It was a very Portland kind of thing to do in an inner Dallas neighbourhood:
Citizens taking their streets back? That is exactly what happened as local activists in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas created their very own complete street.
The back story is that a week before, they were able to shut down the street completely (and without warning)
and set up outdoor cafes and coffee bars. This survived for two hours until police came and shut it down, stating definitively that “streets are for cars.”
A week later, emboldened with positive local press, the wink-wink nod-nod approval of the local councilperson (who sent along an officer to observe), this time they created their own complete street. The result? Businesses did better than ever and the community came out in droves of all ages to do little more than socialize and enjoy their day with the rest of the community. A true neighborhood center was created.
I was struck by the location of the neighbourhood – just on the other side of the Trinity River from downtown Dallas, obviously a turn-of-the-(19th)-century streetcar development, still largely intact but looking rundown. (The traffic-calmed block on Tyler Street is in the red circle.)
It also seems evident that the City had turned the avenues along which the streetcars originally ran into traffic arterials. And the little villages that had popped up along the streetcar lines had been devastated.
The “For Lease” sign and blank storefronts are unfortunately too typical. It seems obvious that the sidewalks had been narrowed when the street was widened, and whatever trees existed were also removed
What seems odd (and would certainly strike a Portlander) is the lost opportunity: for small businesses, for jobs, for neighbourhood-serving revitalization. It would be like Vancouver trying to turn Main Street or Commercial Drive into nothing more than de-facto highways, and preventing the kind of vitality that characterizes them today.
But streetcar neighbourhoods are good at reinventing themselves. And that appears to be happening in parts of Oak Cliff, like this neighbourhood centre on Bishop Street:
The irony, of course, is that a Texas city – with its libertarian, free-enterprise culture – would actually discourage such attempts to reclaim a street by its own citizens. Another case where Motordom triumphs over ideology – and common sense.
Thanks to Scot Bathgate.
