Dallas ( /ˈdæləs/) is the third-largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Divided between Collin, Dallas, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties, the city had a population of 1,197,816 in 2010, according to the United States Census Bureau.

The city is the largest economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area (the DFW MSA) that according to the March 2010 U.S. Census Bureau release, had a population of 6,371,773. The metroplex economy is the sixth largest in the United States, with a 2010 gross metropolitan product of $374 billion.

Dallas was founded in 1841 and was formally incorporated as a city in February 1856. The city's economy is primarily based on banking, commerce, telecommunications, computer technology, energy, healthcare and medical research, transportation and logistics. The city is home to the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the nation. Located in North Texas and a major city in the American South, Dallas is the main core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea.

F. Trammell Crow (June 10, 1914 – January 14, 2009) was an American real estate developer. Crow is credited for creating several famous real estate projects, including Dallas Market Center, Peachtree Center (Atlanta, Georgia), and San Francisco's Embarcadero Center.

Crow was born in Dallas, Texas. As a child and later as an adolescent, he earned money through a series of odd jobs, including plucking chickens, cleaning bricks, and unloading boxcars beginning at age 10 until his father, a bookkeeper, forbade it. He was the fifth of eight children who grew up in a rented one-bedroom house off Fitzhugh Street in East Dallas. His father, Jefferson Crow, worked as a bookkeeper for Collett Munger – one of Dallas' early real estate developers who built the Munger Place subdivision. Unable to attend college because of the Great Depression, Mr. Crow worked after high school at odd jobs. In 1933, Crow landed a job as a runner for Mercantile National Bank in Dallas, earning about $13 a week.

After completing Woodrow Wilson High School in 1932, he worked for a Dallas bank and attended night school in accounting at Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation in 1938, he was the youngest CPA in Texas, at age 24. He then worked for three years as a CPA before joining the Navy in 1940. He utilized his background in accounting and was offered a commission auditing the books of defense contractors. After World War II, he remained with the Navy for another year to handle final settlements with the Navy's contractors and then moved back to Dallas. He had no difficulty perceiving the city's growth, and became an agent for North American Van Lines, a moving company. Shortly thereafter, he worked as a wholesale grain merchandiser where he worked to triple the sizes of the warehouses and erect new loading facilities. Once the grain business faded, he switched at the age of 33 to the field of warehouse real estate development believing there was considerable room for growth.