Big-league ’burbs

Two Dallas suburbs rank among top 50 places to live, new survey says

Kudos to Flower Mound for scoring high on the list.

Flower Mound and Frisco, two fast-growing suburbs of Dallas, are among the country’s top 50 places to live, a new ranking shows.

The ranking, created by the 24/7 Wall St. website, is based on an index of more than three dozen socioeconomic measures, including median home value, poverty rate, and adults’ education level.

Flower Mound appears at No. 13 on the list, and Frisco at No. 16. At No. 21, the Houston suburb of Atascocita is the only other Texas city in the ranking.

To come up with the list, 24/7 Wall St. sifted through data for nearly 600 U.S. cities that had at least 65,000 residents in 2016.

The socioeconomic figures for both Flower Mound and Frisco are impressive.

For instance, Flower Mound’s median home value ($344,300) ranks in the top 25 percent of cities, the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree (61.3 percent) ranks in the top 10 percent, and the poverty rate (4.7 percent) ranks in the bottom 10 percent.

“After adjusting for the area’s low cost of living, the median income in Flower Mound is the highest of any U.S. city,” 24/7 Wall St. says.

Frisco boasts equally strong numbers. For instance, the city’s median home value ($369,900) ranks in the top 25 percent of cities, the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree (65.9 percent) ranks in the top 10 percent, and the poverty rate (4.3 percent) ranks in the bottom 10 percent.

“Frisco is ... one of the wealthiest cities in the country and has one of the lowest costs of living,” 24/7 Wall St. says.

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E-Cigarette News

Dallas City Council places restrictions on vaping in public

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Man vaping

Vaping will now be banned exactly like smoking, thanks to a new ordinance from the Dallas City Council.

At their December 11 meeting, the council passed an ordinance to ban vaping in all the same areas where smoking is not allowed. It'll go into effect on December 11, 2025 — giving everyone a year to get into compliance.

Proposed by City of Dallas Environmental Commission (EVC) and the Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability (OEQS), the ordinance amends the definition of “smoking” in the Dallas City Code to include the use of vaping devices.

The ordinance does not ban vaping — it only bans where you can vape: no vaping in all indoor and enclosed spaces; within 15 feet of building entrances; and on park property. The ordinance also bans marijuana smoking in those same places.

In addition, the amendment requires restaurants, hotels, fitness centers and other businesses to update their signage to clearly state that both smoking and electronic smoking devices are prohibited.

The ordinance already earned widespread support from health organizations such as the Dallas County Health and Human Services, the American Lung Association, and the American Heart Association. These organizations, along with the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Surgeon General, have all raised concerns about the health risks of direct and second-hand exposure to vaping aerosols, particularly for vulnerable populations such as children and older adults.

Dallas is not the first city to impose such a ban: San Antonio enacted a similar ban in October. Theirs goes into effect on January 1, 2025.

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