Dallas Morning News Architecture Critic Mark Lamster pulls no punches in writing of Dallas as the "Paradox City," even describing Michael Morris, the director of transportation for the North Texas Council of Governments, as a new Robert Moses.
"Here’s Dallas in a nutshell for you," writes Mark Lamster. "Talk to most anybody who spends time downtown and they’ll tell you there are too many surface parking lots and garages, and that they sap the streets of vitality. Then talk to a real estate developer. Your real estate developer will tell you downtown doesn’t have enough parking spaces, that this keeps employers from putting their offices here, and that this saps the streets of vitality. Such is the Dallas Paradox, or one of them. Downtown has too much parking and also not enough parking. Catch-22."
Lamster also constructs a similar model in talking about Dallas' highway and road construction decisions, lead like Robert Moses by Michael Morris, who "has served as the Director of Transportation for the North Texas Council of Governments (NTCOG) since, if you can believe it, 1990." Much of Lamster's argument centers on troubled and/or controversial projects like the Trinity Toll Road and the Trinity Lakes as well as unsavory tactics by Morris in discrediting proponents of a plan to tear down Interstate 345.
Read the full story: Welcome to Dallas: Paradox City
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