Urban Planning

City's Plan for Boosting Southern Dallas? Horses, Golf and Completely Screwing Over a Latino Small Businessman

Scott K. Parks has a pretty good OK story in The Dallas Morning News today. It's the good-enough-for-Belo version of a story we brought you two weeks ago about the city's use of eminent domain to seize a privately owned parcel of land near the Trinity River, sandwiched between the equestrian park a ... More >>

Things Got Ugly at an Event Touting Southern Dallas' Horse Park and Golf Course Last Night

Last night the city held a shmooze event for people who live near a proposed exclusive private golf course and horse park in a poor part of Southern Dallas, but the shmooze blew up. A carefully choreographed scene of friendly information booths and party favors turned into an angry shouting match. ... More >>

Trinity Toll Road Doesn't Add Up

However you slice the numbers, it's still baloney.

Scrap-Yard Owners Evolve to Survive Assault by City Hall and the News.

Parkland Hospital's Land Grab

Dallas County's public hospital is using eminent domain to buy up real estate in hopes of flipping it for a profit. But one homeowner is holding out.

City Council Delays Giving DISD Rezoning It Wants in Jubilee Park, Pending Trustees' Vote on School Closures Tomorrow Night

​Best I can tell using our half-baked search engine, we began writing about Jubilee Park-ers' battle with the Dallas Independent School District over a new-and-improved O.M. Roberts in April 2010, when residents told Dallas County commissioners they were terrified of losing their homes in an emine ... More >>

Jubilee Park'ers Celebrate Plan Commission's Rejection of DISD's Expansion Plans

Photos by Leslie MinoraJubilee Park residents visited City Hall once again in protest of an elementary school parking lot planned by DISD.​For Jubilee Park residents, it was a party atmosphere in the Flag Room outside council chambers Thursday afternoon, when the City Plan Commission denied Da ... More >>

Jubilee Park Residents Still Aren't Jubilant About DISD's Plans For School, Parking Lot

Photo by Patrick MichelsJubilee Park Residents and DISD have been brawling for well over a year.​Residents of Jubilee Park, the neighborhood of modest single-family homes just north of Fair Park, have become conditioned to distrust, if not fear, the Dallas Independent School District. For as l ... More >>

"A Great Day for the First Amendment": Appeals Court Tosses HP Developer's Defamation Claims

Carla Main​At this late date I won't detail the case pitting Highland Park developer Hiram Walker Royall against author Carla Main, which we've been following for the past three years. Let's just put it like this: Royall, who was involved in an eminent domain case down in Freeport, became the subj ... More >>

Bridge to Somewhere

Across the new Trinity bridge, a long-neglected but suddenly desirable neighborhood waits and hopes.

QR Signs of the Times, Part II: CityDesign Studio's Virtual Look at Dallas' "Public Realm"

​I saw one of these signs on a Bishop Arts sidewalk over the weekend and thought nothing of it -- that is till today, when I was looking for something unrelated on the Dallas CityDesign Studio, which led me to its Facebook page, which led me to this: Urban Design Matters, a just-launched website r ... More >>

Author Engaged in Legal Tussle With HP Developer Tired of Being SLAPP'd Around

Carla Main testifying down in Austin yesterday​We've written a few times in recent years about author Carla Main, who remains locked in a legal tussle with Highland Park developer Hiram Walker Royall over Main's '07 book Bulldozed: "Kelo," Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land, which chron ... More >>

Into Downtown's Tunnels, A Horror Story

From time to time we've revisited the damage done to downtown Dallas by Montreal urban planner Vincent Ponte, who proposed in the June 1968 issue of Esquire that downtown Dallas bury its businesses underground -- a decision then-Dallas Mayor Laura Miller referred to in The New York Times in '05 as " ... More >>

Visiting Jubilee Park and Greenville Avenue During Today's Plan Commission Liveblog

Just remember: If and when that Lower Greenville Ave. PD passes, this is what you'll get next summer. Ish.​Put down your Angry Birds Seasons, it's time for the City Plan Commission public hearing! Today the big item on the agenda is the rezoning of Lower Greenville into a Planned Development Distr ... More >>

Liveblogging the 21st Century City Conference

Andrea Grimes​Feliz morning, Unfair Amigos! I rolled into City Hall a few minutes ago and found myself standing amid many trendily slacks-ed, bottle-rim bespectacled folks up here in the sixth-floor council chambers. Those New Urbanists, they are a good-looking, if easily spotted, bunch. We're her ... More >>

Days After State Rep. Johnson Weighs In, DISD May Be Backing Off Jubilee Park Land Grab

Daniel RodrigueJubilee Park residents protest DISD's eminent domain suits outside 3700 Ross Ave. earlier this year.​Earlier this week, Robert wrote about state Rep. Eric Johnson's October 28 letter to Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, in which Johnson wondered whe ... More >>

Lookin' for a Home in the Heart of the 21st Century City at Dallas City Hall Next Month

Joel Kotkin​We -- meaning, you -- just got the nicest invitation to Dallas City Hall on November 12. It's for a little get-together called the 21st Century City Conference, which is being staged by The Trinity Trust, The Dallas Institute and the CityDesign Studio. There's some info on the website ... More >>

Lawyers Spar Over HP Developer's Defamation Suit and How to Prove An Alliance "Unholy"

​Carla Main says she did everything she could to sit down with Highland Park developer Hiram Walker Royall while reporting her book Bulldozed: "Kelo," Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land. She finally got in the same room with him today, though, in a morning hearing over Royall's defamati ... More >>

UT Arlington To Set Up Shop In Oak Cliff

Daniel RodrigueBob Stimson​The Oak Cliff spirit of urban development and community outreach, which we are physically incapable of not writing about here in the paper and online, continues -- this time, with an urban planning storefront that's the result of a partnership between the Oak Cliff Chamb ... More >>

Slowly, But Not Quite Surely, Dallas ISD Backs Off Efforts to Seize, Raze Jubilee Park Homes

Daniel RodrigueShawn Busari and her family grew up in this house, which DISD wanted to take for a mere $50,000.​It's been almost six months now since Jubilee Park residents began protesting the Dallas Independent School District's plans to seize their businesses and homes by any means necessary to ... More >>

Oak Cliff Activists--Between Their Bikes And Gardens And Chickens And Goats--Seek To Redefine Their Community Without Destroying It

When It Comes to Bishop/Davis Study, Not Everyone In Oak Cliff Is On the Same Page

From the Bishop Davis Land Use & Zoning Study, which we'd recommend downloading from here before trying to open​With even Oak Cliff homeowners associations split over the Bishop Davis Land Use & Zoning Study, if nothing else yesterday's public hearing at the City Plan Commission proved th ... More >>

The Man With the Latest Downtown Plan Says We're "A City of Districts" In Need of "Unity"

Daniel Iacofano​Daniel Iacofano -- the "I" in MIG, Inc., which the city hired to develop the latest downtown master plan -- was at the Dallas Convention Center a couple of weeks ago collecting wish-list items from stakeholders and civilians; more than a few Friends of Unfair Park have offered sugg ... More >>

It's Official: The Trinty Trust Gives $2 Million to Set Up "CityDesign Studio" in Dallas City Hall

Speaking of the Trinity Trust, they've still got those T-shirts available.​The suspense is over. (See what I did there?) Following up its September 24 announcement concerning $10 mil going toward turning the Continental Avenue Bridge into a pedestrian pathway-n-park, the Trinity Trust this morning ... More >>

Brent Brown, Who Rebuilt Congo Street, Will Head Dallas CityDesign Studio in City Hall

Brandon ThibodeauxBrent Brown​Couple of weeks back we debuted the Dallas Urban Design Studio, a Trinity Trust-funded endeavor that'll get its own office in Dallas City Hall in order to "elevate the design consciousness and culture of Dallas, while working to balance social, economic, environmental ... More >>

The Master Plan: Park and Rec Votes to Spend $2.5 Mil to Turn Parking Lot into Pacific Plaza

​This morning at City Hall, the Park and Recreation Department's Planning and Design Committee authorized the acquisition of the last piece of land the city needs for the long-planned, $9 million Pacific Plaza Park project. Right now, it's just a parking lot west of Live Oak and St. Paul streets ... More >>

Dream Weaver: City Bringing In "The Man Who Built Vancouver" to Talk West Dallas

Larry Beasley​Speaking of the Trinity River Corridor Project ... When last we saw Larry Beasley, "the man who built Vancouver," he was among a handful of urban planners imported to teach the Dallas City Council a thing or three during a daylong gab session at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in ... More >>

Look, It Has Always Paid to Be Royce West

Sam MertenState Sen. Royce West and friendsFormer Dallas Observer ace reporter (and sometime-Unfair Park contributor) Matt Pulle has a great piece up today on the Texas Watchdog Web site revealing that in 2008 alone, state Sen. Royce West's 10-person law firm billed the City of Dallas, Dallas Area R ... More >>

Master of His Domain: Dallas Judge Dismisses Law Prof From Defamation Lawsuit

Well, there's at least one person in this world Highland Park developer Hiram Walker Royall can't sue, at least not this week: law professor Richard Epstein, who provided a blurb for the back of Carla Main's book Bulldozed: "Kelo," Eminent Domain, and the American Lust for Land. As we've mentioned b ... More >>

Man, the National Review Is Just Begging Hiram Walker Royal For a Lawsuit

Still haven't been served over this December 16 item concerning the surprisingly litigious Hiram Walker Royall, a Highland Park developer, so I will proceed further -- but only with the caveat that a mutual friend of ours insists "he's a great guy." So, there -- covered. Anyway, the details behind R ... More >>

A Texan's Home is his Castle, Until Someone Richer Wants It

No Means No, or: Angela Hunt Says Dallas Can No Longer Be Afraid of Developers

Library of CongressThe "New Dallas skyline" in a photo taken on April 1, 1913Speaking of Angela Hunt and how Dallas goes about, um, planning a city (?) -- as we were this morning -- you might wanna click on over to Hunt's blog. There, she just posted a very lengthy essay concerning last week's counc ... More >>

Slumdog Millionaires

If the Morning News considers itself the "conscience" of southern Dallas, it has a lot of explaining to do.

Highland Park Developer Who Likes to Sue Is Royally Pissed Over Book

Can't say I'd ever heard of Highland Park's Hiram Walker Royall till last night, when I stumbled across this piece from the First Amendment Center concerning the developer's October '08 libel lawsuit, brought about because Royall's furious over the contents of the well-reviewed 2007 book Bulldozed: ... More >>

Heavenly Bottoms?

"For the Love of Money": Or, Alphonso Jackson Takes a Gamble

Urban Land Institute Taps the Cedars As the Site of Its Annual Design Contest

More Than a Year Later, Alphonso Jackson's Still Being Investigated

Housing the Homeless, How Novel

We Now Officially Have Those Trinity River Blues

Vox Populi

Wait a minute...There's democracy in Dallas?

That Jim Schutze is Always Makin' Friends

Re: DHA Has a Lott of Nerve

DHA Has a Lott of Nerve

Wall of Blight

Sean Scully's paintings at the Fort Worth Modern are retrograde

Better Than Nothing

P.U.!

Who made a stink at City Hall?

The fix is in

Plans for a giant market in an Old East Dallas neighborhood speed ahead despite protests by neighbors

Rumors of war

A fight over rezoning has some northeast Dallas homeowners talking recall

Soul Power

The city's future is in the hooves of a winged horse--and in the New Age musings of the Dallas Institute of Humanities.