Tianjin and Dallas are friendly associated on April, 14th , in 1995. Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the 8th-largest in the United States. It has a city area of 997 km2, and a population of 6,300,006(2008-07). Dallas is the county seat of Dallas County, the city and its surrounding area are mostly flat with marked terrain differences only found near waterways and along the Austin Chalk Formation. Located in North Texas and a major city in the American Southwest, Dallas is the core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea. The city's prominence despite this comes from its historical importance as a center for the oil and cotton industries, its position along numerous railroad lines, a strong industrial and financial sector, and its status as a major inland port (due largely to the presence of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, one of the largest and busiest in the world). Petroleum solidified Dallas' position as the hub of the market, because Dallas is the center of the nation's petroleum market. In addition, telecommunications and information revolutions also drive a large portion of the city's local economy. The city is sometimes referred to as the heart of "Silicon Prairie" because of a high concentration of telecommunications companies in the region, the epicenter of which lies along the Telecom Corridor located mostly in Richardson, a northern suburb of Dallas. The Corridor is home to more than 5,700 companies including Texas Instruments (headquartered in Dallas), Nortel Networks, Alcatel Lucent, AT&T, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, Rockwell, Cisco Systems, Sprint, Verizon Communications, and CompUSA. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex as a whole has one of the largest concentration of corporate headquarters in the United States. The city of Dallas has 14 Fortune 500 companies, in addition to its large number of businesses, Dallas has more shopping centers per capita than any other city in the United States and is also home to the second shopping center ever built in the United States. Besides,Dallas is the largest inland cotton market in the world, becoming a leader in cotton gin machinery manufacturing. Dallas is at the confluence of four major interstate highways, adn Dallas-area public transportation provides buses, rail, and HOV lanes to commuters. Today the system is the eighth-busiest light rail in the country. Dallas is served by two commercial airports, and five general aviation airports, one of which is the headquarters of American Airlines. |
