Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings says North Texas cities must work together to win 'job wars'

By Elvia Limón
Communities Writer

UNIVERSITY PARK — Dallas is the nation's ninth-largest city, but in the eyes of Mayor Mike Rawlings, it's simply a neighborhood that's part of a larger "city-state" known as the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And that entire area, he said Thursday, will have to work together as a region to compete in "job wars" to help bring even more diversity and economic growth to the region.

"I see myself as a citizen of D-FW, and a mayor of a great neighborhood called Dallas," Rawlings said. "I think we are in a good place in that upcoming job wars that we're going to have."

Rawlings made his remarks at a symposium on the campus of Southern Methodist University to address trends in migration to urban and suburban regions among minorities, immigrants and millennials. It was hosted by the SMU Cox School of School Business Folsom Center for Real Estate, the SMU Economic Center and Houston's Center for Opportunity Urbanism.

Selling the region instead of individual communities is one reason Dallas and Fort Worth recently worked together on a regional pitch for Amazon's HQ2 rather than pitching to the company as separate cities, Rawlings said.

He told the crowd the city has seen population growth in downtown Dallas residents. He said Dallas' GrowSouth initiative wants to boost the region so it can be more attractive to potential employees thinking about moving to the area.

"We are a hub of growth," he said. "We are pro-business. That's in our DNA."

The Dallas mayor received support for his regional teamwork vision from another member of the panel, Henry Cisneros, one-time San Antonio mayor and former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development. 

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