..... (1) Maybe we are just at a different place the the evolution of our city
......(2) Or maybe those hockey sticks are "bubbles" that we don't really want anyway.
.... (3) [if] the problem with Fort Worth is that we're too risk averse and don't want to be open enough for some "necessary" mistakes to find our way.
For sure, I too am disappointed that Fort Worth can't find and project an identity that encourages investment and relocations.
1. Yes, Fort Worth is in the Post Amon G. Carter (AGC) phase. Instead of our leadership fighting tooth and nail for Fort Worth first per AGC, today's approach has been to buy into the theory that the "whole is more important than the parts" with the expectation of a payback of approximately equal returns. These statistics reveal that the current theory is failing Fort Worth. Furthermore, an independent $500k study commissioned by the City of Fort Worth found that Fort Worth was on the road to becoming more like a bedroom community than being a primary city. So, yes Fort Worth is in a different place historically that risks it being permanently positioned as a fourth tier city.
2. There are indications that there is a truism to the idea "that we don't really want [growth] anyway". A better way to think of it is that the only growth that is wanted is the growth owned by a set of hometown power group; and for which tighter control over the City can be maintained. Take Mexico for example:
It is theorized that Mexico's elite is happy to export its labor to the USA; workers are happy to have jobs to support their family and the Mexican Government does not have to deal with policies that will provide jobs for its people. The result is that Mexico is relatively stable and the Mexican Elite maintains its control over the country.
When you boil it down, isn't the roles of Dallas and Fort Worth comparable. Dallas has the jobs and Fort Worth is relieved of the pressure to provide a sufficient amount of employment for its residents. Fort Worth is stable and its power elite maintains control, sets the agenda of what it wants, and continues to prosper. Everyone is happy.
3. In a correctly functioning economy, there is no such thing as a collective aversion by a City to risk taking, only the opportunity to succeed or to fail.
As I have come to believe over time, the Fort Worth economy is being politically engineered to benefit the hometown group and is seen as a deterrent to non-hometown groups aspiring to invest in Fort Worth; sometimes its is subtle as in the handling of Left Bank; and other times it is not, as in the way that City Place v. Sundance Square was to eventually end with regards to WeWork. I had nothing but my feelings that something was not right about the lack of unfettered growth in Fort Worth, but graphs and charts seem to confirm what I was sensing.
It is not that Fort Worth would not be open enough to investment, it is that Fort Worth is a big town under the control of an entrenched lordship having to protect its interest. In a way, Fort Worth is not unlike the small East Central Texas town of my parents where nothing happens unless it has the approval of the ruling family of many generations.
Fort Worth is in the 2nd largest economy within the U.S.; it possesses much if not all of the same fundamental assets of its Texas pier cities; and yet its growth and development has not only fallen behind Dallas, Houston and Austin, it has fallen behind in a spectacular ways such as in higher paying jobs or as in attracting younger, educated populations to the City.
I see a remedy and hope that Fort Worth will do some basic things such as infrastructure to make it more of a player in the Texas economy. Infrastructure should include a streetcar system that will stimulate growth further to the north and to the south of Downtown; infrastructure should include the restarting of commercial air service at Meacham Airport to inject enough of the regional air commerce into the core of Fort Worth and that would stimulate economic growth in Downtown and its immediate surrounding sectors.
Another ray of hope is witnessing new entrants into Fort Worth that are challenging the status quo.
There are plenty of other things needed for Fort Worth to rev up its local economy, to encourage investments and relocations, but implementing a major infrastructure is one way to end the hibernation that Fort Worth has been in since the opening of DFW Airport..