By Emilie Bahr
“Meet the folks selecting to dwell car-free in Dallas.”
The headline from the Dallas Morning Information got here throughout my social media feed lately and I couldn’t resist clicking it. The article was locked behind a paywall, however I watched a brief video linked to the story profiling a girl who lives within the Large D with out proudly owning a automotive.
It hardly appears newsworthy that somebody may dwell in a serious American metropolis of 1.3 million with out a automotive. Until you’ve spent any time in Dallas.
In 1994, I moved from Baton Rouge to Dallas to begin highschool within the metropolis the place my mother had relocated for work. My new dwelling was totally different in some ways from the place I’d been raised, however maybe probably the most pinpointable to my proto-urbanist consciousness was the way in which by which it was devoutly dedicated to concrete and cars.
My hometown, the place I lived with my dad and attended underfunded Louisiana public faculties, was hardly a paradigm of walkable urbanism. The subdivision the place I grew up didn’t even have sidewalks. My dad routinely drove me to the college bus cease.
Even so, in Dallas I used to be struck by the normalcy of hour-long commutes throughout city and driving 90 miles per hour on toll roads and highways that bisected town’s sprawling, low-density footprint. Vehicles additionally weren’t only a technique of getting round – they have been the last word standing image. Valet parking was in all places – even on the mall and the grocery retailer. The coed car parking zone at my personal ladies’ college appeared just like the showroom of a elaborate European automotive vendor, the attendant watching over it was among the many most beloved members of the college workers.
As soon as the shock of my new surroundings wore off, it didn’t take me lengthy to fall underneath the spell of Dallas’ car-centrism.
Former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñelosa famously mentioned: “A sophisticated metropolis isn’t one the place the poor personal a automotive, however the place the wealthy take public transport.” After I lived in Dallas, my then-stepfather’s suggestion on a few events that I take town bus to highschool fairly than have him drive me felt like a selected model of cruelty. Public transit was merely not an possibility that one would willingly select.
My attitudes about mobility basically shifted throughout a university semester overseas in Paris the place I first skilled the liberty and pleasure that got here from life in a walkable metropolis, racking up many miles every day on my well-worn (and trendy) tennis footwear.
Upon my return to the U.S., I watched glumly from the window of my mom’s automotive as she drove me dwelling from DFW airport by means of gridlock and what felt like a barren panorama of strip malls to our north Dallas subdivision of matching brick single-family properties. Unwilling to let go of my newfound zeal for pedestrianism and car-free dwelling, I continued to stroll in all places I may, a behavior that on a number of events triggered a Good Samaritan to drag over to ask me if I wanted a trip, sure that I used to be strolling not as a result of I wished to however as a result of my automotive had damaged down.
My mother moved from Texas years in the past, and I haven’t had many causes to return to Dallas previously couple many years. So once I went again final yr for a highschool reunion, I used to be pleasantly shocked by a few of what I noticed.
My husband and I stayed car-free in a downtown lodge and we went for morning runs alongside the Katy Path, a rails-to-trails greenway that’s now a thriving group gem. I took be aware of the brand new mixed-use growth that has risen up round mild rail that hardly existed once I lived there and now stands, in accordance with DART’s web site, as one of many longest techniques within the nation. I noticed bike lanes – even when they tended to be unprotected and alongside high-traffic roads — and bike share bikes scattered round city, together with quite a lot of new off-road trails. Maybe most conspicuously, once-neglected older, pedestrian-scale neighborhoods – with bushes and sidewalks and quite a lot of makes use of – have been now experiencing a renaissance, crammed with folks on a Saturday night time once I met up with a bunch of outdated associates for dinner.
We even walked from dinner to a close-by bar. And nobody requested us if we wanted a trip.
