I detect the influence of Larry Beasley here, who has been doing some consulting in Dallas.
Five years ago, a trip on foot over the busy freeway that separates downtown Dallas from neighboring Uptown would have required a bit of courage. …
Today, the traffic still flows below, but the same trip takes a pedestrian past fields of picnicking families, a dog park and a putting green.
Completed in 2012, the five-acre Klyde Warren Park (right) was built on a platform over the freeway, providing a walkable link between the two urban centers.
The bustling patch of urban parkland may seem unlikely in a state still largely seen as a sprawling, highway-laced land of car-centric cities and dispersed suburbs. But advocates for more pedestrian-friendly urban cores and communities say interest in making Texas cities more walkable, as Dallas has attempted downtown, is on the rise — a subtle shift spurred in part by changing demographics and the state’s growing population. …
“Millennials are very interested in urbanism and walkable communities as well as being active in trying to create change,” said Patrick Kennedy, an urban planner in Dallas who develops walkable communities.
At the same time, as in the rest of the country, the state’s older population is growing. Walkable communities offer more mobility for seniors no longer willing or able to drive, and many empty nesters now want to live closer to everyday amenities …
In Harris County, which includes Houston, traffic and demographic changes have helped propel a shift in housing preferences, said Stephen L. Klineberg, a director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. …
According to an annual survey of Harris County residents by the institute, the proportion who said they would prefer to live in a smaller home close to shops and workplaces to one with a big yard in a neighborhood where they would need to drive almost everywhere rose to 51 percent in 2012 from 36 percent in 2008.
