‘Texafornia,’ soon to be a reality, needs more mixed-use

Public Square is highlighting top articles from 2024. States like Texas and Florida are growing rapidly as residents of California and other states move for various reasons including lower cost of living, often bringing their cultural and marketplace preferences along. Based in Dallas-Fort Worth, Wei Liu calls the migration “Texafornia,” and he argues that mixed-use development is critical to avoid the level of sprawl experienced by California metro areas.  

“Oh, there is In-n-Out Burger here in Dallas!” 

“No way, you’ve got Dutch Bros here too!” 

These expressions are from my friend who now lives in New York City after being a Californian for a couple of years. Apparently, he misses these establishments that are often associated with California. His observations have added depth to my version of “the Image of the City”—a concept that urbanists use to understand the morphology of places—as a new resident of the D-FW metro area. 

My quick response to this is, “Texas is becoming the next California, where millions of people now live.” This also echoes my recent experience with the Texas Department of Public Safety, where I had to wait four months for an appointment to get my Texas driver’s license. While this might not be a pleasant story for the governor who pledges to shorten waiting lines, it is a reality. 

The three most crucial rules for successful real estate investment are often quoted as a simple mantra: “Location, location, location.” When it comes to urbanism, in my opinion, the three crucial rules are “population, population, population.” Cities are more than just the sum of their inhabitants, but a large population is a common feature of all great cities. Where there are no people, there is no city. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and in the United States, it is estimated that 80 percent of the population lives in urban areas, up from 64 percent in 1950. By 2050, 68 percent of the world population and 89 percent of the U.S. population is projected to live in urban areas. A new analysis from moveBuddha foresees Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX as being the most populous metro area in the US by the year 2100 with a projected population of 33.91 million, followed by Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX (31.38 million) and Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX (22.29 million). 

It is clear that D-FW will replace NYC as the country’s biggest urban area. While I appreciate the population growth in the D-FW metro area, which is one reason I moved here, I have started to develop concerns. I see development patterns similar to those in Los Angeles, California, which is notorious for sprawling urban development and its adverse consequences. 

California’s endless urban sprawl since World War II, driven by population growth, zoning constraints, and the dream of homeownership, has led to numerous negative impacts. Research has shown that such sprawl affects quality of life in many ways, such as increasing the risk of obesity, environmental degradation, social isolation, and higher per capita land development. 

It has long been a fact that urban sprawl has created enormous costs that state residents can no longer afford. Residents tend to live in new suburbs due to their affordability, but pay a high price for commuting and infrastructure. Their home values become unaffordable as outer ring suburbs develop, and this pattern repeats over and over again. The Council for Community and Economic Research shows that four of the top 10 least affordable urban areas to live in are in California: San José, San Francisco, Los Angeles-Long Beach, and Orange County. 

Now, Texas has gained more new residents than any other state in recent years. The 2024 Texas Relocation Report shows that many moved from California, followed by Florida, New York, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Reasons for moving to the D-FW metro area or the Lone Star State include the relatively low cost of living, no state income tax, lower sales tax, growing job opportunities, tax incentives for businesses, high ethnic diversity, and less traffic congestion. 

According to the latest Census Bureau update, four cities in the D-FW area – Celina, Anna, Prosper, and Forney – are among the top ten fastest-growing cities in the U.S. between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2023. The booming housing construction is one way D-FW keeps up with its growth. Over 62,500 new home construction permits were issued in the metro area in 2023, compared to nearly 40,000 in the New York City and Atlanta metro areas, and about 28,500 in the Los Angeles metro area. 

In recent years, most urban tracts in the D-FW metro area have already been built out, so new residential developments have been built in locations on the outskirts of the metro area. The rural countryside feeling of Celina, for example, has been replaced by a surge of construction. With the ease of residential subdivision in vacant lands and relatively cheap land costs, people flock to these surrounding areas within D-FW for space and savings. This should sound familiar, as we have seen this phenomenon in Los Angeles, California. 

With significant growth in suburban areas and available land for potential future developments, the sprawl in D-FW metro area is stronger than ever. However, sprawl alone does not mean Texas will become the next California. The key is how future developments are managed. 

The silver lining is that there are already several successful mixed-use developments with thoughtful placemaking and landscaped public space in the metro area. These large-scale projects provide economic gain, social benefits, and affordable housing, further supporting the concept of the “15-minute city” (sometime referred to as “Daily Community”). This model emphasizes creating neighborhoods where residents can meet most daily needs within a 15-minute timespan via any mode of transportation, thereby reducing traffic congestion, improving public health, and fostering community interaction. 

More such mixed-use developments need to come to the region, especially for areas reliant on automobiles. In the case of D-FW metro area, mixed-use developments spreading out in carefully selected locations across the region help mitigate disparity and injustice as the metro area has a long history of uneven development due to excess capital and white supremacy. 

In the immediate future, I am not worried about D-FW reaching all the way north to Oklahoma, as several towns are already in between. I am not worried about the tendency for existing and new suburban residential subdivisions to be inward-facing and isolated from each other, as front-to-front arrangement is often challenging along public streets. I am not worried about the dominance of the automobile as the primary mode of mobility in the metro area, as shifting norm from private vehicles to sustainable mode of transportation needs time and effort. However, I want to ensure that we seize this critical moment to encourage developers with a human-centric heart and soul to create more quality mixed-use developments across the metro area. In these developments, people have convenient places to live, eat, shop, and engage in recreational activities. 

Sprawl repair, a concept and a toolkit responding to malfunctioning sprawl, is still a valid option for developed land across the central city to suburbia. However, sprawl repair should not be expected in 30 years for retrofitting something we build today on our “new” land. Prioritizing quality mixed-use developments at impactful locations in current planning practice will allow the D-FW metro area to expand organically and sustainably. This requires us—designers, city officials, land use attorneys, developers, residents—to work together to shape the livable future of D-FW metro area or Texas at large.