Mayor Eric Johnson sent a statement a few moments ago announcing that he has a breakthrough infection. Earlier this month, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker also tested positive. This is a reminder, y’all. Encourage your friends to get vaccinated. Johnson’s illness is so far mild, a likely result of his having gotten vaccinated. We wish him a speedy recovery. Here’s his full statement:

“This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, I am fully vaccinated, and I am only experiencing mild symptoms. My wife Nikki, who is also fully vaccinated, has tested negative.

“Our primary concern at this time is the health of our children, who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.

“I have notified my recent close contacts about my positive test, and we have alerted our boys’ schools. After I first began to feel ill late Monday, I also canceled my Tuesday events to ensure that I did not put anyone at risk. Now that I have confirmation of my status, I will be unable to preside over Wednesday’s Dallas City Council meeting and will unfortunately have to miss other engagements this week.

“I appreciate your thoughts and prayers on behalf of my family, and I look forward to a speedy recovery so I can get back to work with my colleagues on behalf of the people of Dallas.

“In addition, I want to take this opportunity to again encourage residents of Dallas to get vaccinated if they have not yet done so — and to receive a booster shot when they are eligible. The vaccines have saved lives and can make breakthrough cases, like mine, far less severe.”

The polls are open for early voting ahead of the November 2 election, which asks voters to weigh in on changing eight laws in the bulbous state constitution. As of Monday afternoon, just 10,581 people have cast a ballot. For context, there are 1,382,054 registered voters in Dallas County, which brings our turnout to a pretty rough .76 percent.

These are always low-turnout affairs—no candidate is up for reelection—which makes approval likely. As Texas Monthly rightly noted, these are all mostly “niche interests,” even some that stand to benefit the families of military members who die during the course of their service. Find your polling place here, and remember, you can vote anywhere in Dallas County. Not just your precinct. I bet it will take you less than one minute to cast your ballot.

Here is a rundown on what you’re being asked to vote on:

COVID Update. The average number of new daily cases in Dallas County for the last two-week period is 502; for the previous two-week period, it was 811. The state of Texas is already ordering Pfizer vaccine with the expectation that the CDC will green-light shots for kids aged 8-11; that should begin in early November.

Severe Weather Possible Tonight. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth says large hail and tornadoes are possible tonight. They advise folks to secure loose objects.

JFK Assassination Files Kept Under Wraps. The FBI and CIA documents were supposed to be released today, but the Biden administration blamed the pandemic for missing the deadline. A few of the records will be released in December, and the rest will follow next year. Some in the Kennedy clan aren’t happy about the delay.

Toilet Paper, Tissue, Diapers Getting Expensive. Irving-based Kimberly-Clark, which makes tons of paper products, said yesterday that inflation and supply-chain issues aren’t letting up. Consider stockpiling Huggies even if you don’t own a baby.

Dallas Zoo Loses Second Giraffe in a Month. Auggie was 19 years old and died from age-related health issues that led to liver failure. The zoo dumped all its bad news at once by also announcing how 3-month-old Marekani was injured earlier this month, leading keepers to euthanize the animal. The calf was running with other giraffes and planted a hoof awkwardly. Another giraffe couldn’t pull up quickly enough and ran into Marekani.

Marsha Jackson was happy to see her neighborhood last week. About 50 people sat on folding chairs in a building on her neighbor’s property to see their vision for a park presented in renderings. It has taken years to get to this point, years of fighting to get the city to pay attention to the pile of shingles that grew to six stories and sat adjacent to her property. Jackson became a spokesperson for her neighborhood of Floral Farms and later a plaintiff, trying to get the courts to force someone to do something.

Eventually, they did. The city acquired the property and hired a contractor to haul off 70,000 tons of shingle detritus to the dump. The mountain is gone, but its remnants — lead in the soil “above expected background levels,” the presence of arsenic — can still be found in the dirt. After the city issued its first environmental assessment, Jackson told us that she wanted the city to “pay as much attention to the people as the property.”

One fight after another. But Jackson and her partners haven’t stopped working: they want this land to be a park. Once the shingles started piling up, it’s been tough to go outside in this part of southern Dallas, not far from the city’s southmost boundary. Jackson has had health problems, black gunk in her lungs, shortness of breath, skin rashes. Her neighbors, particularly the kids, stayed inside to try to avoid whatever was in the air.

Now they have something to look forward to. Jackson and her partners — the neighborhood association Neighbors United/Vecinos Unidos, Paul Quinn College’s Urban Research Initiative, the Inclusive Communities Project, the nonprofit environmental activists Downwinders at Risk — teamed with the Dallas-based international architecture and design firm HKS, which began planning for a park as part of its charity arm, Citizen HKS.

They spent most of the year organizing community meetings (in English and Spanish) to learn what the neighbors wanted in a park. Thursday was the community’s first chance to see their priorities visualized in renderings.

“The biggest joy was just to see the neighbors yesterday, the smiles on their faces. Usually they’re kind of quiet and shy, but it’s just different,” Jackson said Friday. “Matt, you’ve been down here. You can just see the difference. We’re a big family, and they’re finally coming out of their shell.”

The park’s renderings depicted a community garden and a soccer field. A trail runs the length of the 4.3-acre space, accented by benches and surfaces for skateboarding and shady spots to relax. There is a playground and an area for food trucks and another space for where the community can actually gather. Jackson reminded me that they don’t have sidewalks, so it’s tough to walk here, particularly considering her home on Choate Road is a tight turn off the busy State Highway 310. The proposed trail would help. HKS’ plans also include a 14-foot-tall grassy mound with seating at the bottom, representative of both the past and future.

HKS Design Researcher Erin Peavey, who led the design team, said she knew this had to be a project that healed. “You can develop beautiful renderings, but if the community wasn’t involved in making them, how do you know that’s what they’re wanting?” she said. “The power had been taken out of their hands for so long that this was about giving it back.”

We write about the shortcoming of North Texas’ car-centric urban design a lot. Last week, I pointed out how Dallas lags behind other American cities when it comes to bike infrastructure. This morning, Matt reminded us that the city still makes life for pedestrians difficult. We’ve spilled a lot of real and digital ink pushing for things like converting urban highways into boulevards and investing in better and more useful transit.

We devote so much attention to how to make our region’s cities less car-dominated because of all the benefits that come with addressing North Texas’ car-centric design. A less car dependent city would improve neighborhoods’ safety and quality of life, help regenerate inner-city growth and create new jobs, reduce the costs of transportation that contribute to inequality, and lessen the burden on taxpayers for funding a never-ending infrastructure Ponzi Scheme. One benefit we don’t focus on too often is the way in which a shift away from car-centric urban design, particularly in sprawling metros like Dallas, could play an outsized role in the effort to bring global carbon emissions in line with the goals outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement.

The BBC has a new report that looks at the role the United States’ car-centric infrastructure plays in the ongoing effort to reduce global carbon emissions. To drive home how car-centric American culture is, the BBC piece opens by dropping into Arlington, which—as we all know very well—is the largest city in the United States without any public transportation. The BBC isn’t picking on Arlington; it makes the case that the North Texas city is by no means an outlier. No matter where you live in the United States you are likely dependent on cars for all your transportation needs. Since 2017, driving has been the single largest source of greenhouse emissions in the U.S.

In 2019, more than three-quarters of American workers drove alone to work. The vast majority of their cars burn petrol, each emitting an average of 4.6 tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to the total yearly emissions of someone living in France. The US also lags behind China and Northern European countries in electric car sales – electric vehicles made up only 2% of all new cars sold in 2020 (75% of cars sold in Norway the same year were electric).

The BBC also reports that the U.S. was responsible for about a quarter of global passenger aviation emissions in 2019. Taken together it becomes clear that any attempt to substantially reduce the United States’ contribution to climate change will need to address the fact that we drive and fly virtually everywhere.

That’s not going to be easy because, as the BBC points out, since the end of World War II we’ve built a country in which it is all but impossible to use a form of transportation that isn’t a car or truck. In other words, it is not drivers who are at fault for all those emissions. Even if you wanted to give up the car and begin using other, less-impactful means of transit, in places like North Texas, the option just isn’t there. The irony, the BBC points out, is that the car has come to symbolize American freedom, and yet it has also made us slaves to a single form of transit.

It’s time we brought this series back (…for the second time). The city is buzzing and the sidewalks aren’t always accommodating. We’re back this week in Deep Ellum and both of the below images are along Main Street, the first at Trunk Avenue and the following at 2nd Avenue. Construction has torn up the sidewalks, pushing walkers into the street. And considering how walkable Deep Ellum should be, it’s a shame that there aren’t safe alternatives for pedestrians who are looking to get past this stuff.

Let’s take a look: