Garland

Garland runs its own electric utility for about 85 percent of residents, which is not how ordinary Dallas bedroom suburbs are supposed to work. The city has about 250,431 people, sits on the east side of the metroplex, and is often described as suburban spillover from Dallas. What that leaves out is that Garland kept more of its own pipes, wires, and industrial floor space than most postwar suburbs did.

That difference is measurable. A 2025 city audit describes Garland Power & Light as the third-largest municipal utility in Texas, serving about 68,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The same municipal utility stack handles about 84,000 monthly utility statements and roughly $270 million in annual receipts. Garland also remains one of Texas's larger manufacturing cities, with more than 5,000 businesses including about 300 manufacturers, and the base is still active: Kraft Heinz committed $143 million in 2024 to expand and modernize its Garland plant while adding 200 jobs.

That combination gives Garland a different role inside the Dallas region. Instead of pushing all the physical work to somewhere else, Garland still houses production lines, freight activity, and the utility systems that keep them running. It is not the prestige address in North Texas, but it controls enough of its own infrastructure to decide what kinds of industry can survive there.

Cathedral termites are the right biological parallel. A termite mound is a built shell that regulates airflow, temperature, and moisture so the colony can keep functioning when outside conditions swing. Homeostasis fits because Garland owns core systems that let it regulate energy and utility flows. Niche construction fits because the city built an industrial habitat that still attracts manufacturers. Redundancy fits because keeping power, water, wastewater, and sanitation inside one municipal operating stack gives Garland more fallback options than suburbs that outsourced those functions long ago.