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McKinney, TX
McKinney's historic downtown square, built around its 1927 Collin County courthouse, has preserved a dense cluster of early-20th-century brick commercial buildings that now house restaurants, boutiques, and galleries — a walkable town center that's stood in deliberate contrast to the newer, car-oriented commercial development that's grown up around the city as the broader Dallas metro area has expanded northward. Money magazine named McKinney the number one "Best Place to Live in America" in 2014, a national ranking that brought the city significant attention and that local officials and real estate agents have continued to cite as validation of the city's combination of historic charm, strong schools, and comparatively affordable housing relative to closer-in Dallas suburbs. The city has grown rapidly over the past two decades even while working to preserve its historic square, expanding from roughly 55,000 residents in 2000 to well over 200,000 by the mid-2020s, making it one of the larger cities in the broader Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex despite still being commonly described as a "small town" because of its preserved historic core. McKinney's combination of a genuinely well-preserved historic downtown square, a nationally recognized "best place to live" ranking, and rapid population growth managed alongside historic preservation has made it one of the more frequently cited success stories among Dallas-area suburbs balancing growth against small-town character.
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University Park, TX
University Park takes its name directly from Southern Methodist University, whose main campus sits almost entirely within the small town's borders — a genuinely unusual arrangement in which a private university's campus occupies a substantial share of the land area of the independent municipality surrounding it. Like its twin town Highland Park, University Park incorporated as its own independent city specifically to remain outside Dallas's municipal boundaries even as the larger city grew to completely surround both towns, and the two together form the "Park Cities," sharing a combined school district, the Highland Park Independent School District, despite each maintaining separate city governments. SMU's campus brings a genuine college-town element to University Park's identity, with the university's Meadows Museum housing one of the most significant collections of Spanish art outside of Spain itself, and campus events and athletics drawing visitors into the town well beyond its own roughly 25,000 residents. University Park's combination of hosting a major private university's entire main campus, shared independent-city status alongside Highland Park, and a top-ranked shared school district has made it one of the most academically and architecturally distinctive small towns anywhere in the Dallas metropolitan area.
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