Dallas-blogging, the end (Sat. and Sun.)
SUNDAY
Sunday morning I checked out of my hotel and took a bus, then a train downtown - and there my long walk through intown Dallas began (according to Mapquest I walked about 9 miles).
I began (and ended at night) by walking through downtown Dallas. 17 years ago I had a job interview in downtown Dallas and thought it was the worst place on Earth: I remember that at 7 PM there was no place to eat but a Wendy's that was about to close. But today things are greatly improved in the commercial core: there are apartments and condos here and there (mostly on Main Street), there are a few bars and convenience stores, and there's a downtown CVS that's open all the way till 9 PM! Compared to Chicago or Philadelphia, not much to brag about. But compared to Dallas in 1992 or Little Rock today, a big improvement. I would say that downtown Dallas is even a little better than downtown Jacksonville or Atlanta (though only marginally so). I didn't walk around after dark so I can't vouch for that experience; however, at sunset it did not seem totally lifeless- there were some bars/restaurants open, and there were a few people about as long as you stayed in the core of the core and didn't wander too far off in the wrong direction.
Then (after a stop at Dealey Plaza and a snack on the infamous grassy knoll) I started walking around the new neighborhoods at the fringes of downtown Dallas, going northwest to West End, which I thought would be a thriving historic/entertainment district like Larimer Square in Denver. I was partially right: the physical look was a bit like Larimer Square (old red brick buildings, mostly restaurants etc but a little residential) but it was definitely smaller, more tourist-oriented and less prosperous- a shopping mall there, West End Marketplace, had just closed. Maybe the revitalization of the downtown core (and of some other areas) has removed West End's reason for existence.
Then I walked a bit north to Victory Park, a very different kind of new development: new high- and mid-rises, both residential and commercial. Nothing quaint about it, but very utilitarian if you work at one of the commercial high-rises and can afford to live in one of the residential ones. It reminded me a bit of Midtown Atlanta around 14th Street, sterile but convenient.
Then I decided to make my way to Uptown, Dallas' urban satellite downtown (kind of like Atlanta's Midtown). I expected to see something like Victory Park- lots of skyscrapers. There were a few here and there, but it resembled Midtown Atlanta more than anything else- some tall commercial buildings, but lots of small late 19th-c and early 20th-c. houses (about half of which seemed to have been converted into professional offices), lots of restaurants and small shops with small parking lots or parking in back.
The major difference between Uptown and Atlanta's Midtown is that everything seemed a little more jumbled: in Midtown Atlanta, the high-rises seem to be concentrated around subway stops, while in Dallas they seem to randomly crop up here and there. It also seemed like more houses had been converted to offices in the Dallas version.
But otherwise lots of similarity: in both places, there isn't a uniform street wall, since some businesses front the street while others are behind a few yards of parking. I'm not sure to what extent these differences are the result of different zoning policies, or whether something else is involved. Atlanta's Midtown seems more coherent but also more sterile.
My original plan was to walk from Uptown to the DART light rail (dart.org), then make my way to the Deep Ellum neighborhood, then onward to the inner suburbs. But instead I saw some interesting-looking high rises in the distance. So I walked from there to a very nice looking street called Turtle Creek, which is mostly residential high rises (by which I mean 10-20 stories, not real skyscapers) adjoining a very nice park. After a few blocks of this, I looked at my map and noticed I was a lot closer to Highland Park (the suburb I was interested in) than I expected.
So I decided to walk north to Highland Park instead of east towards the light rail. And I have one thing to say about Highland Park: WOW! A super-rich, super-safe* suburb with sidewalks on every block! And grid streets! And bus routes (OK, not that many, and only north-south heading towards downtown as opposed to within the neighborhood)! And even a light rail within walking distance (though only at the eastern edge of the town near SMU)! And it is really, really beautiful- big houses a uniform 10 or 20 feet (i.e. not preposterously far) from the street, kind of like Rosedale in Toronto.
Only downside from a new urbanist perspective (other than, of course, its high level of social homogenity and sheer expensiveness) is mixed use: most commercial uses are at the fringes of the town, so walkscore.com ratings (which measure mixed use) tend to be in the 50s, not horrible but not great either.
There is no place in Atlanta which compares: Ansley Park is similar in that it is a well-off 20s neighborhood, but it isn't as large or as rich, has dreadfully complex curvilinear streets, and I suspect is closer to marginal neighborhoods (and of course does not have the advantage of being an independent municipality). Buckhead is more comparable socio-economically, but you can't count on sidewalks in Buckhead, let alone grids or public transit or walkability in any way, shape or form.
Then I walk to SMU at the edge of Highland Park, and cross a highway to get to Mockingbird light rail station- but I have one more neighborhood to go before I head south to Deep Ellum and downtown, the "M Streets" (aka Greenland Hills) near Greenville Avenue (so named becuase many of the east-west streets begin with the letter M). These are like a Highland Park for people priced out of Highland Park : built in the 20s, grid streets, bungalows that scream "cute" in ways that I find hard to describe without photographs (lots of house photos at http://www.mstreetscd.org/database/tour.asp - just click on any street to see the houses). Only downside: narrower north-south streets didn't have sidewalks; since there are no houses fronting on the east-west streets, my guess is that the idiot who built the subdivision thought of them more as alleys than streets. So if you are in a situation where you really shouldn't be walking on grass (e.g. wheelchair user) you'd be well advised to go on the east-west streets to Greenville Avenue (the commercial north-south street which DOES have sidewalks) and then go back to your east-west destination.
Like Uptown, the M Streets gave me a massive attack of deja vu: they really, really remind me of Atlanta's Morningside. If you want to see the latter area, go on Google Street View and start looking around, oh, 1300 N. Highland and higher numbers, or maybe East Rock Springs.
Similarly, Greenville Avenue reminds me of the commercial part of Highland Avenue (lower numbers if you are using Street View)- basically low-rise and pedestrian-friendly, but not an even street wall: some buildings front the street, others set back behind small parking lots, so it seems a little less orderly than either a purely urban commercial strip where everything fronts the street or a purely suburban area where every building is set back behind yards of parking.
Then finally, I went back to Mockingbird station and I grabbed a bus that I hoped would take me to Deep Ellum, which I vaguely knew was a once-hot, entertainment- and bohemian-oriented area full of late 19th-c. buildings. Though I had a regional bus map it wasn't very clear about where Deep Ellum was: the neighborhood was unfortunately a few blocks too far east to be in the map's "downtown inset" yet too close in to be easily locatable in the regionwide map- perhaps a sign of the trouble that lay ahead. The bus dropped me off at around the 2000 block of Main, where downtown ended, and about six blocks from Deep Ellum. Those six blocks were a serious urban wasteland; I don't think I saw a single human being between where I got off and about the 2500 or 2600 block of Main- and frankly I didn't want to. There was an expressway overpass and vacant lots on either side of it.
Then when I got to Deep Ellum it wasn't much better; I think I saw about 1 or 2 people per block. There were a few tattoo parlors and a couple of restaurants open, but lots of vacant storefronts, or maybe just places open Friday and Saturday night and closed for the rest of the week. Rather than trying to figure out when the nearest bus arrived, I decided I would walk back to downtown as soon as I could and hope for the best- I don't think I've ever felt as happy to be downtown in my life!
Not being very knowledgeable about Dallas, I'm not sure what went wrong in Deep Ellum; my impression, based on what I have read and heard, is that at one time it was more popular. My guess is that transportation might have had something to do with it: the fact that it was cut off from downtown by the expressway and no-man's land nearby was never an advantage, and the light rail (and McKinney Avenue trolley serving Uptown) may have meant that Deep Ellum suddenly had to compete with other intown entertainment districts that were more easily accessible. At any rate, don't waste time going to Deep Ellum; its a hassle to get to without a car and its too yucky and vacant to be worth seeing.
On balance, Dallas reminds me more of Atlanta than I expected: a sprawling Sun Belt city, but with some OK intown and near-intown places. Dallas's sidewalks and street grids make parts of Dallas more walkable than Atlanta; on the other hand, Dallas streets tend to be wider than those of Atlanta, which is a disadvantage for pedestrians.
*At least for a suburb this close to downtown. You can find data at city-data.com; basically, robberies per 10,000 residents (not to be confused with the actual number) range from 1-6 per year, while Decatur, GA, the closest-in Atlanta suburb, typically has between 10-20.
SATURDAY
Since I'm shomer shabbat (which means that I don't drive or ride on Friday night or Saturday) I didn't have many travel adventures on Saturday; I walked to shul (Shaarey Tefilla, a modern Orthodox shul in suburban North Dallas) and hung around that neighborhood all day. Without going into details that would be boring to non-religious readers, I was quite favorably impressed with Shaarey Tefilla.
I was not, however, impressed with its location. One of the worst things about Dallas, from my point of view, is that there is no opportunity for an observant Jewish urban life- not only is there no synagogue in Dallas' intown neighborhoods, there isn't even a synagogue in the Park Cities (Dallas's elite close-in suburbs).
The closest-in synagogue (Reform) is 6 miles from downtown, the closest-in Conservative is 7, the closest-in Orthodox 9 or 10. By contrast, even in Atlanta, the Sprawl Capital of the World, you can find synagogues of all types 2 or 3 miles out (Chabad Intown is about 2 miles from downtown, and Reform, non-Chabad Orthodox and Conservative congregations can all be found about 3 miles away).*
By my "Jewish Urbanism" criteria (discussed in http://planetizen.com/node/39364 ) Dallas gets a C- : you can walk to shul and take the bus to work - but its going to be a long ride, about 45 minutes to downtown from where I spent Shabbat)
Posted by lewyn
at 10:43 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 6 July 2009 11:45 AM EDT
