs. DFW economies. As for the GDP numbers, they are statistics, so they are most likely wrong; I wouldn't take them too seriously.

Okay. The DFW area does better than Houston in the long run because it is more volatile. This is my argument. Dallas does not have the assurances of a seaport, Nasa and the world's largest Medical Center. DFW is out there in the middle of nowhere without such guarantees. But it is no different than Atlanta which is just as volatile for the same reason. When Dallas loses an industry, it invents new industries to replace them. Like Chicago, Dallas isn't number one in anything; but, it is number 2 or 3 in almost everything that has to do with it being the cultural, distribution and financial (once again) center of the southwest.

Houston actually lost about 50,000 during two years, and gained all of that, and more the very next year (55,000). The year after that, Houston gained 80,000 more residents. Oh, and don't expect Houston to lose anymore population like that ever again (Houston will never lose population anyway). The reason is because Houston's economy is not 80%+ tied to energy anymore. The number is now down at 46%.

About Haliburton...no. They decided to move their HQ from Dallas to the oil/energy capitol of the world...Houston. They then decided to open up a Middle East HQ (kind of like a regional office).

And Houston's reputation (with having all of these oil companies which make up less than half of its economy now) sure isn't hurting it (except for getting more rail). People are still moving here in droves.

Maybe it was the totality of people that Houston lost before it started growing again? I know that the city lost a total of over 100,000 before. This was something new for Houston. Dallas had lost population before but never Houston.

I can remember back when the suburb of Plano was adding more new citizens than the whole massive city of Houston combined. I can also remember the billions its local economy lost because of the Enron / energy wholesaler collapse. Although Houston has had some companies relocate to its area since then, you really have to be curious as to whether even that amount of new companies were was enough to replaced the hundreds of billions lost during that scandal?

Regarding this post about an underground downtown Dallas line... I do not think it is true (I may have missed something, if so, please let me know),

but I think you may be confused with the underground direct connection to Love Field.

DART abandoned this plan knowing that the Feds would not approve its cost effectiveness.

The City of Dallas is considering its own plans for a separate direct terminal connection to DART rail.

The ultimate plan is to give the new line expansion

its own subway in the future so that would make the existing line through downtown less constrictive. But yes, they are now going to have to wait to sell the idea after this present expansion is completed. But this next espansion should be successful enough to ultimately sell the idea to citizens.

Houston did not build its rail line. The fabulous success of DART's light rail system built it. Next Houston is going to be sinking its elevated roadways around Midtown after they witness the incredible success of Uptown. I guess Houston has become the follower in its relationship with Dallas.

When considering the office market of DFW, one has to ingore the outside opinions of it especially if they happen to be made by New York City investers. They generally don't understand the volatility of such a market where millions of square feet office space empties out quickly during recessions and likewise fills up quickly during economic expansions. Consider that office buildings have been built in downtown Dallas while it has this large vacancy rate.

One should not be overly concerned with high vacancy rates in volatile markets like DFW, Atlanta and Chicago. Now a high vacancy rate in a city like Houston might last for a century. Fortunately for that city, it has huge oil companies who require large blocks of space when they expand.

When the expanding employment in DFW gets back to the levels it was when the area was adding 125,000 to 150,000 employees a year, then that office space will quickly dwindle. Then it will be absorbing 5 to 8 million square feet a year like it was in the late 90s / early 2000s. While downtown Dallas office space remained empty after the 80 recession partly because a prejudice that made suburban offices preferred, now it remains slow because of the popularity of the Uptown / Art's District area. But it is just one big area. Why people seperate the whole core area into 2 parts is a mystery.

I agree with you red for the most part but I think that the only way this would hurt downtown was if it was 50% vacant and up.Because........ if dallas only had 100 buildings downtown and let's say our vacancy rate was 30% that would mean 30 of the 100 would be empty.And what your saying is this would then cause an increase of crime (which it's possible) Undesireable to tourist, no business travelers would enjoy downtown.....That is untrue...because if just 30 empty buildings could cause all of this then What are the other 70 buildings doing.....................Nothing? And to keep things in perspective...DtD is on 22% vacant not even 30%.

When considering the office market of DFW, one has to ingore the outside opinions of it especially if they happen to be made by New York City investers. They generally don't understand the volatility of such a market where millions of square feet office space empties out quickly during recessions and likewise fills up quickly during economic expansions. Consider that office buildings have been built in downtown Dallas while it has this large vacancy rate.

One should not be overly concerned with high vacancy rates in volatile markets like DFW, Atlanta and Chicago. Now a high vacancy rate in a city like Houston might last for a century. Fortunately for that city, it has huge oil companies who require large blocks of space when they expand.

Okay, Dallas' economy is based off of transportation and IT. Houston is medical/energy/aerospace. Houston industries are more world industries than Dallas'. Dallas is mostly a regional city, while Houston is international. Houston has a lot more international visitors than Dallas does, too.

I am willing to bet that Houston's economy is a lot better than Dallas' and will expand further and further as these oil companies start going flex fuel.

This is the common myth. Oil is not that much better than agriculture in creating wealth. Look at Mexico and Venezuela. Look at what happened to Texas as the "Superstate" during the 80's. You don't think Houston could lose over 100,000 citizens in a blink of an eye? Well, it already happened once back during its oil depression. Houston was out pacing DFW back during the late 70's also. There was a talk of building a mile high office building in Houston back then. Developers had over 100,000,000 square feet of office development planned along the stretch of the North beltway 8 west of Greenspoint Mall. Oil is only good as a great foundation for an economy as is agriculture. DFW still has Oil and Gas and Agriculture as a base for its diverse economy. Houston is too much oil.

By the way, something you should consider is the wisdom of having all the world's oil companies in Houston. It give Houston a very bad reputation. It wouldn 't surprise me if the a lot of the oil companies make that determination in the future by moving their headquarters to more diverse areas of the nation. Think about it. Nothing is assured. Didn't Haliburton recently decide to move its headquarters out of the nation to the middle east?

Post of the Day!

Tell me more about this "new Main Street". Will it be pedestrian friendly? Will we see attractive young professionals walking their Papillions down its median? Will it be lined with street level (or should we call it subterranean level) retail? Tell me more!

Uhm . . . the buried portion of Woodall Rogers will have a park plaza built over it. Main Street references the center of both the city's core and its development. The fellow who designed the suspension bridges to go over the Trinity was puzzled as to why Dallas citizens tended to divide the city core using freeways as boundaries. He said the city should consider the Baylor Medical Center to the east and the Market Center / Southwestern Medical Center to the northwest as part of Downtown.

The people in Dallas confuse others by differentiating Uptown from Downtown. Downtown is becoming successful right now because of Uptown. Both together make up a single core with the Woodall Rogers Freeway serving at its new Main Street. The fact that the old folks in Dallas still want to reestablish the old Main Street in Downtown, just confuses the situation.

The significance in Dallas in comparison to Houston is the critical mass that has been reached there. As lots of development has been built along both sides of Woodall Rogers, even more is going to be started to match the expected openings of the next phase of the Art's District, further expansion of the Victory development, the next Light Rail expansion which will double in size and each phase of the Trinity River project.

Houston went through an incredible building spree itself a few back where it invested billions east of its downtown. That included the building its first light rail line, the rebuilding of a lot of its downtown streets, the expansion of its convention center, the building of a 1000 room convention hotel and the building of the Toyota Center. All this infrastructure does little to enhance Midtown though.

Perhaps development in Midtown is slow because Houston still has ample property downtown to expand?

Okay. Let me give you another analogy. There was a year when the Nissan 300Z could out run a Corvette in the quarter mile. Does this mean that the Nissan 300Z was the better car? No. Dallas over the long run just has the better foundation to expand than Houston does. The assurity of Houston's future economy is actually what keeps it from expanding the way DFW does. DFW is wide open. Houston gets a lot of Federal money because of its Texas Medical Center and NASA. Free Markets do better than socialism.

Uptown Dallas isn't that dense. If anything, it is just a Texas Medical Center. Uptown Houstom may not be dense, but it is larger than Downtown Dallas itself.

The people in Dallas confuse others by differentiating Uptown from Downtown. Downtown is becoming successful right now because of Uptown. Both together make up a single core with the Woodall Rogers Freeway serving at its new Main Street. The fact that the old folks in Dallas still want to reestablish the old Main Street in Downtown, just confuses the situation.

The significance in Dallas in comparison to Houston is the critical mass that has been reached there. As lots of development has been built along both sides of Woodall Rogers, even more is going to be started to match the expected openings of the next phase of the Art's District, further expansion of the Victory development, the next Light Rail expansion which will double in size and each phase of the Trinity River project.

Houston went through an incredible building spree itself a few back where it invested billions east of its downtown. That included the building its first light rail line, the rebuilding of a lot of its downtown streets, the expansion of its convention center, the building of a 1000 room convention hotel and the building of the Toyota Center. All this infrastructure does little to enhance Midtown though.

Perhaps development in Midtown is slow because Houston still has ample property downtown to expand?

Not at all.

Compare Atlanta to Miami. Which city is the regional distribution center? Which has the regional airport? Which has the more volatile economy? DFW is to Houston what Atlanta is to Miami.

Dallas is so volatile that it has to build its own real estate developments. Outside investers just can't rationalize investing in a volatile market like DFW that after every recession it empties out millions of square feet of office space. What they don't understand is how fast it fills back up during periods of economic expansion. People tend to focus so much on the firing that goes on in DFW, which is quite healthy for an economy actually, that they have forgotten how dynamic the hiring has been over the years.

Did they banned you MisterNifty off the Dallas metro forums already?

I'm not banned from the Dallas metro forums, no. Why would my beloved forum members ban me? They know good and well that while I am out of prison on parole, I need their valuable therapy to keep me centered. So I have a signed agreement with that forum's editors stating that I am never to be banned. It isn't that I am treated any more special than the other common members in that forum, in particular. See I tend to suffer from a chemical imbalance every time they delete one of my posts. It comes about because of my homelessness. My therapists calls it "a disposition to go beserk" or something like that. So when they delete one of my posts, I have a tendency to wander the streets of Uptown and the Dallas Lightrail System while antagonizing its upwardly mobile residents.

As they have agreed to developed a full time special committee to edit all my posts, my part of the agreement stipulates that I will continue receiving therapy in regards to my racist posts. Anyway, thanks for being concerned about my welfare.

By the way, have you ever noticed how envious Houstonians are about Dallas' light rail system and about how dense its Uptown area is? Doesn't it border on hostility even?

This point has been rehashed a million times. Yes, the city limits of Dallas only represent about 1/4 to 1/5 of the DFW metro area. However, the region is still referred to as "Dallas" (including Fort Worth), in general terms, throughout the world. So what? This happens with most major cities. Fort Worth is a great city and known well enough to be recognizable worldwide (although partly due to being the second half of DFW airport's name), but how much does it really differ from other "adjacent cities" as Oakland, CA; Tacoma, WA; or St Petersburg FL? They are all eclipsed by their more reconizable neighbors, despite their size.

Outside of North Texas, people will still generically refer to "Dallas" and people from the area (maybe not Fort Worth) will still likely identify as being from "Dallas". The term can be used equally to define the region or the municipal boundaries of the city itself. That distinction is only relevant to the discussion at hand. Otherwise, no one should get worked up about it and accept the dual use of "Dallas" as a city name.

As a local example, how often do people who live off of FM 1960 identify as being from "Unicorporated Harris County" rather than Houston when speaking to people outside of the Houston area. Or for that matter, how about those from Sugar Land or The Woodlands? They are all from "Houston" in the rest of the world's eyes. The general term should be recognized as what it is.

Indeed. But in the future the city of Houston will be competing population wise more with the area of Fort Worth than it will be with Dallas. There are no suburbs north of Fort Worth to serve as boundaries to keep the city from growing all the way to Denton. The relationship Fort Worth has with Dallas is not like the one the city of St. Paul has with Minneapolis. Those 2 citys are only 10 miles seperated from each other. Dallas and Fort Worth are seperated by 30 miles.

I disagree - I think Dallas' equivalent to Houston Midtown is the area of East Dallas along Ross Ave, Live Oak, etc.

I think they are similar in their histories as "downtown extensions" that, once grand, came upon hard times and were gutted for redevelopment that has only recently started to occur. They should both do great once the new development momentum takes off.

Dallas actually has nothing like Midtown. Midtown has well organized square blocks like downtown and the city just got through rebuilding a lot of them a few years ago. Take a peak at a satellite photo of the area.

Yeah -- the area around Fair Park and Deep Ellum is probably a better comparison to Midtown Houston in terms of challenges, momentum, proximity and promise.

Yes. The eastern side of Midtown spills into a neighborhood of row houses in one of the wards. My question would be is a ward considered a ghetto? I don't really know if Houston has any ghettos. What is considered a ghetto? If it is a ghetto, should it be called a ghetto? I can see where potential residents in the area might feel that crime pours forth into Midtown from that neighborhood. Do you think that area is a hindrance to growth in Midtown?

Ive always notice houston winning over Dallas in alot of stuff so that trend is not new.....I think its becoming more equal now.

I noticed that you referenced Dallas. The fastest growing area of DFW now is the northern part of Fort Worth. In fact, Fort Worth isn't hemned in like Dallas so it expects to surpass it in population in the future. Fort Worth also has half of the billionaires living in DFW (which is pretty extinsive) including one of the Walton children as a resident. So it is a legitimate city out right.

Houston edges out Dallas in GDP race

08:21 AM CDT on Thursday, September 27, 2007

By BRENDAN M. CASE / The Dallas Morning News

Bad news in the battle between Dallas and that other large town to the southeast: Houston edged out Dallas in a new ranking of the largest U.S. metropolitan economies.

The Houston area's gross domestic product came in at $316.3 billion in 2005, a hair ahead of Dallas-Fort Worth's $315.5 billion.

That's one of the conclusions in a new study by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a unit of the U.S. Commerce Department. The report attempts to measure total output by metropolitan area through 2005.

The Texas titans rank as fifth- and sixth-largest metro economies in the nation, following New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Washington area.

According to the study, the top 10 metropolitan areas accounted for 34 percent of the total U.S. gross domestic product of nearly $12.4 trillion in 2005.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis called the study a prototype that was open to tweaking. Its analysis relied heavily on industry earnings data from the state and county levels.

In Texas at least, the federal estimates track calculations by Waco economist Ray Perryman. He estimates total output in the Dallas-Fort Worth area at about $315.4 billion in 2005. The Houston area stood at $316.1 billion.

METRO ECONOMIES

Gross domestic product in billions of dollars by metro area for 2005:

------------------------------------

New York $1,056.4

Los Angeles $632.4

Chicago $461.4

Washington, D.C. $347.6

Houston $316.3

Dallas-Fort Worth $315.5

Philadelphia $295.2

San Francisco $268.3

Boston $261.1

Atlanta $242.4

------------------------------------

SOURCE: U.S. Commerce Department

How great is it that Texas has two powerhouse economies? NYC remains in a class by itself.

But, as for the rest, the Texas giants are definitely playing with the big boys.

In the long run DFW will economically top Houston because it has the more volatile economy. An example of that volatility would be the collapse of its telecom industry a few years back. In order to offset such a loss of industry, the area constantly develops new ones.

Well, if you read the little chart (you know, the thing on the lower-left), it says LRT. That is an old rail expansion map and is what Houston citizens voted for.

And I can't believe it, but I do agree with you on one thing. If I-45 was depressed in the areas around Midtown, I think there would be more development right there.

They might call it a LRT but it is just a bus disquised as a train. The city of Dallas feeds its train stations with buses. Houston will be feeding its downtown LRT with buses from the southeast line. A bus is just a bus. Zzzzz . . .