Many people who live in those towns you describe work in McKinney, Plano and other parts of the suburbs. I’m not saying you’re wrong because there certainly are those people that make those commutes. I personally know a dev who lives in Prosper and another who lives in Melissa and they both commute to Las Colinas! Their reasoning was home affordability, home value growth, and school quality.
Many people do, I agree! I'm not trying to paint it as everyone living there does have an hour commute, it's true many don't.
But yeah, go work a job in Addison, Las Colinas, deep in Plano, etc. You'll find a lot of coworkers living in Farmersville, Prosper, Melissa, etc.
> Their reasoning was home affordability, home value growth, and school quality
This is yet another set of data points showing what I'm talking about, thank you. These people live there because it was cheap when they bought it, they expect the metroplex to keep growing increasing the value of their eventually "closer in" home from where the outskirts will be in a decade, and schools are better than other places they might have afforded to buy. Am I wrong?
In the end transit time to the American Airlines Center to watch a Mavericks or Dallas Stars game didn't matter. It didn't matter it wasn't the restaurant capital of the region.
And I don't blame them, that was the choice they were given with the options presented. Housing in the US is a mess, and it seems few get what they'd really prefer they just have to live with the tradeoffs of what's on the market at the time.