Dallas, located in North Texas, is the 9th largest city in the United States and the 3rd largest in Texas. Dallas recently rated as a "beta plus" world city.

The Dallas metropolitan area is much larger and is one of the fastest growing in the country. The 13-county Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area has a population of 6.8 million, which is the 7th largest metro area in the United States.

Dallas Diversity

Among the Hispanic population, Dallas is 36.8% Mexican, 0.3% Puerto Rican, 0.2% Cuban and 4.3% other Latino or Hispanic. The community of Dallas has historically been mostly white, with non-Hispanic whites accounting for 83% of the population in 1930. The city's population has diversified as it has grown in both size and importance, and non-Hispanic whites now represent less than a third of the Dallas population. More than a quarter of Dallasites are foreign-born.

Dallas has long been a major U.S. destination for legal and illegal Mexican immigrants. The southwestern and southeastern regions of the city, such as Oak Cliff, have a predominantly black and Hispanic population, with the southern area being mostly black. The west and east portions are predominantly Hispanic. North Dallas is primarily white.

The suburbs of Dallas are home to a large number of Asian people, including Koreans, Taiwanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indians, Pakistanis, and Sri Lankans. Popular suburbs for Asian residents include Arlington, Irving, Flower Mound, and Garland. Dallas also has a large population of people from the Horn of Africa, including immigrants from Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to 70,000 immigrants who speak Russian, mostly from the former Soviet Block. This includes Russians, Russian Jews, Uzbek, and Ukrainians.

Dallas is also home to the 12th largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population in the United States.

Dallas Population Growth

Texas as a whole has led U.S. population growth for the last few years, and Dallas is one of the fastest growing major U.S. cities. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has seen the greatest population growth in Texas, particularly in its northern suburbs. Of the fastest-growing cities in 2014, Dallas ranked 4th with a growth rate of about 2%. In the past 30 years, the Dallas-Fort Worth area has more than doubled.

By 2020, North Texas will have 1-2 million more residents. It's projected that Latinos will reach 3.2 million in 2020, almost catching up to the estimated 3.6 million non-Hispanic whites in the area. Shortly after this date, Hispanics will become the largest ethnic group in DFW. Demographers predict the downtown Dallas and Fort Worth areas will explode in population and the Asian population will soar.

The Dallas region has been inhabited for thousands of years, more recently by the Caddo people before the claim on the land by Spanish colonists. France also had a claim to the Texas territory although it never established a real settlement. It was the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 between the U.S. and Spain that defined the Red River as a boundary and placed what would become Dallas into Spanish territory. The area was under Spanish rule for another two years, when Mexico declared independence and the Dallas area became a part of the Mexican state Coahuila y Tejas. In 1836, the Republic of Texas, which was primarily composed of Anglo-American settlers at the time, gained independence from Mexico and became an independent nation for a time.

The area of present-day Dallas was surveyed in 1839, and a permanent settlement called Dallas was established two years later. The Republic of Texas was annexed to the U.S. in 1845. Eleven years later, Dallas was incorporated as a city.

The early history of Dallas saw it become a significant boom city and a center of trade and business, which then moved into industrial industries.