The answer is at
the end of today’s column but don’t look before you think it over and then see
if you are right.
We live in a really
remarkable city in a really remarkable state. Most of us just routinely accept
our good fortune and go about our business. That includes being the
beneficiaries of the things that make us different and often better than what
is available in lots of other places.
Texas continues to
lead the nation in population growth. We are the second largest – only
California is bigger – and the fastest growing. Now with more than 26 million
people, some 600,000 were added in the last year.
That’s
more people than live in the entire state of Wyoming – just in the number added
to Texas in the past year.
Richard
Greene
There
are 15 states with fewer people than the number who live in Texas’ largest city.
There
are 33 states with fewer people than the number who live in the
Dallas-Arlington-Fort Worth region.
Our
region, with a population now exceeding 6.6 million, is the fourth largest
urban area in the country and the fastest growing of them all.
Only the
urban areas of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are larger and we are gaining
on them all.
And, the
growth is not expected to slow down. The Texas Office of the State Demographer
projects that Texas could increase to 50 million by 2040.
More
than half that growth will be a continuation of people moving here from all
over the country. In-migration reflects economic opportunity and quality of
life that simply cannot be found in lots of other places.
We are
also a young state. More than a fourth of our population is under the age of 18
and only ten percent of us are older than 65.
We are a
family oriented state. Texas ranks third among all states for the percent of
households that consist of married couple families with children. That is also
the same position we hold among all states of households that are
multigenerational – those with children who enjoy living with parents and
grandparents.
Growth
among Hispanics is also a significant part of what is happening. The State
Demographer says it will only take about another ten years for that segment of
our population to become the largest among all ethnicities.
That
could also foretell a change in Texas’ political makeup. Today ours is among
the reddest of the all the country’s red states.
Right
now it takes the national news networks about five minutes to declare
Republicans as winners across the entire state on any election night.
Republicans
control every statewide elected office and hold significant majorities in both
houses of the state legislature. Our Republican governor is the longest serving
in Texas history and currently the longest serving governor of any state.
Of the
36 members of the U. S. House of Representatives from Texas, 24 are
Republicans. Both senators are Republicans.
The last
time Texas voters cast a majority of their ballots for a Democrat presidential
candidate was 36 years ago.
Our
strong conservative leanings are profoundly reflected in the current debate
over guns. Our attorney general, who is a likely candidate for governor someday
soon, placed an ad in New York papers last week following that state’s adoption
of new gun control laws.
It read
– “Keep your guns. Come to Texas. You’ll be able to keep more of what you earn
(because Texas has no income tax) and use the extra money to buy more ammo.”
As for
Arlington’s part in the great state, we continue to be ranked by the U. S.
Census bureau at or near the position of the 50th largest in the country.
That
means there are 22 states without as many people as the number who live here.
There are 40 state capitals smaller than Arlington.
Which
brings us to the answer to the question posed in the opening paragraph above.
All of those immediately recognizable cities are smaller than Arlington. They
are ranked in order from New Orleans with a population of 360,740 to Birmingham
with 212,413.
My guess is that if you asked
audiences in any of these cities if they know about Arlington, only sports fans
would say they are aware of us – assuming the national sportscasters quit
misidentifying Rangers and Cowboys games as being played in Dallas.
It is our ever-lasting benefit to be
centered between two big Texas cities but to our ever-lasting frustration that
being so denies us an identity.
I once said that Arlington is
nobody’s damn suburb. It’s truer all the time.
Richard Greene is a former
Arlington mayor, served as an appointee of Pres. George W. Bush as Regional
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and currently is an
adjunct professor in UT Arlington’s Graduate School of Urban and Public Affairs.
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