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Fort Worthology

Member Since 02 Feb 2006
Offline Last Active Jul 20 2020 09:18 PM
*****

#81821 So where is Fort Worth's urban growth?

Posted by Fort Worthology on 24 January 2014 - 04:04 PM

What?  We have *lots* of land in the central business district that could be developed.  Outside of Sundance (and even in Sundance's own periphery), downtown is still pretty broken up by parking lots and even the occasional vacant lot.  There are big tracts of nothingness on the eastern side, the northwestern side, the western side, the southern side, etc.  Even in the core, there are full-block parking lots interrupting things (XTO's lots, the remaining Sundance lots, etc.)  If you think that the FW CBD is significantly built-out, I'd invite you to go look at a number of our competitor cities who have built denser, active downtowns over the years while the city leadership kept repeating the mantra that we have the "best revitalized downtown in America."




#81794 So where is Fort Worth's urban growth?

Posted by Fort Worthology on 23 January 2014 - 02:33 PM

It's definitely a fact that there's plenty of land around the edges of town here for sprawl to keep happening unchecked.  That's a ruinous attitude that will spell disaster for us in the future - "we've got plenty of land - let's use it in the most wasteful way possible" - but only a handful of people at City Hall and in the population care at all.  So we get token nods to developing the central city that results in some apartments here, an office there (along with the requisite 7,000 parking garages because we can't do transit well in Fort Worth), while we do absolutely nothing to either slow down the outward spread, or even to change its form to something more environmentally and economically sustainable.




#81793 FW's Next Area to Revitalize?

Posted by Fort Worthology on 23 January 2014 - 02:29 PM

Doohickie is right - South Main is going to get a BIG upgrade, in terms of the street itself.  It's taking a while, but it's going to be beautiful once it's done.




#81792 FW's Next Area to Revitalize?

Posted by Fort Worthology on 23 January 2014 - 02:27 PM

 

 

However, let's not forget a lot of this new growth is occurring within Fort Worth city limits.  Is that really what we call "suburban growth"?  I don't readily criticize our city's right to grow within its boundaries.  

 

 

Yes, it is "suburban growth," and yes, I want to readily criticize our city's right to grow within its boundaries.   :)

 

It's "suburban" due to its design.  And growth for growth's sake can be extremely detrimental in the long run, if it's built in a manner that is wasteful, and unsustainable (both environmentally and economically, due to the ever-spiraling costs of building more and more roads, etc. to keep up with all the single-mode development).  It'll choke the air and suck our funds dry, and only a very few people in the city (population and government) seem to give a care at all.  Everybody else, especially the "all growth is good" outer councilpersons, are just driving a truck off a cliff, and the younger generations will get stuck with the bill.

 

Aren't I cheery today?




#81754 Tarrant County Commercial Real Estate Forecast

Posted by Fort Worthology on 22 January 2014 - 09:24 AM

How are apartments suburban? While I live in the city limits I consider myself suburban I wish I could get away from apartments altogether.

 

"Suburban" is a matter of design - one can design apartments in a suburban or urban fashion.  In this context, "urban" means oriented towards pedestrians, friendly to walking, fitting into the context of a well-designed public outdoor room (i.e., an urban street).  "Suburban" means oriented towards cars, hostile to walking, usually isolated in its own pod.




#81688 TEXRail

Posted by Fort Worthology on 17 January 2014 - 03:36 PM

The transit-oriented development sales pitch has always been, to me, misleading - TOD happens around streetcars and light rail.  It tends not to happen around diesel commuter trains with hour-long headways.  The only thing commuter rail lines generate are park & rides.




#81677 Southside Bookstore

Posted by Fort Worthology on 17 January 2014 - 10:51 AM

There's still a market for interesting and good bookstores, even today.  B&N and Borders just, well, aren't.  I'm thinking of something like:  http://en.wikipedia..../Powell's_Books




#81671 Frank Kent Cadillac owners and a new development on Magnolia

Posted by Fort Worthology on 17 January 2014 - 09:30 AM

Because what better place for a car service drop-off + expensive wine shop than the city's most walkable alt-transportation-embracing urban main street?  Looking forward to the inevitable blocking of the sidewalk for people waiting on the valet drop-off.




#81658 Food cart park coming to N. Main Street

Posted by Fort Worthology on 16 January 2014 - 06:45 PM

 

What makes an area like Magnolia more walkable is that the area be anchored linearly with a  variety of brick and mortar stores that creates its own synenergy or a number of other variables; but a gaudy food truck park or trucks lined along the street is far down the list, if on it at all when it comes to enhancing walk-able areas.

 

 

 

 

 

What makes an area like Magnolia walkable (and realize this is an oversimplification) is its design - buildings and activated spaces right up on wide, inviting sidewalks, on small streets arrayed in a walkable grid, in tight, dense proximity.

 

Wherever that network of structures and activated spaces is interrupted by a bad sidewalk or a dead parking lot or a blank wall, it suffers.  And one tool in the urbanism kit of parts to fix that sort of thing is a non-permanent/less-permanent "pop-up" activity or business, like a food truck.  They can bring extra life and energy to the street, which benefits *all* businesses nearby.

 

And, they're almost always run by creative local entrepreneurs who might not otherwise have been able to get their business on their feet were it not for the (comparative) affordability of a food truck vs. a brick & mortar store, which helps offset the rising rents of increasingly popular districts and leads to greater diversity in the local scene.  How is allowing creative new voices to enter the market anything but a good thing?  If it ever got to the point where the only people who could afford to run restaurants in Fort Worth's urban neighborhoods were chains and the old guard of big local names, that would be one boring place to be (that's sort of how Sundance Square feels at times, come to think of it...)  And often, their success leads to a new brick & mortar offshoot - in Portland, I enjoyed an outstanding Mexican restaurant that had started as a food truck in a Magnolia-like area.  If not for that, this business might not have existed!

 

Fort Worth so far hasn't been very good at food trucks, but in plenty of other places, the increased popularity of food trucks hasn't caused some terrible die-off of brick & mortar restaurants.  As in many ways in the giant interwoven organism that is an urban place, the extra foot traffic driven by them can benefit everybody.




#81560 Replace Water Gardens with an urban park like Klyde Warren

Posted by Fort Worthology on 13 January 2014 - 11:31 AM

I agree with Austin - that wall on the south end needs to come down ASAP.  It has no place in a revitalized Lancaster streetscape.  Otherwise, I am fine with the Water Gardens in their current form.




#81555 TEXRail

Posted by Fort Worthology on 13 January 2014 - 10:12 AM

I am basically done with The T.  This pains me, because of all people in town I am 1,000% in support of better transit, but I think it's become obvious that this organization + this council is completely and utterly incapable of providing it.  We are getting left in the dust by competing cities, and those of us who fought for improvements have found everything just dumped or delayed, over and over again.  We should have fully funded transit years ago and we'll only be seeing more problems with our lack of action and leadership in the coming years.




#81493 Restaurants That Closed in 2013

Posted by Fort Worthology on 02 January 2014 - 10:24 AM

From what I hear, the main problem was that nobody involved had experience running a grocery store.  Things like they were buying produce from restaurant suppliers rather than grocery suppliers - hence their often absurd prices on said items.




#81387 Medical Tower Demolition

Posted by Fort Worthology on 20 December 2013 - 03:42 PM

To me, they're the electronic equivalent of a berm and hedgerow around a Wal-Mart - I cannot stand the attitude of "we built something completely hideous, so we'll slap on a band-aid or two to try to make you forget about it."  It feels insulting.  The images I've seen rotate through the display look like something that should be on holiday promos for the Hallmark Channel or something equally cheesy.  And they're counting on this huge, over-bright visual slap (and the fake storefront windows crammed full of dollar-store decorations, attempting to distract that they did a terrible job with the garage's street interaction) to try to take attention away from the fact that they built an ugly piece of architecture.

 

I don't mean to go on about it, but I hate feeling like I'm being talked down to, and that sort of thing - sticking something flashy/cheesy on an otherwise terrible piece of architecture to pander to people and try to make it "all better" - is talking down to people in the form of design.  And it's in my 'hood, so I have to see it constantly.




#81357 Downtown Parking

Posted by Fort Worthology on 18 December 2013 - 02:53 PM

Preferable to fake storefront windows:  *real* storefront windows.  Appearances are one thing, but actual vitality is even better.




#81353 Medical Tower Demolition

Posted by Fort Worthology on 18 December 2013 - 09:49 AM

I guess I'll be the dissenting opinion on the LED sign thing - I think it looks terribly cheesy and tacky.