In reading this FiveThirtyEight piece about how San Jose, Calif., is America’s “most forgettable” major American city, I was impressed to see how unforgettable Dallas looks.
Their method for determining these admittedly imprecise terms was to consider how often participants in Sporcle’s time-suck of a quiz on the 100 most-populous U.S. cities remembered (or didn’t) the name of each city in the allotted 12 minutes. More than half a million people have taken the challenge.
It’s no surprise that when asked to name all 100 cities, most-populous New York was rarely missed. More than 99 percent of users got it. Compare that to poor San Jose, which only 66.6% named, even though it is the 10th-largest in the U.S.
Dallas is golden by comparison. Ours is the 9th-most populous city, but we were named on the fourth-most quizzes, 92.4%. Decades of the Ewing family and America’s Team and (less fortunately) JFK conspiracies have allowed Dallas to burrow deep into the collective consciousness. We’re only beat out by the three-largest U.S. cities, which is nothing to be ashamed about.
But what about our best little suburb sister city to the west? Fort Worth is almost as bad off as San Jose. It’s the 16th-most-populous city, but ranks 45th among those named in quiz responses. Only 59.2% of Sporcle users remembered it.
The other North Texas cities on the list — Arlington, Irving, and Plano — all finish a bit closer than does Fort Worth to where their population alone would hope to place them, though only Irving overachieves. Dallas’ brand still dominates North Texas’ identity nationally.
