Dallas

Located in North Texas, the city of Dallas is the main core of the largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the largest inland metropolitan area in the U.S. that lacks any navigable link to the sea. It is the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country at 7.5 million people.

Dallas is the ninth most-populous city in the United States and third in Texas after the cities of Houston and San Antonio. Its metropolitan area encompasses one-quarter of the population of Texas, and is the largest in the Southern U.S. and Texas followed by the Greater Houston metropolitan area.

CULTURE - The Arts District in the northern section of Downtown is home to several arts venues and is the largest contiguous arts district in the United States. Notable venues in the district include the Dallas Museum of Art; the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, home to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Dallas Wind Symphony; the Nasher Sculpture Center; and the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science, also in Downtown Dallas, is a natural history and science museum. Designed by 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis Architects, the 180,000-square-foot facility has six floors and stands about 14 stories high.

PERFORMING ARTS - Venues that are part of the AT&T Dallas Center for the Performing Arts include City Performance Hall; the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, home to the Dallas Theater Center and the Dallas Black Dance Theater; and the Winspear Opera House, home to the Dallas Opera and Texas Ballet Theater.

NOTABLE ATTRACTIONS - Stone Street Gardens is lined with bistros, pubs, and restaurants connecting Main to Elm Streets in Downtown Dallas. The Institute for Creation Research operates the ICR Discovery Center for Science & Earth History, a creationism museum, in Dallas.

The former Texas School Book Depository, from which, according to the Warren Commission Report, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963, has served since the 1980s as a county government office building, except for its sixth and seventh floors, which house the Sixth Floor Museum.

Deep Ellum, immediately east of Downtown, originally became popular during the 1920s and 1930s as the prime jazz and blues hot spot in the South. Today, Deep Ellum is home to hundreds of artists who live in lofts and operate in studios throughout the district alongside bars, pubs, and concert venues.

Like Deep Ellum before it, the Cedars neighborhood to the south of Downtown has also seen a growing population of studio artists and an expanding roster of entertainment venues. The area's art scene began to grow in the early 2000s with the opening of Southside on Lamar, an old Sears Roebuck and Company warehouse converted into lofts, studios, and retail. Within this building, Southside on Lamar hosts the Janette Kennedy Gallery with rotating gallery exhibitions featuring many local, national, and international artists.

PARKS - The city's parks contain 17 separate lakes, including White Rock and Bachman lakes, spanning a total of 4,400 acres (17.81 km2). In addition, Dallas is traversed by 61.6 miles (99.1 km) of biking and jogging trails, including the Katy Trail, and is home to 47 community and neighborhood recreation centers, 276 sports fields, 60 swimming pools, 232 playgrounds, 173 basketball courts, 112 volleyball courts, 126 play slabs, 258 neighborhood tennis courts, 258 picnic areas, six 18-hole golf courses, two driving ranges, and 477 athletic fields as of 2013.

GETTING AROUND - Like many other major cities in the United States, the automobile is the primary mode of local transportation, though efforts have been made to increase the availability of alternative modes of transportation, including the construction of light rail lines, biking and walking paths, wide sidewalks, a trolley system, and buses. Walk Score ranked Dallas the twenty-third most walkable of fifty largest cities in the United States in 2011.

AIRPORTS - Two commercial airports serve Dallas: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field. In addition, Dallas Executive Airport (formerly Redbird Airport), serves as a general aviation airport for the city, and Addison Airport functions similarly just outside the city limits in the suburb of Addison. Two more general aviation airports are about 35 miles (56 km) north of Dallas in McKinney, and another two are in Fort Worth, on the west side of the Metroplex. Alliance Airport, in far North Fort Worth, is a cargo reliever airport to DFW and general aviation facility.

DFW International Airport is in the suburbs slightly north of and equidistant to Downtown Fort Worth and Downtown Dallas. In terms of size, DFW International is the largest airport in the state, the 2nd largest in the United States, and 9th largest in the world; DFW International Airport is larger than the island of Manhattan.

RAILWAY - Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is the Dallas-area public transportation authority that provides rail, buses and HOV lanes to commuters. DART began operating the first light rail system in Texas in 1996, and it is now the largest operator of light rail in the US.

Today, the system is the seventh-busiest light rail system in the country with approximately 55 stations on 72 miles of light rail, and 10 stations on 35 miles of commuter rail. It includes four light rail lines and a commuter line: the Red Line, the Blue Line, the Green Line, the Orange Line, and the Trinity Railway Express.