Rising to the top

Buzzy Dallas neighbor crowned best U.S. place to live by New York Times — sort of

Developments like Glade Parks have made Euless a shopping and dining destination.

Photo courtesy of Glade Parks

So long to that old, unfortunate nickname "Useless." The city of Euless is now officially Dallas-Fort Worth's hottest city, having just been crowned The New York Times' best place to live in the U.S. — well, sort of.

Times opinion writer Farhad Manjoo and several colleagues recently collected data for thousands of towns and cities covering more than 30 metrics, such as school quality, crime rates, and affordability. They then used that data to create a quiz allowing readers to determine where they should live based on the criteria they select.

When Manjoo picked criteria for himself — jobs, climate change, racial diversity, and affordability — Euless rose to the top, claiming the No. 1 spot.

Another DFW community, Edgecliff Village, ranked two places behind, at No. 3. Nestled in between them was Woodlawn, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati.

Those three communities were a 90 percent match for Manjoo’s criteria.

And five more Texas communities — all in Dallas-Fort Worth — tied for an 87 percent match: Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Garland, Grand Prairie, and Mesquite. (Notice that Flower Mound, Frisco, and Plano — the usual cities that tend to steal a lot of the spotlight when it comes to North Texas communities appearing on the seemingly endless slew of best-places-to-live lists — failed to make this one.)

Both Euless and Edgecliff Village earned a score of nine out of 10 in the jobs category. Edgecliff Village edged out Euless in the climate risks column (nine versus eight, respectively), and both scored 10 out of 10 in the racial diversity category.

Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Garland, Grand Prairie, and Mesquite notched identical scores in Manjoo’s three categories: eight for jobs, eight for climate risks, and 10 for racial diversity.

Two non-Texas cities round out Manjoo’s list: Brooklyn Center, Minnesota (a Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb), and Forest Park, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb.

For the list, Manjoo sorted affordable communities by assigning one or two dollar signs (out of a possible four). All 10 communities on the list received one or two dollar signs, but Manjoo didn’t specify the dollar signs attached to each of the 10 “winners.”

Obviously, Manjoo’s ranking is subjective. If you take the quiz, your results could be markedly different from the ones Manjoo, who lives in Northern California, came up with. But in general, Manjoo’s ranking sheds a positive light on DFW’s quality of life.

The opinion piece laying out Manjoo’s thoughts about the best places to live carries this headline: “Everyone’s Moving to Texas. Here’s Why.” (As if we needed The New York Times to drive even more out-of-staters to Texas.)

“For the many hypothetical life scenarios I ran through our quiz, the suburbs around Dallas — places like Plano, McKinney, Garland, Euless, and Allen — came up a lot. It’s clear why these are some of the fastest-growing areas in the country,” Manjoo writes. “They have relatively little crime and are teeming with jobs, housing, highly rated schools, good restaurants, clean air, and racial and political diversity — all at a steep discount compared to the cost of living in America’s coastal metropolises.”

That’s the kind of glowing language you might see on the websites of DFW chambers of commerce — language that could entice even more Californians and other out-of-staters to land in the Lone Star State.

“Texas, now, feels a bit like California did when I first moved here in the late 1980s — a thriving, dynamic place where it doesn’t take a lot to establish a good life. For many people, that’s more than enough,” Manjoo writes.

But back to Euless. Anyone who's watched the business boom the last few years could tell it was heating up. The Glade Parks development, in particular, has become a prime destination for restaurants and retailers.

Here's Manjoo's complete top 10 list from The New York Times:

1. Euless
2. Woodlawn, Ohio
3. Edgecliff Village
4. Garland
5. Grand Prairie
6. Mesquite
7. DeSoto
8. Cedar Hill
9. Brooklyn Center, Minnesota
10. Forest Park, Ohio

lists rankings

Park news

New I-35 deck park in southern Dallas moves closer to spring 2026 debut

Courtesy rendering

Renderings for Halperin Park.

A massive deck park spanning Interstate 35E in southern Dallas is set to open in late spring 2026. Called Halperin Park, the five-acre community space has been under construction since 2017 and will be completed in two phases:

Phase One (finishing in late spring) will include the section from Ewing Avenue to Lancaster Avenue and will feature a pavilion, amphitheater, playground area, interactive fountains, a second level overlooking the Dallas Zoo and the highway, and a large event room for every dining and special events.

Phase Two (to be completed over the next five years) will add the park section toward Marsalis Avenue, with an additional pavilion and extra gathering space.

The project is being developed by the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation and built by the Texas Department of Transportation. Funding comes from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, as well as the private Halperin Foundation, which donated $23 million in 2024 and secured naming rights.

In January, the Dallas City Council approved spending up to $8 million to complete Phase One for spring completion.

The public-private initiative will create $1 billion in economy impact over the next five years, according to a study by UNT Dallas.

Rendering of Halperin ParkCourtesy rendering

A park with purpose
Developers say the park aims to integrate the west side of Oak Cliff, which was somewhat segregated with the construction of I-35 in Oak Cliff in the 1960s, leading to low-income communities and generational poverty.

The project started nine years ago, when the Texas Department of transportation planned a reconstruction of I-35 and began gathering neighbors’ feedback. The result was a plan to widen bicycle and pedestrian lanes in the service roads alongside the highway, and to build a deck over the highway between Ewing and Marsalis avenues, adjacent to the Dallas Zoo. (Similar Klyde Warren Park's "deck park" concept.)

While the project faced some skepticism at first, it later gained momentum as private supporters continued to join.

“Forty percent of the Dallas population lives in South Dallas, yet this segment only accounts for 15 percent of the tax base,” says April Allen, President and CEO of the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, citing the opportunity to address the economic equality in the area through the development of the park and all the business it can bring.

Rendering of Halperin Park.Courtesy rendering

Neighborhood pride
For Allen, this project is personal. The Toronto-born executive first moved to Dallas 22 years ago to work at Neiman Marcus, after getting her engineering degree in Canada and her MBA at Harvard. Oak Cliff felt like the right place for her as an intown neighborhood, with a confluency of cultures, local pride and an entrepreneurial spirit, as she describes it. Her first Realtor told her Oak Cliff was “not the right place for her." Instead of choosing a different neighborhood, Allen chose a new Realtor.

She has lived on the same street in North Cliff since, now raising her two kids with her husband, an Oak Cliff native, whom she credits for her further understanding of the neighborhood, its roots and civic dynamics.

Under Allen’s leadership, Halperin Park is focused on a community-first approach that provides support to the neighbors through programs around health and wellness, after-school activities, local food trucks and markets, and educational workshops to help expand homeownership and financial acumen.

To highlight the history and culture of Oak Cliff, they will feature an annual Walk of Fame, lifting up the stories of those who contributed to Oak Cliff history, with the first one happening as part of the inauguration of the park, organizers say.

They will provide their own 24-hour security team to ensure a safe place for families and kids, with clean and well-lit crosswalks.

Given their proximity with the zoo, parking will be available on the East side of the park at the zoo site, with a walkway to the park. They are working on parking options for the West side.

“We want to create a space for community growth and more business in the area," says Allen. "We are already seeing this come to life with projects such as East Dock, and we are excited for future investment that the park will bring."

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