Secret Hope for Old Richardson

Are big things in store for old downtown Richardson?

In November, the council approved zoning changes to facilitate a large expansion of the Afrah restaurant, including a market center and plaza.

In January, the council approved doing a Main Street/Central Expressway study to create a redevelopment and reinvestment strategy for the area.

In April, secret doings in city council. More after the jump.

Market Failure

Mention "Great Depression" to most Americans and what do they think of? High unemployment and poverty, certainly. ("I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." -- FDR.) What they might not think of is failure of the free market. But at the time, it was a different story. There was serious doubt about the viability of America's free market economic system, whose failure was on such dramatic display. There was an alternative system that was increasingly attractive to many Americans, the revolutionary communist system in the Soviet Union ("I have seen the future and it works." -- Lincoln Steffens.)

But in the end, Americans of the day rejected revolution and communism. Americans of our time forget, or never learned, that that wasn't inevitable. We can thank the success of FDR's New Deal in creating a safety net for those suffering the most from the failure of the free market. And on the other side of the coin, the totalitarian nature of communism in the Soviet Union gradually became clear to Americans. With the atomic bomb and ICBMs, the USSR posed an existential threat to the US. Partly in reaction to the threat of Soviet communism, memory of the failure of the free market during the Great Depression faded and was replaced by its opposite, a glorification of the free market. It became a matter of self-evident truth: the free market could do no wrong.

The pendulum had swung too far. After the jump, restoring some balance.

Return of the Dead: Trinity Tollway Edition

Dead development projects have a way of coming back to life and haunting their cities forevermore. Last week, it was a plan for a self-service warehouse on Arapaho Rd in Richardson that the city council dragged out of its grave and plopped down in the middle of a commercial and residential neighborhood just down the street from city hall, where it will haunt Richardson for twenty years.

But the mother of all living dead projects has to be Dallas's plan to lay a freeway down inside the levees of the Trinity River. No matter how many studies reveal that to be a disaster waiting to happen, the powers that be in Dallas keep finding a way to keep breathing life into that zombie development project.

After the jump, a dream that won't die, a dream to counter these nightmares.

Spring in the Steger Garden (2012)

From Flowers

Clicking for Charity

Maybe I just missed the start of this trend, but it seems like a lot of charitable funding decisions are being turned over to online voting. That leads to get-out-the-vote campaigns by champions of those charities.

What better way to drum up online support than through Twitter? After the jump, three tweets with a Richardson connection that caught my attention recently.

Review: One Amazing Thing

Amazon

From One Amazing Thing, Chitra Divakaruni:


I screwed up my life big-time, a lot of ways. Did a lot of stupid stuff. But at least I saw one amazing thing."

 
 
 
  One Amazing Thing is the "Richardson Reads One Book" pick for 2012. It's a disaster novel (an earthquake traps a diverse cast of characters in the visa office of the Indian consulate in an unnamed American city). It's an uplifting morality play (victims, in turn, tell stories of events that changed their lives). It's short. It's an easy read. It would make a good book to take to the beach this summer.

After the jump, my review.

Richardson is in a Back-Alley Fight

If you are not in the habit of reading Jim Schutze in the Dallas Observer, you are missing the one must-read columnist in Dallas journalism. Not that he's always right (although he's right more than he's wrong), but he avoids the false equivalence that is standard in most journalism today (in the name of "balance"). Schutze always has a point of view and he's not afraid to let you know what it is, no matter whose feathers he ruffles while making it. No, that's not quite it. Making a point seems to be only a means to an end for Schutze. It's more like ruffling feathers itself is his main purpose. No, that's not it, either. Schutze aims at more than ruffling feathers. He wants to de-feather, de-skin, and de-bone his target altogether. You get the point. It's no accident that Schutze's column in Unfair Park is accompanied by a photo of Schutze pointing the barrel of a gun at the reader. Anyway, let me allow Schutze to speak for himself, to show you what I mean.

It's a simple challenge. Jefferey Muhammad, I call you a chicken-shit liar. Prove me wrong.

Source: Unfair Park.

After the jump, what Schutze thinks of Richardson (and every other suburb of Dallas).

Good Friday at Dallas Blooms

From 2012 04 Dallas Blooms

More photos after the jump.

Repeat Tweets: Texas's History, Richardson's Future

Repeat tweets from March, 2012:

• 2012 03 01 - March is Texas History Month in honor of those Texans who gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the New Testament.
  
• 2012 03 01 - Headline: "Patients often unhappy with new Texas sonogram law." News that isn't news.
  
• 2012 03 02 - It was 176 years ago today that immigrants declared independence from Mexico and created the Republic of Texas.
  
• 2012 03 02 - "Attention Young People: Move to Richardson Now!" It's an ad, but still true. http://t.co/CjJD52uP
  
• 2012 03 02 - Richardson's TOD can't get here soon enough. Matthew Yglesias on the nationwide shortage of apartments: https://t.co/PBeKyWyH
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

OTBR: Rabbit Tracks in Finland

Latitude: 66.5376° N
Longitude: 25.7216° E


A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".