Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas The Dallas-Fort Worth area has experienced stunning growth however Dallas remains one of the most economically and segregated cities in America. Through eye-opening data and pointed solutions Cullum Clark argues that Dallas can become a national leader in reviving upward mobility in his essay Gentrification in Dallas.
Clarks essay is part of a new report by the Center for Opportunity Urbanism Beyond Gentrification: Towards More Equitable Growth which explores how unbalanced urban growth has exacerbated class divisions particularly in the urban centers of our largests metropolitan areas.
Read an excerpt of Clarks piece below.
The Dallas region is a microcosm of Americas latest urban evolution. The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area is booming fueled by a range of thriving industries and a tremendous influx of people and businesses. The city of Dallas home to 1.3 million of the 7.4 million in the DFW metro has experienced a stunning resurgence from the dark days of the 1980s oil and real estate crash.
Yet for all its heady growth Dallas still faces many of the defining challenges bedeviling other major cities and the nation as a whole: a dwindling middle class growing bifurcation into have" and have-not" neighborhoods an emerging home affordability problem and rising numbers of poor citizens for whom twenty-first century prosperity seems a sham. In certain respects the citys revival has compounded these challenges.
Dallas remains among the most economically and racially segregated cities in America in part reflecting the heritage of Jim Crow. The poverty rate in the city of Dallas is nearly 23 one of the highest among large American cities. At the same time Dallas has a greater opportunity to address these challenges than most of its peers in view of the DFW areas economic vibrancy and the citys comparatively abundant and inexpensive land. Unlike most big cities Dallas has the potential to build its way out of its current challenges.
Dallas urgently needs to pursue three policy directions in order to shift to a more inclusive and sustainable pattern of urban growth.
First it needs to spark a new home building boom focused on middle and lower-income families especially in depressed southern Dallas.
Second it should adopt a range of smart policies to preserve and rehabilitate as much of the existing housing and commercial real estate stock as possible in less advantaged areas.
And third it needs to get considerably more creative about bringing urban amenities innovative schools stores restaurants health clinics greenspace and arts facilities and the middle-skilled jobs that come with them to historically underserved areas.
If it gets these things right Dallas can become a national leader in reviving upward mobility and the promise of the middleclass American Dream.
To read or download the full report click here.
Cullum Clark is Director of the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and Adjunct Professor of Economics at SMU in Dallas.
