Goals for Dallas, or: A Look Back at When a Mayor Dreamed The Possible Dreams

While we await confirmations and return calls, let's take a look at this short film I just found (again) featuring one John Erik Jonsson and, specifically, the former mayor's creation of something called Goals for Dallas, which I really never knew much about till coming across a copy of a close-to-400-page 1982 tome called, well, Goals for Dallas: The Possible Dreams at the Half Price mothership Monday night. (I paid $5.98 for a book someone bought from Cokesbury for $5, hunh.)

Turns out, it dates back to '64 and stayed on life support till the early '80s, at which point ... that, as they say, was that. I did a little more digging, found a case of related docs in the James Pratt Collection at the downtown library and a 1985 paper on the subject written for Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, for which I just paid $3.95.

So far, the tome's an intriguing read, what with its references to "the lack of perception of teachers as professionals" and its call to create "a revitalized central business district and inner-city neighborhoods" and turn the Trinity River into Town Lake "between the I-45 bridges and the Sylvan Bridge" and the inclusion of Pauline Medrano as a member of the Public Safety Committee. Timeless literature, in short. I've scanned the introduction and cover, which you'll find on the other side. More to come? What -- you new around here?

Goals for Dallas