Quote:
Originally Posted by greywallsareboring
One huge difference has been the suburbs, DFW suburbs are large cities in their own right as nicely demonstrated by wikipedia.
Places with 200,000 to 499,999 inhabitants
Arlington
Garland
Irving
Plano
Places with 100,000 to 199,999 inhabitants
Carrollton
Denton
Frisco
Grand Prairie
McKinney
Mesquite
Richardson
Sugar Land, for example, does not even have 100,000 residents and Baytown only has 72,000.
Both Houston and DFW have roughly the same metro populations, but Houston has been able to annex much more of the surrounding areas than Dallas. Big-D has been boxed in by huge suburbs that give no ground and Dallas's only real chance to grow is to the south. Also, the fact that Dallas and Fort Worth have grown together makes the comparison between Houston and just Dallas strange. For my generation, DFW has functioned as one big city, last night I met friends in downtown Fort Worth (which is a great place) and tonight we are all going to a Jack Johnson concert in Dallas. I've lived in both Dallas and Houston and I've never had the felling that one was much bigger than the other.
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Houston does have large suburbs but they aren't as defined nor powerful as DFW's (generally). The NW area of Houston metro has around 750,000 that occupy various MUDs and ETJs. Houston generally annexes an area with lots of employment, which is why almost all of the major employment areas are in Houston (uptown, med center, westchase, energy corridor, greenspoint, greenway, etc.).
I think driving through central Houston makes it look bigger because of the multiple skylines and overall size and number of buildings. Dallas certainly has been booming in its core, but so has Houston. Outside of the core, the cities' are pretty similar in layout. However, Houston always "looked" bigger to me.