On Monday the City's Finance Committee went through eleven proposed changes to its own financial rulebook. Three of them are interesting: authorizing a new or replacement city building would drop from a supermajority vote to a simple majority, money from selling city property would go into a maintenance reserve up to $20 million per sale, and a rule requiring the city to publish a budget at the “no-new-revenue” tax rate would be deleted. Nothing was voted on. Full council discusses it August 19th and votes August 25th. Here’s an article from KERA.

It just so happens that in my way too many years of mapping, my most requested map has probably been….where does the City of Dallas own land? So I’ve decided to open it up to all of you fine readers.

Which local governments own what land?

Link to the map (no phone)

Dallas County has about 700,000 parcels. 10,381 of those are owned by our local governments. Summing to about 133 of the County’s 909 square miles. That’s 1 acre in 7 owned by the government.

The City of Dallas owns 54% of that land, worth $10.6 billion. DISD owns 4% of it, worth $5.8 billion.

The City has done 204 land deals between 2021 and 2026. They’re mapped below:

https://themap.io/maps/view/9350eb10-9e7c-42f5-92db-b67467d182ec

Sources

• Dallas Central Appraisal District — 2026 certified roll. Who owns every parcel in the county, and what it’s appraised at.

• Review Financial Management Performance Criteria and Consider Potential Changes — the actual presentation staff gave the Finance Committee on August 3rd. Jack Ireland, Chief Financial Officer, and Janette Weedon, Director of Budget and Management Services.

• Dallas City Council calendar — agendas, video, and minutes for every meeting, including this one.

• KERA News — reported the proposed change before the meeting.

Want the data? Email me at robert@themap.io.

https://themap.io/maps/explore/fields-of-the-world

If you want to know where farmland is across the world, This is Fields of the World — a dataset released by Taylor Geospatial, Microsoft AI for Good, and Arizona State University that delineates every agricultural field boundary on earth in 241 countries.

This is an AI model. It was fed labeled satellite farm data. Then trained and run on every parcel on earth to generate an educated guess on where farmland is across the world. So it’s not literally farmland across the world, it’s an AI guess at where farmland is across the world.

It’s a fascinating dataset for food insecurity, farmers and supply chains.

Who Made This

• Taylor Geospatial Engine — funded the infrastructure and assembled the collaboration

• Dr. Hannah Kerner’s lab at ASU — built the original benchmark dataset

• Microsoft AI for Good — contributed AI/ML expertise (Caleb Robinson)

• Washington University in St. Louis — Nathan Jacobs’ computer vision lab

• Wherobots — scaled the model to production

Open Data, Open Tools

The entire dataset is hosted on Source Cooperative under CC-BY licensing. The model weights are on Hugging Face. The code is on GitHub. You can run your own inference on any Sentinel-2 scene using the ftw-tools Python package.

Amazing work that is completely open.

themap.io/maps/compare/satellite

themap.io/maps/compare/satellite

Send questions to robert@themap.io

The U.S. Census Bureau released its annual population estimates on March 26, 2026, covering every county and metro area in the country through July 2025. The headline nationally: America’s biggest counties are growing slowly. Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth added more people than any other metro in the country.

But zoom in on Texas and a sharper picture emerges. This is not a state that’s growing uniformly. It’s a state splitting in two: a suburban ring that can’t build fast enough, and an urban interior that’s quietly emptying out.

For instance, Dallas County lost 2,616 people last year while Kaufman gained 11,225.

Percentages are misleading, let use raw numbers:

Percentage Growth:

Texas added 2,471,926 people between 2020 and 2025. That’s an 8.5% increase — roughly the population of Houston appearing in five years. But 84 of Texas’s 254 counties — one third — lost population over the same period. The growth is not statewide. It’s concentrated in a handful of suburban counties ringing four metro areas.

Where 2.5 million people went

The top 10 counties by absolute growth tell the story:

These 10 counties — out of 254 — account for 1.56 million of the state’s 2.47 million new residents. That’s 63% of all Texas growth in just 4% of counties.

Every single one is in one of four metro areas: DFW, Houston, Austin, or San Antonio. No rural county, no mid-sized city, no border town makes the list.

See the full map: Texas Counties — Population Growth 2020-2025

The DFW explosion

See the map: DFW Counties — Population Growth 2020-2025

Dallas-Fort Worth added 810,000 people since 2020, pushing the metro past 8.47 million — the 4th largest in the country. But the growth isn’t happening in Dallas.

Dallas County grew 1.9%. That’s 50,595 people added to a county of 2.6 million. Meanwhile:

• Kaufman County: +42.2% — from 147K to 209K. The fastest-growing county in Texas.

• Rockwall County: +28.9% — now 141K, up from 109K.

• Ellis County: +24.0% — 241K, up from 194K.

• Collin County: +20.6% — crossed 1.29 million. Added 221,667 people — the second-largest absolute gain in the state after Harris.

• Denton County: +16.9% — passed a million, now 1.07 million.

Houston: still the biggest gainer

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands added 126,720 people in the last year alone — the #1 numeric gain of any metro area in the United States, edging out DFW’s 123,557.

Over 5 years, Houston’s metro added 735,343 people. Harris County alone gained 311K — the single largest county-level increase in Texas. But the percentage growth is again suburban:

• Montgomery County: +24.9% (+156K) — The Woodlands, Conroe, Willis corridor

• Liberty County: +31.2% (+29K) — fastest-growing in the Houston metro

• Chambers County: +22.6% (+11K) — east of Baytown

• Fort Bend County: +17.4% (+145K) — Sugar Land, Missouri City, Richmond

Harris County grew 6.6% — respectable for a county of 4.7 million, but outpaced by every suburban county around it.

See the map: Houston Metro — Population Growth 2020-2025

Austin: fastest rate, same suburban story

Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos is the fastest-growing major metro in Texas at +2.1% per year (1-year rate), and grew 14% over 5 years. But Travis County (Austin proper) grew just 7.2%.

The action is in the ring:

• Hays County: +24.8% (Kyle, San Marcos, Buda)

• Williamson County: +22.3% (Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown)

• Bastrop County: +21.3% (Bastrop, Elgin)

• Caldwell County: +20.0% (Lockhart, Luling)

Austin’s metro now stands at 2.62 million — and it’s the only Texas metro where the suburban counties are growing faster in percentage terms than every other metro’s suburbs. The entire ring is 20%+.

See the map: Austin Metro — Population Growth 2020-2025

San Antonio: Comal and Kendall surge

San Antonio-New Braunfels added 244,368 people (+9.5%). Bexar County (San Antonio proper) added 145K at 7.2% — the steadiest core-county growth of any Texas metro.

• Comal County: +27.8% (New Braunfels, Bulverde) — the I-35 corridor between San Antonio and Austin

• Kendall County: +19.6% (Boerne)

See the map: San Antonio Metro — Population Growth 2020-2025

The other Texas: 84 counties shrinking

While the metros boom, a third of Texas is losing people. 84 counties lost population between 2020 and 2025, almost all of them rural.

See the map: Texas Shrinking Counties

The national picture: Texas vs. everyone

Nationally, the Census data shows a Sun Belt surge and a coastal decline:

Biggest metro gains (2024-2025):

1. Houston: +126,720

2. Dallas-Fort Worth: +123,557

3. Atlanta: +61,953

4. Phoenix: +59,065

5. Charlotte: +54,122

6. Austin: +53,796

Metros that shrank:

• Los Angeles: -62,454 — the single largest metro loss in America

• Miami: -8,909

• San Diego: -5,294

• Memphis: -4,217

Four of the top 6 gainers are in Texas. The state isn’t just growing — it’s the primary destination for domestic migration in the United States. Houston and DFW together added more people in one year (250,277) than the entire state of Vermont’s population.

Explore the maps

• Texas Counties — Population Growth 2020-2025 — all 254 counties, green = growing, red = shrinking

• DFW Counties — Growth by County — Kaufman +42%, Dallas +1.9%

• Houston Metro Growth — Harris +311K, Montgomery +25%

• Austin Metro Growth — Hays +25%, Williamson +22%

• San Antonio Metro Growth — Comal +28%

• Texas Shrinking Counties (84 of 254) — the rural decline

• Top 20 Fastest Growing Counties — Kaufman, Liberty, Rockwall lead

Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 Population Estimates (released March 26, 2026). County-level estimates based on births, deaths, and migration. All maps are interactive on TheMap.io.

Built with TheMap — making public data actually public.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/2025-popest-metro-micro-counties.html#table-9

Map Link

It is incredibly cool that the NCTCOG created and host this geographic layer on their site. Love it.

Peter Simek wrote about this in 2019 far better than I could. Browse the map and read his article.

Email me with questions: robert@themap.io.

U.S. Geological Survey, Digital map of aquifer boundary for the High Plains aquifer in parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming — originally Cederstrand & Becker (1999), Open-File Report 99-267, republished 2009 as USGS Data Series 543. Public domain.

Map Link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

In 2019, more than 4.4 million acre-feet were pumped out of the Ogallala — 67% of all the water Texas pumped from its major aquifers that year. No other aquifer in the state comes close.

It built up water over millions of years, but we (humans) started pumping from it seriously after WWII - at that point it held roughly 3.2 billion acre-feet of recoverable water.

We’ve taken about 9% of it over the past 75 years.

Rain refills it, but not at the pace that we’ve been taking it. Rainfall returns less than an inch a year across the plains — and in parts of the Texas panhandle, less than a millimeter. Across the aquifer as a whole, that recharge replaces only about 15% of what gets pumped out.

Even if every pump were shut off tomorrow, most estimates put full recovery of a depleted aquifer at 500 to 1,300 years — and some run to 6,000. (source: (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ogallala-aquifer/)

Here’s a map of the aquifers in Texas.

Map Link

That’s all for this one….if you’re looking for a good book, Cadillac Desert is an amazing account of how water was brought to the west.

Sources:

1. Here are some great GIS maps from the state:

   1. https://www.twdb.texas.gov/mapping/gisdata.asp

2. U.S. Geological Survey, Water-level and recoverable water in storage changes, High Plains aquifer, predevelopment to 2019 (Scientific Investigations Report 2023–5143) — how much water is in the aquifer, how much has been taken, and how far it stretches.

3. Kansas State University, Ogallala Aquifer — how fast it refills, and how little of what we pump gets replaced.

4. USDA Climate Hubs, Impacts to the Ogallala Aquifer — when farmers started pumping it, and why it accelerated.

5. Texas Water Development Board, Ogallala Aquifer — what’s left under the Texas Panhandle.

6. The aquifer outline on the map comes from USGS Data Series 543, digitized from Cederstrand and Becker, Open-File Report 99-267. Public domain.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled that this new Texas redistricting map would be allowed, meaning the boundaries of each of the US House Districts in Texas will be different for the rest of the decade. Governor Abbott called it The One Big Beautiful Map. So what changes were made?

Map - Old (left) vs. New (right) Boundaries

(apologies to Gen Z, these maps are best viewed on an actual computer):

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There are 435 total seats in the US House that can flip votes for America (again, TX now has 38 of the 435). Which means Texas now has 40 electoral votes for president (38 + 2 senators). We’re second only to California’s 54 (CA is down from 55 before 2020).

Below is the current Texas map (as of the last election) - 25 of the 38 seats are Republican. Still, Trump asked Texas to try and flip 5 additional seats to the GOP mid-decade to give Republicans an advantage in the US House. So expect it to be even more red after these latest boundary changes.

But now liberal states are responding and doing the exact same thing. So…like many things in politics, it may be a bunch of yapping and work that changes absolutely nothing. We’ll see.

Compare District Boundary Changes One at a Time:

I have made a map here where you can look at each district individually and see how the boundaries have changed. You can see the changes more clearly this way.

District 9

District 32

Here’s a good Dallas Morning News Article on the changes in District 32: Texas redistricting divides North Dallas neighborhood, leaves some residents wondering why

District 35

District 3

Which 5 Districts might flip from D→R?

Map Highlighting Changes in 7, 32, 33, 34, 35:

Demographics of Current Boundaries:

This is a map of the current boundaries with some demographic information for each. I can’t do the new boundaries because that census data hasn’t been released.

Map Link

2020 Census Changes - Change from 36 to 38 Districts:

Previous Change (from Pre-2020 to Post 2020):

Implications

My personal take - we’ve now created an arms race where every state is going to start doing this over and over again to counteract the other states that are doing it. And each state will become more homogenized in the US House, ie - there won’t be any conservative districts in California or any Democratic districts in Texas.

So each conservative state gets more conservative and each liberal state gets more liberal, further dividing an already divided country.

On May 2nd, Dallas voters decide on $6.2 billion across four propositions: A,B,C & D. (Building and renovation, technology, debt service and swimming pool upgrades).

Here’s a sample ballot so you can practice at home before getting nervous at the big screen.

The 2020 Bond has delivered fantastic results so I think it’s worth voting for.

Here’s what the data shows — in maps.

26 Schools being completely rebuilt:

The bond will fully rebuild 26 campuses. These aren’t cosmetic renovations — these are tear-down-and-start-over projects for buildings that have reached the end of their useful life.

The biggest single allocation: W.W. Samuell High School at $317 million for a complete rebuild.

From dallasnews.com:

Sanders noted that when the district has invested in its buildings in recent years, academic improvement has often followed. He pointed to Pinkston, Roosevelt and South Oak Cliff high schools, all of which have either been rebuilt or undergone major renovations within the past decade. All three moved from D or F to B ratings in the years after they reopened.

Map Link

10,000 students attend class in portables:

Right now, 79 campuses across the district have students attending class in portable buildings. That’s roughly 10,000 kids.

District 4 has the most with 13 schools using portables. District 6 has 12. These aren’t temporary solutions — some of these portables have been “temporary” for over a decade. This is a map of those schools. The portables will all be gone with the bond.

Map Link

How much does each of the 223 campuses get? ($0 to $317M)

This is every DISD campus, sized and colored by its bond allocation — from $0 to $317 million. You can see immediately where the money is going and where it isn’t.

The concentrations aren’t random. They follow building age, condition scores, and enrollment patterns.

Map Link

The Age Problem:

The oldest school in the district is Ben Milam Elementary, built in 1909 — 117 years old.

52 schools were built in the 1950s. 34 more in the 1960s. That’s 86 buildings DISD uses that were built in the 50s and 60s.

Map Link

Campus School Scores:

According to the TEA, A-rated Dallas ISD schools jumped from 30 in 2024 to 61 in 2025. B-rated schools rose from 72 to 107. F-rated schools dropped from 24 to just 2.

There is a lot more green on this map after the 2020 Bond:

Map Link

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What the FCI Actually Means for Your School:

Dallas ISD hired https://www.dlrgroup.com/ — a national architecture and engineering firm that specializes in K-12 school facilities — to assess every single campus in the district. They walked every building, evaluated roofs, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, structural integrity, and calculated what it would cost to fix everything that’s deferred over the next 10 years.

That number, divided by what it would cost to just build a new school, is the Facility Condition Index.

You can get this information for your school here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tnrRCYaDh6rT86DGnMpvKbbLbwkGAAkB,

This data is fascinating. Each campus has a .pdf report. You can go and find your school and download it.

Explaining the map:

- Green (0-15%): Building is in good shape, normal wear

- Yellow (30%): Significant deferred maintenance — roofing, plumbing, mechanical systems need work

- Orange (45-60%): Major systems failing — approaching the point where renovation costs more than replacement

- Red (60%+): Replacement territory — cheaper to tear down and rebuild than to fix

Map Link

DISD District Trustees on the ballot this year:

Three DISD District Trustees are also on the ballot this year. Here are the locations of their districts (In District 8, Joe Carreón is running unopposed). So we have 2 competitive races. District 2 and 6.

Source of the GeoJSON.

Map Link

So Go Vote!

Early Voting Locations:

Early Voting Centers PDF.

Map Link

Election Day Locations:

Election Day Voting Locations PDF.

Map Link

Every map in this article is interactive. Click any school to see its name, allocation, age, condition score, and what the bond will fund. All of this data is public — I just mapped it for us visual people.

If you think this kind of transparency matters, subscribe now:

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