Farlington? Arlworth? What if we merged Fort Worth and Arlington?

John Kent

In the most recent census estimates, Fort Worth moved up one spot to become the nation’s 15th most populous city, now larger than Atlanta, Boston or Detroit. Arlington also elbowed into the top 50 – at number 48. Statewide, Fort Worth is No. 5, behind Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin. Arlington is the seventh-largest Texas city.

With populations of 874,000 and 396,000 respectively, Fort Worth and Arlington are the two biggest cities in Tarrant County, the state’s third most populous county behind Harris (Houston) and Dallas. Fort Worth and Arlington also share a border, and their economies and cultures are deeply interwoven.

So, why not just erase the line that separates the two and make one really big burg? It wouldn’t be simple – but what if?

The result would be a city of 1.27 million people, leapfrogging Austin and placing it just a hair’s breadth behind Dallas (1.34 million).

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A Fort Worth-Arlington kluge would create the 10th-largest city in the United States. The combined area would be 438 square miles – big, for sure, but still no Houston (638 square miles) or Los Angeles (468), and nowhere close to Jacksonville, Forida, (747), which in 1968 boldly went ahead and combined itself with the whole county, following a consolidation referendum that was put to voters.

See? This has been done before. Kind of.

With police, fire and other city services already well established in both Fort Worth and Arlington, the process of synchronizing common processes across existing operations would be one of the main challenges.

Each city could certainly learn a thing or two from the other in that process. A food fight might erupt here and there, but in the end, best practices could be applied to all departments in both jurisdictions.

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Clearly, bigger bragging rights are not enough of a reason to join the two cities.

What might be enough of a reason is this: Federal grants to local governments are distributed on the basis of formulas that rely heavily on the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial population count – the greater a municipality’s population, the grander the grants.

The colossal Fort Worth-Arlington metropolis could be a powerful magnet to attract federal dollars that otherwise might go elsewhere.

Another reason?

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The fusion of the two Tarrant titans would go a long way toward realigning perception with reality.

The longstanding assumption outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area is that Fort Worth and Arlington are the sleepy backwaters of Dallas. The reality is that we’re the fast-growing, economically turbocharged urban core of one of the most heavily populated counties in the United States.

That word is not getting out. My wife and I were in Palm Springs, California, a few weeks ago, and in the course of conversation with a shop owner we mentioned that we’re from Fort Worth. “That’s Dallas, right?” he asked innocently.

Sigh.

Even the flight attendants on Fort Worth-based American Airlines routinely say, “Welcome to Dallas” when the plane touches down at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

And you could be forgiven for thinking that AT&T Stadium is in Dallas, not Arlington, thanks to the occasional misguided out-of-town sportscaster. Sometimes the booth announcer calls it “the palace in Dallas.”

Clearly, our PR problem, one that has been dragging on for decades, needs to be attacked more aggressively from multiple angles. One of those angles might involve making Fort Worth and Arlington a single city that’s the same size as Dallas — and consequently harder to ignore.

Political scientist Allan Saxe of the University of Texas at Arlington believes that’s the point. The overriding reason to go ahead with it, he says, is “to be bigger than Dallas.”

Packaging Fort Worth and Arlington neatly into one box would certainly present challenges, maybe none greater than deciding on a name.

Farlington?

Arlworth?

Maybe just Fort Worth-Arlington?

Saxe suggests “Fort Worthington.”

The one-time Arlington City Council candidate and political analyst jokes about taking a shot at being the first mayor. “I promise not to make any decisions, just make lots of speeches on how great our newly named great metropolis is.”

Well, that kind of positive PR would indeed be a good start.

Let the discussions begin.

John Kent is a long-time Fort Worth resident and a former staff writer for The Albuquerque Journal.

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