To see the most recent list of the best Dallas suburbs, click here.
You can thank Ross Perot for this ranking of Dallas suburbs. Without his foresight and daring plans, much of what we know today as North Texas wouldn’t exist (meaning, with only slight exaggeration, we wouldn’t have cities to rank). North Texas claims 6.5 million residents, more than all of Texas during World War II. By 2050, demographers expect, that number will nearly double. Much of that growth has occurred in Collin County, which was the nation’s fastest-growing county from 2000 to 2007. And it’s not a stretch to say it all started in the early ’80s, when EDS began to outgrow its campus on Forest Lane. Perot and his team decided to look north and eventually assembled 2,665 acres in Plano. They named the development Legacy, and EDS moved into its new headquarters, which were built on a 367-acre site, in 1985. Frito-Lay soon relocated to Legacy. Then came J.C. Penney Co. And with the corporations came people. Only 6,000 people lived in Frisco in 1990. Today that number has jumped to more than 125,000. McKinney, Allen, Parker—they all owe their growth, in part, to Ross Perot, a man whose bold vision built up a region and, along the way, gave us a list.
