Current Time in Plano, United States

Plano lies in Collin County in the state of Texas, about thirty kilometres north of downtown Dallas and forming part of the Dallas Fort Worth metropolitan area, the fourth largest in the United States. Its name comes from the Spanish word for flat, an accurate description of the blackland prairie on which it stands, though creeks and belts of oak and pecan give the city more variety than that suggests. The humid subtropical climate brings long hot summers, short mild winters and dramatic spring storms.

About two hundred and eighty five thousand people live in Plano. It is regularly listed among the wealthiest, safest and best educated cities in the country, and it has one of the most diverse populations in Texas, with large Asian American, Indian, Korean, Chinese and Hispanic communities whose restaurants, temples and cultural festivals are an important part of local life.

The town was settled in the 1840s by farmers from the upper Mississippi valley, became a stop on the railway in 1872 and survived a fire that destroyed most of its buildings in 1881. For a century it remained a small agricultural community, and only in the 1970s did it begin its transformation, when major corporations moved their headquarters north from Dallas and developers laid out the residential neighbourhoods that now cover the prairie. The population multiplied many times over within a generation.

Plano is now one of the most important corporate centres in the United States. Toyota's North American headquarters occupies a large campus at Legacy West, joined by financial, telecommunications, technology and consumer goods companies, and the Legacy district has grown into a second downtown of offices, apartments, hotels, restaurants and shops. This concentration of white collar employment underpins the city's prosperity.

The historic downtown around Fifteenth Street has been carefully preserved, with brick storefronts, art galleries, a restored cinema and a theatre company, and it is served directly by the light rail line into Dallas. The Heritage Farmstead Museum presents Victorian farm life, and the Interurban Railway Museum recalls the electric railway that once linked the towns of north Texas.

Plano is unusually well provided with parks and trails. Arbor Hills Nature Preserve protects prairie and woodland, Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve is the largest in the city, and roughly ninety kilometres of paved trails connect neighbourhoods, allowing residents to cycle across town away from traffic. The Plano Balloon Festival each September fills the sky with hot air balloons, and the city has an active calendar of concerts and street markets.

Public transport is provided by the regional light rail and bus network, and the two airports serving Dallas Fort Worth are both within easy reach by motorway.

Plano's public school district is among the most highly regarded in Texas, and Collin College serves the area alongside the nearby University of Texas at Dallas.

Plano is important as a corporate and technology hub, and it is popular as an example of the prosperous, green and remarkably international suburban cities of the modern American Sun Belt.