For decades, local leaders have promoted the value of regional cooperation. They point to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport as Exhibit A, and ask where we’d be without that economic engine. They tout Super Bowl XLV, which pulled together dozens of cities and corporations, and shared the bounty.

Last spring, in a newspaper op-ed, the president of the University of Texas at Arlington and an urban futurist touted regionalism again. The headline: “North Texas is stronger together.”

“Its major economic centers,” wrote UTA’s James Spaniolo and co-author Richard Florida, “can no longer afford to compete against one another or chart their separate destinies.”

If so, then who calls the shots? Texans don’t have much faith in a central authority. And the unbridled pursuit of self-interest, the so-called invisible hand, has worked pretty well here.

Continue reading full D CEO story by award-winning journalist Mitchell Schnurman.