Dallas City Council considers future land use guidelines
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A view of downtown showing there's still a lot of land to work with in Dallas. Photo: Kirby Lee/Getty Images
The Dallas City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on FowardDallas, a comprehensive plan on how public and private land should be used.
Why it matters: City committees and residents have met for months to update the wide-ranging plan for the first time in almost 20 years.
- The plan aims to guide zoning decisions to ensure there is enough equitable housing in the city.
The big picture: Dallas leaders continue to grapple with the city's racist past. The east-west Interstate 30 severs lower-income communities from the higher-income communities to the north.
- Dallas was the first Texas city to impose housing segregation by race in 1916.
Between the lines: The city first adopted a forward-looking land use plan in 2006 when faced with population growth that outpaced the housing supply.
- While development in the past two decades has increased housing options, it has also displaced communities, often in lower-income, diverse neighborhoods like West Dallas and North Oak Cliff.
State of play: The wide-ranging ForwardDallas draft establishes goals for land use and describes ideal urban development. It details what a dense neighborhood could look like versus a neighborhood with single-family homes on larger tracts of land.
- The document also gives examples of "community residential" neighborhoods that have a mix of single-family homes, duplexes and multiplexes but not large apartment complexes.
- "City residential" neighborhoods are a mix of multiplexes, apartments and mixed-use developments, as seen in The Village and Lowest Greenville.
The other side: Many Dallas residents oppose the land use plan, saying it discourages single-family zoning and would discourage homeownership.
- They fear the city will start rezoning some neighborhoods to add multiplexes.
Yes, but: The ForwardDallas plan is not a regulatory document and does not change zoning. It is meant to inform future zoning decisions.
- Any zoning changes would still go through a full approval process.
Go deeper: The full plan and history can be found here.