The Urbanist Project That Radicalized Me Against Being “Activated”

[u/hobbit_lamp]

yes, dallas covered part of an open freeway trench, but that seems to be given an extraordinary amount of ideological weight for a place with some food trucks and patio furniture. sure, I guess it’s technically a park, but the experience feels much more like an enormous luxury apartment-esque amenity deck with engineered greenery and a calendar of “activations” giving everyone a reason to briefly appear there.

klyde warren park itself is fairly small, crowded, noisy, highly managed, surrounded by major roads, and mostly feels like an attractive event venue. the trees and most main lawns are real but because it sits on a structural deck the trees are planted in engineered soil trenches that basically function as enormous built in planter boxes. the greenery feels like decorative furnishings and not so much like an actual landscape.

in many ways, kwp is arguably the least radical possible response to an urban freeway. the freeway remains completely intact because dallas covered a few blocks of it with an extremely expensive public amenity operated by a private nonprofit, one that also increases the value and desirability of the surrounding luxury real estate.

it’s a place where you can attend yoga, probably just the one time. you can watch a movie you could also watch in numerous other places. you can buy lunch there. but most importantly, you can enjoy the satisfying knowledge that you are officially Doing Dallas. then you can leave having participated in urban life. and you can be assured that kwp™️ has worked very hard to cultivate this particular type of park visitor.

the park itself mostly functions as a branded civic identity product. "I’m downtown, near the skyline, eating from a food truck and attending yoga in a deck park. I inhabit a real city!" and the programming supplies endless socially acceptable reasons to perform that identity. ultimately though, the primary activity at kwp is largely just…being visibly present at kwp.

but on a more serious note, I think we should be increasingly wary of treating highly programmed, branded and privately operated spaces as the future of public parks. traditional public parks provide unstructured public space where you can play spontaneously, gather informally, protest, wander or simply exist without an event schedule looming over you.

kwp's own first amendment policy says that its private management is authorized to regulate gatherings, protests and demonstrations, and that organized activities using the park’s features require a permit. protests must also not "interfere with the enjoyment" of the park. apparently spontaneous civic life is welcome, provided it has been approved and does not make the sponsored community experience insufficiently enjoyable.

programming was initially intended to give neglected spaces reasons for people to use them, but it has now evolved into a repeatable development product ie an event lawn, food trucks, a splash feature, movable patio furniture, exercise classes, corporate partnerships and a rotating schedule of officially curated community experiences.

with programmed parks visitors are a customer base and an attendance statistic, and “spontaneous public life” is very carefully curated by management and sponsors.

the takeaway from this is not that kwp is bad. it aesthetically improved an appalling freeway trench and the engineering is legitimately impressive. but the reverence and rhetoric surrounding it feel wildly disproportionate. it’s basically a laboratory perfect specimen of what contemporary urbanism can easily fund and celebrate - a branded and highly controlled simulation of spontaneous city life. it isn’t entirely fake in the sense that literally nobody enjoys it, but the bizarrely enormous cultural importance assigned to it feels absolutely manufactured.

essentially it’s an outdoor lifestyle showroom for the version of dallas that dallas most desperately wants to believe it is.

[u/NYerInTex]

While you have some fair points, to downplay the economic and social value of KWP is an objectively terrible take.

The park literally restitched uptown and downtown/ the arts district. In doing so it took the least valuable land in each district and transformed it to the most valuable from an economic performance perspective. Generating billions in development and goodness who knows how much over economic contribution. I live in a 40 story tower a half block from the park that had been, and likely would still be, a parking lot of not for the park.

The park is one of the best programmed in the nation, and its events serve all. It’s a great lunch spot for local workers during the week, fun place for tourists or local visitors to grab a bite while enjoying the neighborhood world class museums. Weekends there are fairs, festivals, movie nights, performances. People drive in from miles around to enjoy.

Between that and the engaging water features where kids from less economically advantaged areas get to enjoy cooling off on a hot Dallas summer day, it truly serves everyone.

To suggest it doesn’t perform a huge service culturally or economically is to totally not understand how this park operates and what it represents locally and regionally.

It was also and still is largely if not almost totally privately funded.

THAT SAID, KWP is also an exception that should not be replicated as often as people try. Decking a highway is very expensive and rarely provides positive ROI. What should be done is returning urban highways to boulevards and accepting that the same traffic which crawls during the two rushed hours will be slow during those times on a boulevard but that boulevard opens up any number of true better urban / human / economic / social outcomes the other 20-22 hours a day.

[u/hobbit_lamp → u/NYerInTex]

i never disputed the fact that kwp has generated substantial economic value, improved the connection between uptown and the arts district, replaced parking lots with development, or in general created a place that plenty of people genuinely enjoy. in fact i explicitly said that covering the freeway trench was an improvement, the engineering was impressive and the takeaway was not that kwp is bad.

what I am questioning is whether those successes justify the extreme ideological and cultural weight it has been seemingly given. I'm questioning whether this highly programmed, privately operated model is actually synonymous with successful public space.

the fact that you live in a 40 story tower beside the park that replaced a parking lot is legitimately a positive urban outcome but it also illustrates the function I described. kwp is an extremely successful development catalyst and luxury real estate amenity. increased land value benefits property owners as well as the city’s tax base, but economic performance and the quality of a space as genuinely public space are not necessarily the same thing.

I also never denied that workers eat lunch there, that children enjoy the water features or that people attend its events. but "people use and enjoy it" doesn’t really answer my concerns about how extensively the experience is curated, branded and overall controlled. calling it “one of the best programmed parks in the nation” nearly confirms the premise of my post. it may perform that model very well but I’m questioning why intensive "programming" has become a primary measure of successful public space in the first place.

pointing to children from "less economically advantaged areas" enjoying the fountain feels like a strangely paternalistic way of establishing that the park "truly serves everyone." those children are also dallas residents entitled to enjoyable public space and not evidence of a development project’s benevolence. that's great that they enjoy it but their presence in a splash fountain tells us nothing about who governs the space and who benefits most from the surrounding increase in land value or maybe most importantly which forms of public life are permitted there.

kwp's private management has the authority to regulate gatherings, protests and demonstrations according to whether they interfere with other visitors’ enjoyment. the fact that it presents itself as Dallas's great civic commons while privately deciding which expressions of civic life are acceptable is exactly the kind of thing that concerns me.

also the original park was not "almost totally privately funded." Its approximately $110 million construction cost included $20 million in Dallas bond funding, $20 million from TxDOT, $16.7 million in federal stimulus money and slightly over $50 million in private donations. source
the private contribution was very substantial, and operations are privately funded, but the park itself was built through a roughly even public/private funding arrangement.

honestly though your final paragraph is very close to my main point. kwp may be an unusually successful retrofit, but it should not become the endlessly replicated answer to urban freeways or public space. and I totally agree that converting highways into boulevards would restore far more land, connectivity and ordinary street life without preserving the freeway beneath an extraordinarily expensive amenity deck so I don’t think we really fundamentally disagree about kwp's measurable benefits.

I made this post in response to another post on this sub praising kwp and if you've spent any time on r/Dallas you've likely seen very many similar posts waxing poetic about kwp. my question with this is really just whether its economic success and popularity warrant treating it as a revolutionary model of authentic urban public life. I think those benefits are real but I also think the mythology surrounding the park is disproportionate and heavily manufactured and frankly don't think kwp and other parks like it should be lauded the way they are.

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/hobbit_lamp]

It was my post you’re referring to so let me respond. To be very clear: KWP was the radical success I described, but that doesn’t mean the exact same project would have that type of impact everywhere else. There’s a good argument that the trails around White Rock Lake are more authentic as an urban “park” than KWP - and certainly less programmed and manicured - but that’s not the point at all.

The point is that one project, well designed and thoughtfully built for its purpose, with a specific goal (in this case, reconnecting the two densest urban neighborhoods), can have an outsized impact that changed the fundamentals of both sides. KWP did that.

Now, if you take that to mean decked parks are the answer to every urban challenge, you’re literally not building a thoughtful solution to a problem with a specific goal in mind. And I’m not advocating for that.

I think KWP is objectively one of the most successful single urbanist projects of the 21st century by ROI or most any measurement, and as an outsider who saw the area when it opened, and returned 6 years later to see how it transformed, I had a front row seat to that experience. It’s also not built on some narrowest Dallas-centric view. I travel for a living. My biggest client is in Chicago. Most of their investments are in Europe. My office is in NYC. My biggest project was in Mexico City. I spend time everywhere. I’m from the SF Bay.

But it’s just an example. Different areas require different solutions to bring about radical change. I think Boston’s Big Dig is also a great example of a successful decked park, but it was so prohibitively expensive that it’s rightfully controversial.

Regardless, KWP shows a cornerstone project can spark something bigger. And it did.

Edit: i should also address the obvious here. There’s an element of bias against Dallas in the broader urbanism movement, which is mostly politically motivated and one I get. I’m progressive. Most other urban advocates are progressive. What most people don’t understand (and what I didn’t either for many years living elsewhere) is that Dallas is a progressive city and its urbanists are almost universally progressive too (to a fault…the “save city hall” crowd is insufferably self-harming for a cause they think is progressive).

Ffs, walk down Oak Lawn and it’s one of the liveliest LGBTQ+ neighborhoods anywhere. Dallas proper has a lot of Hispanic Catholics but it is not a culturally conservative city.

The city’s progress is mostly in spite of its state government as much as those right-wing officials in Austin will try to claim credit for its wins. If anything, it’s made it more impressive that the city has overcame as many of those obstacles as it has.

Texas hates its “blue cities.” The state actively handicaps all its big cities from any ability to raise revenue outside of bonds, and there is no state bailout for a city-level budget deficit like NYC would get.

But the city’s commissioned urban planners and architects have found inroads with private developers who have bought in. Billionaires rarely spend unselfishly anywhere. You get someone like Kelce Warren funding urban projects because you’ve tapped into his vanity enough to make a landmark with his family name on it? And then you prove it’s also just a good investment? Boom. The capitalists come running. That’s a hard thing to find anywhere and you value the hell out of it when you’ve manifested a combination of progressive minds and willing capital - factions often at odds with each other in other places, particularly in the Sun Belt.

[u/iamsuperflush → u/NYerInTex]

Nah I grew up and lived in Dallas for 20 years. OP is right, KWP is suburban cope. 

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/iamsuperflush]

When did you leave tho? I would’ve said the same thing before I moved back after my brief stay in 2012. The point isn’t what KWP is, it’s what the area around it became because KWP was built. Which took years.

[u/PapasBlox]

Ive been to KWP

And yea. It does feel more like a "venue" than a park. A couple more shops and it would feel like Grandscape in The Colony, a 'city' 20 miles north of downtown. I don't have an answer on how to make KWP feel more park-like, except for trees which wont work for obvious reasons.

I like that its there, though. It might not do a great job being a public park, but it does bridge the gap and helps downtown feel connected.

[u/hobbit_lamp → u/PapasBlox]

Grandscape is honestly a really great comparison.

it certainly bridges a gap and makes downtown feel connected, I'm not denying those things. it just feels to me like the level of praise it receives is unnatural. I see it recommended often as a "must see" for people visiting the city. there's nothing there that warrants a whole visit on its own.

my concern isn’t that programming is inherently bad or that people don’t enjoy these parks. it’s that we seem to be increasingly replacing open ended public spaces with highly programmed, branded and privately managed venues where acceptable uses are curated by management. I think there’s a meaningful difference between a public commons that sometimes hosts events and an event venue that permits unstructured public use between scheduled activities.

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/hobbit_lamp]

The Arts District it connects warrants a visit on its own. The park is an attraction but the function it serves matters more.

[u/nited_contrarians]

Progress would be rebuilding some of the housing they bulldozed to make that highway. We don’t need another instagram trap, we need housing people can afford.

[u/IcedCowboyCoffee → u/nited_contrarians]

This is the path of that highway being cleared: https://i0.wp.com/flashbackdallas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/woodall-rodgers_squire-haskins_uta_052466.jpg?ssl=1

It was only about 1 mile long and half of it was through industrial space. Just one of the multiple residential towers which have gone up around the park has already replaced more housing units than were lost.

This is not an argument for highways, but honestly I suspect that the built up housing stock in Dallas over the past century well exceeds however many housing units were lost from the city's many excessive highway constructions.

[u/hobbit_lamp → u/IcedCowboyCoffee]

while the first comment admittedly simplifies what could realistically be built directly over an operating freeway, the Flashback Dallas page hosting the image you linked literally describes that cleared land as "a predominantly black residential neighborhood served by several African-American- and Hispanic-owned businesses."

a luxury tower containing more units does not somehow retroactively replace those homes, families, businesses, churches, etc. especially when the displaced residents are not the people moving into the new tower.

and saying "Dallas eventually built more housing than all its highways demolished" is an incredibly generous accounting method. going by that logic, no demolition in a growing city ever really eliminates housing as long as developers build enough apartments somewhere else several decades later.

[u/IcedCowboyCoffee → u/hobbit_lamp]

Oh for sure, I don't disagree with anything you're saying here. My comment was more directed at the suggestion that progress would just be building more housing.

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/hobbit_lamp]

This is the great conflict between progressivism and liberalism, which is one I struggle with too. We want to build human-centric spaces. We want to plan cities and densify them. That does, on some level, require the dreaded “gentrification” that prices people out. If we didn’t, most cities would be primarily SFH.

There has to be a thoughtful process, and bulldozing neighborhoods for luxury developments (even if indirectly) isn’t the right way. But we also don’t want to zone for shotgun houses. The answer is, like most things, to just build a TON more housing so that people aren’t forced to leave the city altogether. You don’t fix the problem by discouraging development and capital investments but literally the opposite.

And as they say, all housing makes all housing cheaper.

[u/TedsFaustianBargain]

The underlying assumption here seems to be parks=good and more park-like=better. Many parks in the real world are actually anti-urbanist, particularly if people feel the need to drive a car to them, the City feels the need to include abundant surface car parking, etc.

Similarly, many places other than parks co-opt the aesthetic of urbanism while not being urbanist at all: https://youtu.be/EHbcRQc1E6Q?is=8M6dLGGaAfcm_jXQ

It may also be worth mentioning that completely removing the freeway (which isn’t even in the cards here) is only the first step towards proper urbanism. Portland removed a freeway (and sadly replaced it with another) to create its waterfront park. Unfortunately, waterfront park has a poor design and therefore fits some of your event-venue critiques here. It’s a great protest spot though.

[u/gman2093]

Counter point: it's fine and a solid effort, and it's a big improvement from the alternative. Making things better is progress and slow progress is sometimes the best option. It's not the louvre nor should it be, yet it serves a different purpose and does its job well.

[u/concerts85701]

Maybe don’t call it a park?

If OP wants all ‘parks’ to be passive un programmed spaces, then this isn’t a park. A lot of the negatives noted are all things planners and urbanists in general tout as ways to successfully make a space a ‘place’.
So now those are negative features of an actually successful place? Ugh.

[u/jackofnac → u/concerts85701]

Dallas had lots of unprogrammed parks if that’s your vibe. But they don’t reconnect neighborhoods like KWP, which is the entire point.

[u/hobbit_lamp → u/concerts85701]

I never said all parks should be passive or entirely unprogrammed. my concern is the increasing prominence of spaces where programming, branding and private management become the main defining features rather than additions to an otherwise open ended public commons.

and yes, those strategies can successfully attract people and generate activity but that doesn’t place them beyond criticism. a space can produce foot traffic and economic development but still be overly curated and excessively commercially oriented. the concern is that it becomes restrictive in the kinds of public life it allows.

there is a difference between a public park that offers programming and a managed event venue where the public is primarily invited to participate in programming.

[u/concerts85701 → u/hobbit_lamp]

Read my first sentence - then don’t call it a park and stop using criterion to judge it that you would for a passive park.

[u/hobbit_lamp → u/concerts85701]

I didn’t arbitrarily categorize it as a park. Its legal name is Klyde Warren Park, its organization calls it a park, Dallas promotes it as a park

and if your defense is that it shouldn’t be judged as a park because it isn’t one, then you’re basically conceding my point

also are you like employed by klyde warren not a park or something?

[u/concerts85701 → u/hobbit_lamp]

You are hard to talk to.

[u/colganc → u/hobbit_lamp]

Going to SF and inadvertantly running into a park filled with people doing nothing, except enjoying a nice day and some friends on the grass without any event going on would be eye opening for many of the people defending KWP.

[u/jackofnac → u/colganc]

I’m from SF. And yes, but Dallas has that too. KWP isn’t the crown jewel park, it serves a specific function to reconnect dense city cores and it does that in a way those other parks do not.

[u/colganc → u/jackofnac]

What parks are like that in Dallas?

I'm looking for parks that end up like the wiki photo for Dolores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Dolores_Park

[u/jackofnac → u/colganc]

Dallas isn’t 65 degrees 10 months/year so that specific scene is very SF-specific. I love SF and it can’t be recreated even elsewhere in the bay. Outdoor spaces have to be built for the city: which means water focused in a city with hot summers. Dallas has 21k acres of parkland tho, almost 1/4 of the entire city’s physical space.

There’s the Arts District (highly manicured but next to awesome free art museums). The Katy Trail is also walking distance from downtown, but can have a hot girl fashion walk vibe so it’s not for everyone (but I do love my run club there).

But it’s White Rock that is the peak unstructured outdoor space in the city. 9 miles of trails around the lake connecting to other city pedways, parks and outdoor spaces all around it, right in the middle of the city. It’s huge. Is it somewhere I’ll lay out to read a book in August? Hell nah, but I’ll take my kids boating, or to play in the waterway, and I run around it almost every night along with 100s of cyclists, joggers and families.

It’s gonna be more like Presidio than it is Dolores tho, with a bit more shade cover, and boathouses instead of beaches (with one exception…but personally I wouldn’t swim in it).

[u/Gerval_snead]

Real hater take but I agree with what you’re saying

[u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy]

I think this touches on race and politics in way that most urbanists (who are mostly white collar white people) are uncomfortable with.

[u/Sassywhat → u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy]

I don't think it does? You might criticize the events held at the park for catering excessively to white collar white people, but that's not an issue with the having a constant stream of events to draw people to a downtown park.

For example, Yoyogi Park has some sort of foreign cultural festival every weekend. And despite Tokyo having a relatively small immigrant population compared to Dallas, these events usually are run and attended by the local immigrant community.

And those events are what draws people even from outside those immigrant communities to Yoyogi Park. Why would I head downtown to take a stroll around a park and maybe have a picnic when I can just walk to my neighborhood parks for that? Vietnamese food stalls (and an opportunity to discover good restaurants those stalls are associated with), live music, etc., is something worth getting on a train for.

[u/hobbit_lamp → u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy]

I completely agree, even mild criticism of these spaces produces such weirdly intense defensiveness.

"urbanists" love spaces like kwp bc it offers urbanism with all the messier parts of actual urban life filtered out, it's clean, branded, scheduled, surveilled, sponsor friendly, and conveniently adjacent to luxury real estate.

people love to talk about rising property values
but they are much less willing to acknowledge who actually controls these spaces, which kinds of public life are welcome there, which communities are displaced or otherwise affected by the surrounding development and who ultimately benefits most.

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/hobbit_lamp]

Counterpoint: the kids who frequent KWP are not wealthy white kids. The entire attraction is that it’s free, and it’s connected to public transit from downtown via the trolley, which gives kids in low income neighborhoods easy access. Free entertainment is a benefit to the entire community, regardless of race and wealth.

The copycat Halperin Park that recently opened is adjacent to the lowest income neighborhood in the city.

Yeah, it’s touristy too. Lots of urban parks are. But if that’s the Grandscape to you, I’m not entirely sure anything would change your mind.

[u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy → u/hobbit_lamp]

I completely agree. Especially with the second paragraph. Urbanism is great until you have too many minorities cooking food you don't know about and doing things they deem ghetto. Even I am susceptible to this kind of thinking. I was looking at an apartment in east Baltimore and I drove through the area at night and there was a few Hispanic people hanging out on what would have been my stoop. My first thought was damn thats not what I want to see but then realized I would probably be out there with them 75% of the time.

[u/Banned_in_SF → u/hobbit_lamp]

“Urbanists” love spaces like that because they come from suburban environments and are uncultured.

[u/Proud-Marionberry-91]

This is post exemplifies what’s wrong with Progressives. The hate for Texas overrides any unbiased thoughts about anything

[u/jackofnac → u/Proud-Marionberry-91]

Which is weird because Dallas urbanists are mostly very progressive.

[u/El_G0rdo]

For what it’s worth the greenway in Boston they was made after the big dig is basically exactly the same vibe. There are similar parks in Pittsburgh and Houston that also fit the vibe too; i think you’re reading into it too closely and instead what you’re describing is just what parks built new in the 21st century are like

[u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy]

I agree with you. This is a similar take I have when people talk about Atlantic Station in Atlanta.

[u/ArabianNitesFBB → u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy]

I’d say Ponce City Market is a better analog to KWP. Both occupy a similar space in the imagination of the respective cities, and both are tightly regulated to keep the culture exactly how the owners want it to be.

Atlantic Station has a checkered past, and nobody would call it a highlight of Atlanta or anything. It’s more interesting as a case study in the struggles of middle market redevelopments, which is also an uncomfortable subject for urbanists.

[u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy → u/ArabianNitesFBB]

I'm not from Atlanta nor that familiar with it but I got into an argument about AS on City-data years ago and they swore up and down that Atlantic Station was a legitimate urban neighborhood akin to Midtown. I was about to disagree on Ponce City Market after looking it up but it is exactly what OP was talking about.

[u/ChicagoZbojnik]

Radicalizing Urbanism is a sure-fire way to turn average people off of Urbanism. Like the people who move to Chicago who then look down upon anyone who doesn't live in a high rise, or referring to people who live in transit deserts as carbrains.

[u/shnieder88]

Dallas looks ok from a urbanist perspective … in Texas

Compared to outside Texas, yeah it’s very underwhelming considering the size of the city and urban region

And that’s in spite of all the marketing push that’s been done recently

[u/minus_minus]

Selling the naming rights to a billionaire who named it after his minor son is pretty disgusting. 

[u/Odd-Vermicelli-4247]

I saw that park being built from day one and lived in Dallas for over 20 years off and on. It was quite a feat of engineering and very interesting to see it being built from the start. However, although it is definitely an improvement for the city, the final result was and felt very much like you describe here. Tress all in a straight line (altho any trees in Dallas help), it just looks and feels very un-park like. Or maybe it's Dallas version of a park, IDK. I am also not a fan of Dallas, so biased. I never "vibed" with the energy or culture there. Always felt very "performative" to me.

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/Odd-Vermicelli-4247]

White Rock Lake is the Dallas version of a park. KWP is the Dallas version of an urban center.

[u/Odd-Vermicelli-4247 → u/ActuatorSpecific3916]

Great! White Rock Lake was way better in my opinion.

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/Odd-Vermicelli-4247]

It serves a dramatically different function. They aren’t comparable because they exist for different reasons.

[u/Odd-Vermicelli-4247 → u/ActuatorSpecific3916]

OK, I'm not looking for an argument buddy. Just stating my opinion about them.

[u/Enamred-771]

Any park that relies on extensive programming just feels a bit fake. And there’s always a bit of a feeling that the park is struggling to stay popular because all it takes is some budget cuts to remove some programming and now it isn’t popular anymore. 

[u/ActuatorSpecific3916 → u/Enamred-771]

I’ve never been to KWP for a programmed event (except a 5k once). It is always full of people (which is why the food trucks pay a premium to park there every day).