Notes on Density

The PBS affiliate in Dallas recently ran a little documentary – no, make that polemic – by a local artist bemoaning the death of community and how suburban development is lifeless and soulless. Nothing surprising there. I was a little surprised by the interviews with not only the author of the ubiquitous Bowling Alone, but even Andres Duany. Both of them went on, as they are wont to do, about the importance of the dense, walkable community, and how important it was to have access to shopping, etc. without being required to use a car. Nothing new there. The structure of the film was comparing the neighborhood where the maker grew up to where he moved later (Allen, TX – see my commentary on Collin County.) Fine. Good. All of this we’ve heard before, the Geography of Nowhere / Edge City / Sprawl / On Paradise Drive / Timeless Way . . . debate goes on as usual. There were even interviews of residents talking about how tight-knit and happy their community was and how it was a great cultural place. Feeling a sense of obligation, I went over one sunny Saturday afternoon to see this oasis of urban living in the great anti-urban carbuncle of Texas. It’s what I found that was telling.



This is our filmmaker’s “urban” neighborhood, from whence all of the diatribes against “the suburbs” are launched (in the center.) It’s a rectangular grid of single-story, single-family houses, isolated by a through street of mostly fences (the unnamed yellow line) on one side, heavy rail tracks on a second, a dead-end terminus street on the North (Old Gate,) and a dangerous six-lane high-speed boulevard on the fourth (Gaston Pky / Garland Road.) The lake at the top lies between this area and central Dallas, and the neighborhood is a good twenty-minute drive from both the historic and de facto centers of life in Dallas. Rapid transit is nowhere near.

Before I went, the obviously commercial parts along the two edges gave me some hope; they look promising from the air. In real life, the Old Gate complex is a very large Methodist church, a smaller church, and the derelict shell of what used to be a corner store. Nothing else. The strip along the artery is more promising, but holds things like a rough mechanic’s shop, a down-on-its-luck garden center, and a small convenience store with bars on its windows. The strip on the lake side is an actually viable neighborhood strip center, but it’s once again across a dangerous 150 foot wide traffic artery. Not exactly The New Urbanism.

Which got me thinking: The issue (explicit or not) on this guy’s mind isn’t really density – the housing is a fraction as dense as the multi-family blocks in my neighborhood (famous for being bucolic – go figure) – or even urbanity in a broad sense. It’s socio-economic and architectural. The themes referred to again and again are “we know our neighbors,” and “look at the character in these funky little houses.” It never ceases to amaze the difference between the purported issue and the actual issue. This man simply wants the people around him to be friendly (and, I’m assuming, of a non-intimidating social class) and his surroundings to be interesting. The great elephants of urbanism really don’t even factor into the equation. In fact, it continues to amuse how little many people in Texas understand what “urban” is. Christopher Alexander and friends are, I suppose, still right on the money.

But how to translate it into a buildable form?