Houston and Dallas Compared

Mr. Beat compares and contrasts two iconic Texas cities, Dallas and Houston.

#houston #dallas #geography

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Special thanks to the AP Archive for footage for this video. It made a huge difference! AP Archive website

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Houston and Dallas

Space City and Big D

The biggest and third biggest cities in Texas, which is impressive, because everything is bigger in Texas. To say there is a rivalry between the two iconic cities is an understatement.

They are 240 miles, or 386 km apart. About 3 and a half hour drive. And yeah, both are huge.

In fact, with around 2.4 million people, Houston is the 4th largest city in the United States. With 1.4 million people, Dallas is the 9th largest. Houston actually is the biggest city in the country by total area. I know, I know. Dallas is part of the 4th largest metro area in the country (7.6 million). I mean, it’s close to Fort Worth and Arlington. Their metro is also known as DFW, or simply The Metroplex. Houston’s metro area is 5th (7 million). And for the rest of this video, I will give you statistics based on their metros areas, unless I state otherwise, mmk?

First of all, Dallas has a lower population density.

Ok next, so apparently there are these rankings by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network that look at global cities. While it considers both Dallas and Houston global cities, Houston is ranked Alpha - and Dallas is ranked at Beta +. Have fun with that in the comments.

Houston is a short drive from the ocean. More specifically, the Gulf of Mexico or even more specifically, Galveston Bay. It’s a Gulf Coast city. Dallas is...uh...a longer drive from the ocean. It’s at the edge of the Great Plains, and you’re not going to see as many palm trees there.

Due to this, Dallas gets more tornadoes and Houston gets more hurricanes. Dallas is at the southern end of what’s known as Tornado Alley, where tornadoes are more common. Dallas has been directly hit by tornadoes multiple times in its history. Houston has been hit by hurricanes multiple times. Most recently, in 2017 Hurricane Harvey caused parts of Houston to flood. Flooding is actually a regularly occurring problem in Houston, but not in Dallas as they’ve figured out a way to tame the mighty Trinity River, for the most part. Related to this...Houston is sinking. Literally. Dallas is not.