Regional Cultural Infrastructure
Best Southwest Assembly
for Arts, Culture,
and Community
Four cities. One regional cultural geography. A shared framework for measuring what local arts investment actually does.
Member Cities
The Best Southwest Region
Duncanville
Foundation seat — CIS Primary Segment
DeSoto
CIS Secondary Segment
Cedar Hill
CIS Secondary Segment
Lancaster
CIS Secondary Segment
Click any city to navigate the map. The Best Southwest region sits southwest of Dallas, sharing a cultural geography distinct from the urban core.
About the Assembly
A Regional Framework
Built on Shared Geography
The Best Southwest is a recognized regional designation encompassing four municipalities southwest of Dallas: Duncanville, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, and Lancaster. These cities share a cultural geography — residents move freely across municipal boundaries for entertainment, employment, and daily life — but have historically lacked a coordinated framework for measuring or investing in shared cultural infrastructure.
The Best Southwest Assembly for Arts, Culture, and Community is the coordinating body for regional cultural strategy across these four cities. It operates on the premise that the cultural needs and behaviors of Best Southwest residents cannot be fully understood or addressed by any single municipality acting alone. Duncanville's residents travel to Cedar Hill. Cedar Hill residents attend events in DeSoto. The entertainment spending pattern is regional whether or not the investment strategy is.
The Duncanville Arts Foundation's Cultural Investment Strategy is designed to operate within this regional reality. The CIS measurement framework extends naturally to the Best Southwest geography: when a DeSoto resident attends a Third Wednesday Jazz Series activation at Arts Junction instead of traveling to Dallas, that is a regional recapture event — entertainment spending retained within the Best Southwest rather than exported to the urban core.
The Assembly provides the institutional context within which the Foundation's municipal work gains regional significance. Programs validated in Duncanville through the CIS pipeline generate data that is relevant to every Best Southwest city considering its own cultural investment posture. The Foundation participates in the Assembly as a model-builder — demonstrating through evidence what demand-validated cultural investment looks like in a Best Southwest city.
Member Cities
Four Cities, One Cultural Region
Each Best Southwest city occupies a distinct role in the CIS measurement framework, determined by geography, audience segmentation, and its relationship to the substitution behavior the strategy measures.
Duncanville
CIS Primary Segment
The Foundation's seat and the CIS Primary Segment. ZIP codes 75116, 75137, and 75138. Resident ticket buyers in these ZIPs are the core measurement target for F2 (Resident Share) and F3 (Substitution Signal) scoring. Programs are designed first to serve Duncanville households.
DeSoto
CIS Secondary Segment
Adjacent to Duncanville along the eastern boundary. DeSoto households share the same entertainment-spending patterns and out-of-city venue relationships as Duncanville households, making DeSoto a natural audience extension for CIS programs. Secondary segment ticket buyers from DeSoto broaden the pre-commitment pool without diluting F2 measurement.
Cedar Hill
CIS Secondary Segment
Located southwest of Duncanville along the FM 1382 corridor. Cedar Hill residents currently travel to Dallas and Fort Worth for cultural programming. Cedar Hill's geographic position makes it a natural audience for programs at Arts Junction that offer a closer, more accessible alternative to urban venues.
Lancaster
CIS Secondary Segment
Located southeast of Duncanville. Lancaster's proximity and its residents' existing travel patterns to Dallas entertainment venues position Lancaster as a secondary audience segment for programs that create a closer substitute for that travel. Lancaster participation strengthens the regional recapture narrative.
Regional Measurement
How the CIS Measures Regional Impact
The Cultural Investment Strategy's measurement framework was designed for Duncanville but scales naturally to the Best Southwest geography. Three measurement dimensions are directly relevant to regional cultural investment assessment.
Regional Recapture
Spending Retained in the Region
When a DeSoto or Cedar Hill resident attends an Arts Junction activation instead of traveling to a Dallas venue, the entertainment dollar stays in the Best Southwest. The CIS measures this through ZIP code capture at ticketing and the substitution survey instrument.
Substitution Geography
Where Residents Would Have Gone
The F3 substitution survey asks attendees what they would have done if the program did not exist. Responses naming Dallas, Fort Worth, or regional venues outside the Best Southwest constitute out-of-region substitution — the strongest signal of regional recapture.
Model Transferability
Data That Works for Every City
The CIS measurement instrument is standardizable. The methodology developed in Duncanville is designed so that DeSoto, Cedar Hill, and Lancaster can adopt the same framework and generate comparable data — enabling regional aggregation and cross-city learning.
Role in the Cultural Investment Strategy
How the Best Southwest Maps to the CIS Pipeline
Every CIS activation at Arts Junction draws from all three audience segments defined in CIS v2.0, Section 4.2. The Best Southwest geography determines how Secondary and Out-of-City segments are defined, reached, and measured.
| Segment | Geography | Best Southwest Cities | CII Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary | Duncanville ZIP codes 75116, 75137, 75138 | Duncanville only | F2 (25%) + F3 (25%) |
| Secondary | Adjacent Best Southwest municipalities | DeSoto, Cedar Hill, Lancaster | F1 (30%) velocity contribution |
| Out-of-City | Regional — no ZIP constraint | Dallas, Fort Worth, and beyond | F3 (25%) — strongest substitution signal |
Working Paper Reference
The theoretical framework underlying this regional measurement approach is developed in Measuring What Matters: A Standardizable Behavioral Measurement Instrument for Municipal Cultural Policy Decision-Making. The paper situates substitution-based cultural measurement within the literature on cultural economics and establishes the case for regional aggregation of CIS data across Best Southwest member cities.
Read the working paper →