Investment propertyThe New Urban Village: The Town Square Makes a Comeback in Texas
Cities are beginning to discover that their greatest natural resource - people - are right in their own backyard. New developments are underway to restore decaying and abandoned areas to vital economic and residential centers to attract new residents and bring homeowners back from the suburbs. As the major attraction of these developments, the town square is being reintroduced as the gathering place for the community to conduct business, shop and be entertained.
According to a recent report in the Dallas Morning News, housing and real estate consultants have watched planning patterns shift from the last three decades to a new urbanism, with a neo-traditional twist. With sunshine over 288 days a year and average year-round temperatures in the upper sixties and lower eighties, North Texas offers the ideal location for the largely outdoor town square concept. This is a radical departure from the underground mall built in Dallas only three decades ago.
Witness the recent success of Sundance Square, in which an area of downtown Fort Worth, Texas was transformed into a performing arts mecca with restaurants, museums, entertainment, a plan which revitalized neighboring businesses and boosted the city"s economy. To attract and protect the huge crowds, which can sometimes be as heavy as those on New Orleans" Bourbon Street or San Antonio"s Riverwalk, the city and its investors have made public safety a primary concern by providing police and private security forces to protect the well-being of the crowds. The look of Sundance Square is delightful, with old renovated buildings, al fresco dining and clean paved and landscaped streets, complete with lamppost lighting.
In one of the nation"s largest building campuses, Legacy Park in Plano, Texas, developers are building a town center with shops and residential space to bring a sense of community to the commercial master plan.
Ground will soon break on Austin Ranch, a 300-acre residential development which includes over 5,000 apartments, townhouses and condominiums, part of a massive master planned commercial development situtated between the cities of Carrollton and The Colony, north of Dallas, Texas. The neighborhoods will feature landscaped squares, boulevards and parks.
Austin Ranch architect Peter Calthorpe was recently quoted as saying, " There is a real change in what people want in their communities. People really love traditional urban neighborhoods, and there are some old forms of housing that we"ve forgotten."
One suburb of Fort Worth, Southlake, is even going so far as to add a downtown where none existed before. To create the look of authentic Victorian store fronts, the city turned to the architect of Sundance Square, David Schwartz. Southlake"s Town Square project will house the City Hall and school district offices, with future phases to bring in more shops, offices, a movie theater and apartments.
The wide open spaces surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth have traditionally been more hospitable to the sprawling "ranch" style home than to the shared walls of urban housing. But the price for that has been a homogenous kind of lifestyle lacking in a sense of identity. The new urbanism promises safe, attractive areas to work and play with a strong sense of community, but it remains to be seen whether these developments will become a national trend.