Dallas, City of Walkers: With comprehensive plan, it could happen

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

“Changing fundamental concepts about what a city should be isn't easy. Giving up the idea that an instantly available parking space is the highest good a human being can aspire to – even if it gives our city more holes than Swiss cheese – will require real fortitude.”

Urban planning has its trends, not unlike the changing fashions in clothing, music or television series. Except the decisions made by urban planners are with us for decades. Decisions made 50 years ago to cater to Americans' love affair with the automobile have left us with an urban landscape where cars are a necessity, even for the many who may have fallen out of love with the fossil-fuel guzzling, air polluting, road clogging vehicles. The spreading hiking/biking trails in the suburbs and the development of urban centers surrounding DART stations are a couple signs that fashions are changing. The town hall meetings in which Dallas residents are asking for a "denser, greener, more architecturally varied, more walkable Dallas" could be the start of a new trend for downtown Dallas. Good, because the old ways are starting to look pretty unfashionable.