I never, EVER figured that I'd see the day where Dallas and Portland appeared in the same sentence when talking about edgy communities. Of course, considering how much Dallas has been changing as of late, I'm really not all that surprised.

It'll be interesting to see if Dallas begins to experiences a business exodus similar to Portland.

Doubtful, David: between the natural gas boom just west of the city and the number of big corporations that have their headquarters either in Dallas or in the immediate vicinity (JCPenney, Texas Instruments, FritoLay, Verizon, Kimberly-Clark, ExxonMobil, among many others), Dallas is pretty well cushioned these days from major business collapses. Not only did residents and businesses learn something from the big oil bust of 1986 and from the bank and dotcom busts of 1991 and 2001, but it's a city that's actually getting quite a unique arts community. Instead of packing up and moving to Seattle or New York, a lot of artists and musicians have decided to stay put and produce work while working the usual corporate job, meaning that they're a lot more flexible than the wannabe who's working groovy retail while waiting to be discovered. I don't know what's going to happen with Dallas and Fort Worth in the next few years, but they're no longer the cities I knew back in the Eighties.

Texas has a higher education infrastucture that Oregon can only apparently)dream about. Note the story in today's Oregonian business section about how Houston beat out Portland for a Vestas (wind turbine manufacturer) R&D facility - the principal reason, evidently, being that Texas universities can turn out many more engineering grads, and was willing to hook-up three universtites with Vestas. Oregon's universities are third rate, and do not seem to be getting any better; Portland State is practically a junior college. This kind of story just slips quietly past the community, but it really belies how ill-prepared this city and state are to compete longer-term. But hey, we have the "creative class", right?