Later this month, subscribers will receive a 13th issue in their mailboxes. Titled Dallas and The New Urbanism, the special edition explores all the opportunities that the city has at its fingertips to develop into a municipality that is designed for residents. After decades of being battered by transportation decisions that benefit commuters, pedestrians are finally finding open ears, both at City Hall and in the boardrooms of developers.
Demographers believe Dallas-Fort Worth will grow by 4.5 million people in the next 20 years. Collin County, if the predictions are correct, could double. The Dallas urban area grew more last year than it did in the entire decade between 2000 and 2010. City leaders have some heavy decisions to make with these trends; transition our infrastructure to become more friendly to pedestrians or continue the trends of our past, expanding freeways and catering to the car, furthering the deep physical divisions between the city’s neighborhoods that have fueled poverty and segregation.
From 8 a.m. to noon on July 11, we invite you to the Dallas Museum of Art to see the issue come to life. You can find the full schedule here, but we’ll give you a taste. State Rep. Rafael Anchia will moderate a panel on how Dallas can reclaim its urban identity, with Jessica Burnham, the director and clinical professor of the Master of Arts in Design and Innovation at SMU; Mike Hoque, a restaurateur and developer with DRG Concepts and Hoque Global; and Elizabeth Wattley, the Forest Theater lead at CitySquare.
We’ll explore how the city can employ these strategies without displacing residents of up-and-coming neighborhoods; you’ll hear from Assistant City Manager Raquel Favela on that one. She’s in charge of the city’s new housing policy. Another panel is focused on the transition from a commuter city to a residential one.
The issue explores these themes and more through nine chapters. In addition to the D staff, writers include Christopher Leinberger, the Charles Bendit Distinguished Scholar and Research Professor of Urban Real Estate at George Washington University; Brandon Formby, the urban affairs writer at the Texas Tribune; Tracy Loh, a senior data scientist at the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis; infrastructure developer Scott Polikov, president of Gateway Planning and a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners; and Patrick Kennedy, the Dallas-based urban planner and DART board member.
We hope you’ll join us.
