Further Thoughts on the Center of Dallas

Yesterday, I mused on the implications of an assertion by urban designer Patrick Kennedy:

The center of town has shifted to swaths of 635 and 75 up through Plano. The center of town is no longer Dallas, but the North Dallas border.

Source: StreetSmart.

Kennedy had a prescription for how Dallas could wrestle the center of town back south to Dallas: Densification. Transit. Walkability. The implications to me were that Richardson needed to steal a page from Kennedy's playbook in order to hold the center of town in Richardson.

Being the center means that there is something in all directions. Today let's complete a tour d'horizon.

Center of Dallas is Now in Richardson

Professional urban designer (and unprofessional gadfly) Patrick Kennedy makes an audacious claim about Dallas in the D Magazine blog StreetSmart:

My fundamental point of this work and one I make over and over again in my various presentations is that we’ve been applying suburban thinking to the downtown area, which has in effect, forced it to compete with the suburbs. That’s a fight it cannot win. And has effectively suburbanized it (while ruralizing South Dallas as Peter Simek has correctly pointed out) as the center of town has shifted to swaths of 635 and 75 up through Plano. The center of town is no longer Dallas, but the North Dallas border.

Source: StreetSmart.

Kennedy doesn't say by what measure the center of town has moved north (population? economic activity? traffic? world classiness?), so it's impossible to confirm or falsify the audacious claim. But Kennedy is the unofficial leader of the "tear down IH345" movement in Dallas as well as a member in good standing of the "Kill The Trinity Tollroad Project." He makes a living from this stuff (or, if not from his gadfly work for D Magazine, at least from other stuff related to urban design). So, when he says, "I do know cities," we probably ought to listen. So, let's make him king for a day and just assume he does know what he's talking about. Let's just assume he's right -- the center of Dallas is now somewhere in or near Richardson -- and consider the implications.

Overtime: Richardson 71, Mesquite Horn 65

From 2015 01 06 Mesquite Horn vs Richardson

What a game! The Richardson Eagles men's basketball team defeated Mesquite Horn 71-65 in overtime Tuesday night in the Eagles gym. There was never more than a one point difference in the score at the end of each quarter. But someone had to win and eventually the Eagles prevailed in overtime. With the win, the Eagles move to 2-0 in District 10-6A while the Jaguars drop to 0-2. Don't expect the Jaguars to stay down long.

More after the jump.

OTBR: Tidal Waters in New South Wales

Latitude: S 32° 11.538
Longitude: E 152° 27.480

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".

North South Divide In Richardson

The north gets CityLine and Palisades Village. (I've had some reservations about some of the details of these developments (ahem), but I do like their scale and density.) The south gets a restaurant row (maybe), a 7-Eleven gas station and now (maybe) yet another drive-through fast food restaurant.

File No./Name: ZF 14-39 / Drive-thru Restaurant
Property Owner: Jason Ricks / BH Dallas Portfolio LLC
Applicant: Jarrod Blake
Location: 811 S. Central Expressway (See map on reverse side)
Current Zoning: C-M Commercial with special conditions
Request: A request for a change in zoning from C-M Commercial with special conditions to PD Planned Development to allow a restaurant with drive-through service and other site modifications on property located at 811 S. Central Expressway, the northeast corner of Central Expressway and Spring Valley Road.

Source: City of Richardson.

After the jump, what's going on here?