Thumbing through our copy of this past Sunday's Dallas Morning News--a.k.a., "All the news we've already read online at CNN.com, ap.org, and espn.com"--we came upon a revelation: Once a decade, the DMN shows some balls.
This discovery was made by reading every word of Section E, a special project titled "The Global City: The road ahead for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolis in the 21st Century." Once you get past the sleep-inducing headline and into the meat of the section, some very un-DMNish viewpoints are espoused by co-author Antonio Di Mambro, the world-class urban planner hired to write the report. In a nutshell, Di Mambro argues the following (italic comments added by Buzz):
"Dallas should abandon its 'Big D' mentality and embrace Fort Worth."
Those Cowtown freaks?
Dallas' ranking in relation to other cities is "hindered by an image problem that stems from below-average performance in the areas of social equity, cultural excellence, intellectual assets, and tourism...More important, the character and quality of the place leaves much to be desired, especially in the inner city."
Good heavens. Not that it ain't wun hunnerd percent true, but we never thought we'd see it in print outside of our own pages.
"The notion that building more highways will relieve traffic congestion is a myth."
But Buzz just bought a new fuel-inefficient sports-ute. Vroom vroom.
"All other first-tier international cities have a vibrant center. Dallas does not--yet."
Well, uh...we got a Farmer's Market.
"In my opinion, the Farmer's Market has been marginally successful but will not do much more for downtown in its present context and organization."
Oh.
Dallas must redo the mixmaster, invest in the Arts District, the Convention Center, the West End, relocate the Farmer's Market to the Cedars area, build a second large airport in the southern sector, re-establish unused railway lines, build new plazas, and remake the downtown library into a hub of multimedia information for the region.
Oh.
The Trinity River project as currently envisioned "would create a mess." Of it, Di Mambro says, "Dallas is mortgaging its future in pursuit of the Town Lake dream...The project is too expensive a toy."
Der.
Got it? Virtually every conclusion about Dallas you might draw from reading the News up to this point is wrong. How do the paper's editors know that? Because a hired outside expert told them so, and he certainly should know better than a silly reporter or anyone who actually lives here.
This is Dallas, after all, where the hired consultant is an object of veneration second only to the Cowboys, or maybe Jesus.
