US Map / Cities / Plano

Plano Map

Plano is a Dallas suburb that became a corporate headquarters town, spread flat across the Blackland Prairie north of the city.

Where is Plano?

Plano is about 20 miles north of downtown Dallas in northeastern Texas, in the middle of the continuous suburban belt that runs up US 75 and the Dallas North Tollway. Fort Worth is roughly 45 miles southwest and Arlington about 35 miles southwest, both on the other side of the metroplex; Garland adjoins the area to the southeast and Frisco sits immediately north. Irving is some 25 miles southwest. There is no gap in the built-up area between Plano and Dallas, and the city functions as part of a single metropolitan labor market of more than eight million people.

Plano at a glance

Plano in Texas

Almost all of Plano is in Collin County, one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, with a small western piece in Denton County — the Texas county map shows how the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs sprawl across county lines. What sets Plano apart from the dozens of other suburbs around it is that large employers moved to it rather than to Dallas proper: Toyota's North American headquarters opened here in 2017, and a series of corporate campuses along the tollway have made the city a job destination rather than a bedroom community. Seven Texas cities in the national top 100 sit within this one metropolitan area — Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Plano, Irving, Garland and Frisco — which the Texas state page puts in perspective.

Blackland Prairie and creeks, not rivers

Plano is built on the Blackland Prairie, a belt of dark, heavy clay soil running north-south through east-central Texas that was tallgrass prairie before it was farmed and is subdivisions now. The clay is expansive: it swells when wet and shrinks when dry, which is why foundation repair is an ordinary household expense across North Texas. The land is close to flat, around 650 to 700 feet, with no river through the city — drainage is by Spring Creek and Rowlett Creek, which run southeast into the East Fork of the Trinity River and the reservoirs on it, and by White Rock Creek, which rises in west Plano and runs south into Dallas. That lack of a river matters: the whole metroplex depends on man-made lakes, and Lake Lavon, about 15 miles east, is the main supply for this side of it.

Cities near Plano

Frisco, Garland and Irving are all within the same suburban belt, with Dallas, Arlington and Fort Worth to the south and west. Seven of the hundred largest US cities stand inside this one metropolitan area — half of everything Texas has on that list.