FrontBurner

In a bid to shore up public support for its planned $88 million streetcar system, Fort Worth spent $25,000 to ship one in and show it off. The thinking was that most residents had never been to Portland to see what a modern streetcar looks like.

I suggest that the Downtown Dallas folks borrow the model when Fort Worth is done with it. Most people of Dallas hear “streetcar” and think “rattletrap” because of the McKinney Ave. trolleys. Meanwhile, the $35 million downtown Dallas-to-Oak Cliff line is proceeding at breakneck speed.

Last week I attended the Metromorphosis conference staged by the Dallas Planning Council. The theme for the all-day affair was “Dallas’ Post-Recession Renaissance.” There was a lot of talk about what Dallas needs to do to become a world-class city (cough, cough). I meant to put up a post about my thoughts on all that, but the end of the week got away from me, and now I’m glad I didn’t. Because I couldn’t have said it better than Tamar Wilner, a writer I met at the gig. Tamar came to our fair shores from London. She writes about urban planning and renewable energy. She doesn’t have a driver’s license (or a car). And she wasn’t terribly impressed with where Dallas is in its march toward becoming — COUGH, SPUTTER — a world-class city.

Careful readers of the magazine noticed that we debuted a new columnist in our November issue. The column is called Urban Affairs, and a fellow named Patrick Kennedy writes it. In his first installment, Patrick tackled Dallas’ parking problem. I’ve heard from a couple people who’ve asked who, exactly, Patrick is. I can’t answer that question. I’ve only known him for a few months. But I can tell you approximately who he is. Patrick runs a blog called Walkable DFW. He’s semi-famous for not owning a car. And, besides that, he is a partner in the planning and design firm Space Between Design Studio, where he is Director of Development Quality and Livability Consulting. He is on the board of directors of the North Texas chapter of the Congress of New Urbanism. So there.

This photo was taken by J. Ivy Foster and sent to us from our neighbors at First Baptist. It was taken right after the implosion of their old buildings on Saturday. The work is part of a building project that has so far received commitments for $115 million, the largest capital campaign ever for a Protestant church in the United States. Says the note from the PR man who sent the pic: “When the dust from the implosion cleared, the sun shone on the sanctuary, which was undamaged by the destruction all around it. Church members took this as a sign from God affirming their plans to create a campus equipped for 21st-century ministry.”

With all due respect and all neighborly goodwill, I take the sunlit steeple as a sign of meteorological conditions and the geometry of the buildings downtown. No question, though, that’s one hell of picture (if you’ll pardon the expression).