Richardson, TX
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What Richardson is actually like
Richardson began in 1873 when the Houston & Texas Central Railway built a depot northwest of an older settlement called Breckinridge and named it for A.S. Richardson, the railway's secretary; the town incorporated in 1925. It stayed a small agricultural community until Collins Radio opened an office in 1951 and began building a major campus near Central Expressway in 1957, followed by Texas Instruments choosing a nearby site in 1956. In 1961, TI executives Eugene McDermott, Cecil Green, and J. Erik Jonsson founded the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies specifically to address a regional shortage of engineering talent — it became the University of Texas at Dallas in 1969. By the 1980s, telecom deregulation had drawn in equipment makers like Nortel and Ericsson, and the Richardson Chamber of Commerce trademarked the "Telecom Corridor" name in 1992.
The corridor still spans roughly 6.5 miles along US-75 with more than 25 million square feet of office space and over 130,000 jobs, though it lost about 30,000 jobs after the 2000 dot-com collapse and has since diversified well beyond telecom into insurance, finance, and data centers — Richardson is now considered the second-largest employment center in the DFW metro. UT Dallas's 445-acre campus, an R1 research university with nearly 30,000 students as of fall 2024, sits inside city limits and anchors that tech-transfer reputation. CityLine, a 186-acre mixed-use development at the CityLine/Bush DART station, adds roughly 1,900 residential units and 50-plus retail and dining options alongside major office tenants — worth knowing that CityLine's anchor tenants, State Farm and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, run large regional campuses here rather than their actual corporate headquarters, which are in Bloomington, Illinois and Chicago respectively. Fossil Group, by contrast, is genuinely headquartered in Richardson, near the Spring Valley DART station.
Home values in Richardson
The typical home value in Richardson currently runs $438,611, per Zillow — up 0.3% year-over-year as of August 2026.
Getting around
DART's Red Line runs four stations through Richardson — Arapaho Center, Spring Valley, Galatyn Park, and CityLine/Bush — with peak-hour Orange Line service too. DART's new Silver Line, opened October 2025, now runs a direct rail connection from CityLine/Bush through UT Dallas to DFW Airport.
Richardson FAQ
Is the "Telecom Corridor" still a real thing, or just old branding?
Both, honestly. The name dates to a 1992 trademark, and Richardson lost roughly 30,000 jobs after the 2000 dot-com bust — but the corridor has since diversified into insurance, finance, and data centers and still accounts for more than 130,000 jobs along US-75, making Richardson the second-largest employment center in the DFW metro today.
Are State Farm and Blue Cross Blue Shield actually headquartered in Richardson?
No — both run large regional operations campuses at CityLine, but their actual corporate headquarters are elsewhere (State Farm in Bloomington, Illinois; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas's parent, Health Care Service Corporation, in Chicago). Fossil Group is a genuine Richardson headquarters, near the Spring Valley DART station.
Can you get to DFW Airport by train from Richardson?
Yes, as of October 2025 — DART's new Silver Line runs a direct rail connection from the CityLine/Bush station through UT Dallas to DFW Airport.
Does UT Dallas actually drive the local economy, or is it just a commuter campus?
It's a real research anchor — UT Dallas holds Carnegie R1 "very high research activity" status, enrolled nearly 30,000 students in fall 2024, and traces directly back to a 1961 institute that Texas Instruments executives founded specifically to build a local engineering talent pipeline, which helped seed the Telecom Corridor itself.
Nearby alternatives*We're not ranking these — every neighborhood has real trade-offs, and which ones matter is up to you.
Garland
About 15 miles southeast. Zillow puts Garland's typical home value at $283,276, well below Richardson's $438,611, for a comparable distance into Downtown Dallas.
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