Dog Parks and Skate Parks

Dog Parks and Skate Parks? Meh.

This is the result when you have a 12 part vision statement and 57 near-term action items. You lack a sense of priority.

Return of the Dead: Warehouse Edition

Remember when the Richardson City Council rejected a request to build a self-service warehouse on Arapaho Rd west of Custer Rd? The vote was four to three to kill the proposal.

Here's what I thought in December about a warehouse in that location:

The other request is for rezoning for a self-service warehouse with outside vehicle storage (boats, motor homes, etc.) on Arapaho Rd west of Custer Rd. That's right in a shopping center, across the street from a shopping center, just down the street from the Civic Center. A few years ago, the city thought parked boats and motor homes were such an eyesore that the city council passed an ordinance restricting home owners from parking their recreational vehicles at their houses. The city also spent years buying up aging homes across Arapaho Rd from the Civic Center and tearing them down. Why in the world would the city now agree to zoning that would allow a self-service warehouse, with boats and motor homes parked outdoors, to be built in a shopping center, near a residential neighborhood, and just down the street from the Civic Center? Here's another use destined to destroy any hope that this aging retail neighborhood can be revived.

Source: The Wheel.

Like I said, the council rejected the rezoning request. After the jump, an update. Spoiler alert: like in all good zombie movies, the dead don't stay dead.

Tear Down Central Expressway - update

Regular readers know of my quixotic dream to rip up North Central Expressway from LBJ Freeway to the President George Bush Turnpike and replace it with a grand central boulevard for Richardson -- human-scaled, walkable, lined with trees and sidewalk cafes, designed for pedestrians, not just cars.

I know this is a pipe dream, but I like to think of it as just a larger-scale version of smaller steps Richardson has already taken to impede the flow of traffic elsewhere. For example, the intersection at Campbell Rd and West Shore Dr at the entrance to UT-Dallas is a messy maze of turn lanes designed with a single purpose in mind -- to keep drivers from going directly from UT-Dallas onto West Shore Dr (or vice versa). For another example, where N Collins Blvd meets Renner Rd, it has been completely blocked off to prevent drivers from going directly from Renner Rd or Alma Rd to N Collins Blvd (or vice versa). For a third example, Grove Rd, where it intersects Centennial Blvd, has been narrowed to one lane -- by the addition of a bike lane and by the construction of a bottleneck at the intersection. The goal there is to discourage drivers from proceeding north on Audelia Rd across Centennial Blvd onto Grove Rd.

Given these concrete examples of Richardson deliberately impeding traffic in order to, presumably, increase the livability of the neighborhoods cut off by these actions, should I really be faulted for dreaming big and imagining something similar happening to North Central Expressway?

After the jump, news from the rest of world that keeps hope alive.

Hookah Story Mostly Hokem

"Hookah boom in Richardson causes concerns about underage smoking."

That's the headline to a story in The Dallas Morning News by Ann Marie Shambaugh. Go read the story. Read it again. Does the story support the headline?

After the jump, trying to find some fire beneath all the smoke.

Better Parking, Better Cities

Source: Google Maps.

What's missing from the photo above? It's an aerial photo of Lijiang, Yunnan, China. There are a lot of rooftops. A lot. But where are the streets? It turns out the streets are there. What's really missing are the cars. Eliminate the cars and the streets don't need to take up much space. They can be people-sized. The photo below shows what I mean.

From 2012 03 Lijiang

OK, maybe that's too much for most of us. After the jump, steps we can take, without needing to eliminate cars, to make urban settings more adapted to humans, not just their cars.

Rows of Vegetables or Rows of Cars

Source: Garden Cafe.

I went to a garden party last weekend. Literally, a garden party. I had dinner on the patio of the vegetable garden of the Garden Cafe in East Dallas. What once was a rundown, dilapidated, decaying (you get the idea, right?) old shopping center is now a neighborhood gem serving breakfast, lunch and, by pre-arrangement, dinner, with meals of some of the freshest local produce around.

After the jump, what's wrong with this picture?

Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge

From 2012 03 Lijiang

A three hour bus trip north of Dali, on a two-lane twisty mountain highway, was our last stop on spring break, the UNESCO world heritage site of Lijiang, Yunnan, China. The modern city of Lijiang has over a million residents, but the old city, where tourists congregate, is a delightful, walkable maze of narrow alleyways, canals and bridges. The Dongba culture of the Naxi people is on display, in pictographs and music, as well as embroidery and popular fare such as yak meat.

Lijiang's latitude puts it somewhere south of Corpus Christi, but its 7,800 feet of elevation gives Lijiang a mild climate. The mountains are never far from sight. A classic image of Lijiang is of the Black Dragon Pool, with a temple and bridge in the foreground and the towering Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the background. The mountain forms one side of the Tiger Leaping Gorge, a breathtaking narrow canyon with steep mountain sides through which flows the Jinsha River, the upper reaches of the Yangtze. It's a popular destination of backpackers. We took a shortcut -- a drive along a highway carved out of the side of the gorge to Tina's guest house in the middle gorge, then a three hour hike down and back up a ridiculously steep trail to the river.

After three nights in Lijiang, we were up at 4:30 am to go to the Lijiang airport for a short flight to Kunming, followed by a longer flight back to Shanghai. The next day, we took the long flight to Chicago, followed by a connecting flight to DFW airport. Memories of our Yunnan vacation are as close as my cell phone, where I still have the "Tibetan Cafe" on my phone's list of Wi-Fi hotspots. I can look at the "Tibetan Cafe - out of range" indicator and sigh with warm memories.

More photos from Lijiang after the jump.

Dali, Yunnan, China

From 2012 03 Dali

After touring the Stone Forest in Kunming, we were dropped off at the Kunming west bus station to catch a bus for the four hour ride to Dali, one hundred sixty miles west of Kunming. We walked in, bought tickets for the next bus, and waited only fifteen minutes before departure. There's much to be said about the intercity travel options in China. (The toilet facilities in the older bus stations of China are something else again, but here, too, China is rapidly modernizing.)

Yunnan province might be the most ethnically diverse in China. Dali is the ancient capital of the Bai kingdom. Its walled old city is the main tourist attraction and where we stayed. The old city is laid out in a neat grid pattern, of which the north-south pedestrian-only Fuxing Road contains the best shopping and the east-west pedestrian-only Huguo and Renmin Roads contain the most restaurants. We ate in the "Bad Monkey" and the "Tibetan Cafe," typical of the small, slightly seedy nature of the area, catering to young Westerners, including many backpackers who are attracted to Yunnan's hiking trails. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the old hippie culture, updated with ubiquitous Wi-Fi. By the way, China seems to block social networks like Twitter and Facebook altogether and even Gmail is hit or miss. Sometimes you can connect, sometimes you can't.

About a mile from the old city are the Three Pagodas, a complex of Buddhist temples, the oldest of which dates back about twelve hundred years. The temples stretch up the mountainside, unveiling themselves one by one as you walk the complex. In a separate location there's a cable car you can ride halfway up the mountain to a trail and guest house. The cable car was closed the day we attempted it, so we can only imagine the views.

More photos from Dali after the jump.

Kunming and the Stone Forest

From 2012 03 Kunming

Kunming is twelve hundred miles southwest of Shanghai. Its climate is ideal. It's on the same latitude as Miami, Florida, but with the elevation of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Kunming is one of the seemingly countless number of huge, sprawling cities in China. It has a population of 3 million (or 6 million, depending on how broadly you define the metropolitan area). If Americans know anything of Kunming, it might be from WWII history. Kunming was the base from which the Allies supported the efforts of Free China to resist the Japanese invasion. The main supply route was the Burma Road from Rangoon to Kunming, defended by American fighter squadrons known as the Flying Tigers.

Kunming was the starting point for our vacation in Yunnan Province. We spent an afternoon in the city. We strolled the delightful Green Lake Park and ate on the street-side patio of one of the restaurants across from the park. The next morning we visited the main target of our stay in Kunming, the Stone Forest, a national scenic area about 75 miles away. Supposedly, there's an old saying, "If you have visited Kunming without seeing the Stone Forest, you have wasted your time." We didn't partake of enough of Kunming's other attractions to vouch for the truth of that, but our time in the Stone Forest was definitely not wasted.

More photos from Kunming after the jump.

Shanghai, the Adventure Begins

From 2012 03 Shanghai

Our spring break vacation began and ended in Shanghai. Last year we spent a couple of days there. But this year, Shanghai was only our jumping off point. We spent more time in the airport, taxis and subway trains than in the city itself. So, this first installment of our spring break trip report is a short one.

We took the Shanghai Metro subway from our hotel out near Pudong airport to downtown. It took about an hour. It cost 5 yuan (about 75 cents) for a one-way fare. It was new, clean, fast, convenient. It was crowded, but not packed. It's the kind of system that America could use more of.

More photos from Shanghai after the jump.