Last week, I was really
provoked by urban designer Patrick Kennedy's assertion that the center of Dallas had moved north to or near Richardson.
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.
My takeaway? That Richardson needed to adopt Kennedy's strategy for Dallas: Densification. Transit. Walkability. I stand by that.
But today, I want to back up a little. Is Kennedy on to something when he says the "center of town" is up near Richardson? Kinda. There's no doubt that significant development in last half century has happened north of Dallas and continues to this day. But, let's face it. Richardson is located somewhere near the geographic center of the area from downtown Dallas to McKinney and Frisco, but it lacks the urban core that most people think of when they think of the "center of town." Dallas is going to remain the "center of town" no matter how much decay it suffers from.
After the jump, what Richardson is instead.