Kirk, I REALLY appreciate the history here AND I think the case for the fix is weaker than the case against the past.
The 1916 to 1929 record is damning for Dallas. However, the 1965 R-7.5 default looks more like the national suburban template, not older denser core parts of that era (FHA lending standards, septic and drainage on newly annexed land) than a Dallas-specific racial device.
I reflexively push back on measuring Dallas against Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth. They still have open land down there. Dallas is built out. The fairer comparisons are other mature core cities like Atlanta or Los Angeles, and LA, where I've lived, shows that "more density" alone doesn't fix affordability.
On Preston Hollow, the land is expensive because low density is what people there want and pay for (they can afford that.) Allowing more units raises the value of each lot. It doesn't make the area any more affordable, which you concede.
My real worry is that citywide changes won't actully land in Preston Hollow though, ...which has deed restrictions and high powered lawyers. They'll first land first in West Dallas, Tenth Street, and Joppa, the places the old code has already hurt.
Gentle density, yes. But planned neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, by the city up front. It's slower and costs more, and a unique city deserves a unique plan, not a blanket rule. Forward Dallas 2.0 COULD'VE done that but it was rushed as a mandate by TC Broadnax to hang on his resume to impress Austin.
Thanks for reading and sharing John - I thought of you (and your blog) when I was writing the history parts. I think of the principle of "Chesterton's Fence" - you don't tear something down until you understand why the people before you built it - applies here. Relatedly, it's not enough to simply show the people that wrote these rules had some sort of racial animus, therefore they must be bad rules. I think this all goes to the point that I'm actually making in the piece (which is actually not "Dallas must get rid of minimum lot sizes / allow duplexes+", I never say that in the article, even though its probably clear where I would side on that issue), my point is that we give the current rules a dignity I do not think they have earned. I think we can glean enough about why the rules are there, in one era, racism, and in the second, the availability of land, to see that it is well time to revisit them. I end the article talking about tradeoffs, and I think that's all I am really trying to steer people to. These rules have real costs that all of us that live here pay, and whatever benefit they may have provided in a different era, those tradeoffs today are weighted towards reform.
I think you and I can find a lot of common ground on, "whatever is in place now, isn't working." And I think Dallas is a unique place...with all the history and how that was settled in some code one way or another in time.... That we CAN find an "outside the box" way to revamp zoning. Perhaps in a way that other cities would start looking to Dallas as an example for their coding issues, instead of Dallas just trying to copy elsewhere.
Kirk, I REALLY appreciate the history here AND I think the case for the fix is weaker than the case against the past.
The 1916 to 1929 record is damning for Dallas. However, the 1965 R-7.5 default looks more like the national suburban template, not older denser core parts of that era (FHA lending standards, septic and drainage on newly annexed land) than a Dallas-specific racial device.
I reflexively push back on measuring Dallas against Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth. They still have open land down there. Dallas is built out. The fairer comparisons are other mature core cities like Atlanta or Los Angeles, and LA, where I've lived, shows that "more density" alone doesn't fix affordability.
On Preston Hollow, the land is expensive because low density is what people there want and pay for (they can afford that.) Allowing more units raises the value of each lot. It doesn't make the area any more affordable, which you concede.
My real worry is that citywide changes won't actully land in Preston Hollow though, ...which has deed restrictions and high powered lawyers. They'll first land first in West Dallas, Tenth Street, and Joppa, the places the old code has already hurt.
Gentle density, yes. But planned neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, by the city up front. It's slower and costs more, and a unique city deserves a unique plan, not a blanket rule. Forward Dallas 2.0 COULD'VE done that but it was rushed as a mandate by TC Broadnax to hang on his resume to impress Austin.
Thanks for reading and sharing John - I thought of you (and your blog) when I was writing the history parts. I think of the principle of "Chesterton's Fence" - you don't tear something down until you understand why the people before you built it - applies here. Relatedly, it's not enough to simply show the people that wrote these rules had some sort of racial animus, therefore they must be bad rules. I think this all goes to the point that I'm actually making in the piece (which is actually not "Dallas must get rid of minimum lot sizes / allow duplexes+", I never say that in the article, even though its probably clear where I would side on that issue), my point is that we give the current rules a dignity I do not think they have earned. I think we can glean enough about why the rules are there, in one era, racism, and in the second, the availability of land, to see that it is well time to revisit them. I end the article talking about tradeoffs, and I think that's all I am really trying to steer people to. These rules have real costs that all of us that live here pay, and whatever benefit they may have provided in a different era, those tradeoffs today are weighted towards reform.
I think you and I can find a lot of common ground on, "whatever is in place now, isn't working." And I think Dallas is a unique place...with all the history and how that was settled in some code one way or another in time.... That we CAN find an "outside the box" way to revamp zoning. Perhaps in a way that other cities would start looking to Dallas as an example for their coding issues, instead of Dallas just trying to copy elsewhere.