In October I was in Dallas for a transportation planning conference. I'd never visited Dallas before, so it was an interesting chance to see the city. Here are my photos, with a few thoughts attached.
Downtown:
I was surprised to not find any part of downtown Dallas where there seemed to be a critical mass of cafes, shopping, or nightlife. Maybe I just missed that street (I didn't have a local to tell me where to go). Not that I expected Manhattan, but I did maybe expect it to be more like downtown Denver.
I love this:
You'll see more light rail in part 2.
The park-built-atop-a-highway is nice.
Uptown:
I asked several Dallas natives where they'd live if they wanted to be in a walkable, transit-oriented neighborhood, and every one of them to a tee listed Uptown as their top preferred answer. Naturally, I went to check that out.
It's a pretty fascinating place, simply because it's so new. It appears that a lot of the recent urban-format residential infill in Dallas has gone to uptown. I don't know what it looked like 20 or 50 years ago, but it's clear that it's a lot different today than it was in the 20th Century--in a good way. Oh, it's still transitioning. I still saw a lot of surface parking lots, especially at things like grocery stores that are typically slower to welcome urban-format layouts. But it's clearly in the middle of a seismic shift.
Actually, more than anything, Uptown reminds me of Arlington, VA: Clearly this was suburban a generation ago, but there's been enough recent infill that it doesn't feel that way any more. And it's legit urban infill, not an isolated new urbanist town center.
Nice details for a recently-built building:
Deep Ellum:
I'd heard of Deep Ellum before arriving, and expected it to be the answer to my question from above. Nobody said Deep Ellum, which surprised me. When I finally went there, I understood why nobody said it: It's walkable, but it's mostly commercial. Nobody said it because people *go* there, but not a lot of people *live* there.
The Cedars:
I stayed in an Airbnb in The Cedars neighborhood just east of downtown, which clearly used to be the ghetto but is now transitioning to be more middle class. This was my street, one block from a light rail station. The modern rowhouses are interesting and were nice inside, but the giant garages and gated entry were off-putting.
Texas State Fair:
Now this place is cool. Art-deco with a western flair. This was the highlight of the city for me.
This seems... unintentionally appropriate.
Only in Texas (and maybe Detroit) does the artwork glorify cars.
We do get trains too.
See you in part 2.
Linear Mode
