Dallas city core development hindered by roadways
Downtown Dallas, it’s the heart of the city, which is the commercial hub of Dallas County and the third largest city in Texas and the ninth largest in the entire United States. Yet, this area’s full potential has been hindered by a zoning decision in the 1980s that saw major freeways routed through the city and created a complex ring of highways (the Dallas freeway loop) around the core downtown area.
This ‘concrete ring’ has become a major impediment to further development of the area. Downtown Dallas has been undergoing something of a residential transformation, new apartments and high-rise condominiums have transformed the area from a purely commercial one into an increasingly mixed zone with a growing population of permanent residents.
At the moment, there are just a few thousand permanent residents in the core downtown area and around 30,000 in the greater downtown areas, with the potential for more residents of Dallas to be attracted to the city’s core, but the ring has increasingly been identified as an obstacle. There are a number of reasons why the highway ring around downtown is unpleasant.
Because of the geography of the city, there are parts of the highway that are elevated above street level and other parts that are sunk beneath street level. On the north side of downtown, for example, Woodall Rogers is sunken while the I 30 also lies beneath street level in the south. Conversely, on the east side, the interchange for Central, Woodall Rodgers and Interstates 30 and 45 is elevated, creating a number of underpasses.
These design features break up the downtown area and separate it physically from other parts of the city, making it feel isolated and socially disconnected, which hinders residential growth because of what Veletta Lill, executive director of the Dallas Arts District calls a “need to create connectivity with surrounding neighborhoods”.
Veletta Lill is a former member of the City Council and she blames the current situation downtown on a planning logic in the 1980s and 90s that is no longer applicable today.
“There were different urban planning theories at that time that we know today discourage pedestrian and mass transit and denser forms of housing,” Lill told Dallas news provider, The Dallas Morning News, adding that people nowadays want neighborhoods that are free flowing.
A number of projects downtown are intended to mitigate the mess created by the downtown freeway loop. In areas where the highways are sunken, for example, deck parks can be created, thereby bridging separated communities.
This is the plan for the sunken part of Woodall Rogers on the north side, a $118 million park will sit atop a deck that will be built across the sunken freeway, thereby creating a tunnel for motorists and a large open urban park for residents, while connecting disjointed neighborhoods at the same time.
Uptown and the Arts District are the two areas that will be directly joined by the park, which will be completed by 2012 and is being funded through both public and private means, according to Dallas news reports.
In the east, where the elevated interchange has created dark and sometimes unsafe underpasses a number of community groups are working to clean up the area, getting rid of rubbish and literally cleaning the area of vulgar graffiti and painting the bland pillars with bright local art works. They are also pursuing options for putting better lighting in place to deter nefarious anti-social behavior.
The Deep Ellum Foundation is one of the groups pushing to have colorful LED light displays installed in the underpasses in order to remove the intimidating aspect of the gateways, which are meant to connect communities but deter pedestrian traffic because of their atmosphere.
These are some of the short-term projects in place in Downtown Dallas, but with a greater sense of community and pride in one’s city catching on, residents hope that these projects will lay the groundwork for more clean-up and fixer-upper efforts to broaden the appeal of the city’s core.
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Dallas city core development hindered by roadways
The Dallas freeway loop is a series of highways that wrap round the center of Downtown Dallas, built at a time when the inter-connectivity of neighborhoods was not yet appreciated, but with changing attitudes, a series of projects are underway to enhance the appeal of downtown.
Downtown Dallas, it’s the heart of the city, which is the commercial hub of Dallas County and the third largest city in Texas and the ninth largest in the entire United States. Yet, this area’s full potential has been hindered by a zoning decision in the 1980s that saw major freeways routed through the city and created a complex ring of highways (the Dallas freeway loop) around the core downtown area. Read more
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