How Much Bigger Will We Be?

Bud Weinstein, associate director of SMU's Maguire Energy Institute, talks with KXAS-TV about growth expectations for the North Texas area.

By SCOTT GORDON

The “big” in “Big D” will get a lot bigger in the next decade, experts agree. The only question is by exactly how much.

By 2020, between one and two million more people will call North Texas home, according to most projections.

In the past decade, Dallas-Fort Worth grew to the nation’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, behind only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The current population of 6.5 million has more than doubled in the last 30 years.

"I really believe we are going to see another surge of people and business into North Texas,” said SMU professor Bernard Weinstein, an economist and expert on population trends.

The potential is almost unlimited, Weinstein said.

"One of the real plusses about our region is that we don't have any natural barriers to growth,” Weinstein said. “Well, I guess once you get to the Red River, if you keep growing, you're in a different state!"

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