The Trouble with & Potentially Potential (sic) of Airports

When I was a kid I used to love planes, airports, and travelling. Once I finished school and went to work, flying once a week or so for work, the joy quickly vanished into a soul-crushing malaise, sitting in generic airport lounges, waiting in lines through security, putting up with crying babies, and the general insufferability of all people seemingly at their worst, during travel, amplified by the stress compounded by airlines under the weight of their own stress and bureaucracy dealing with failed and failing business models.

And its true that many airlines are struggling with a litiny of factors from labor costs to operations and maintenance costs. Except they won't go anywhere. Save for complete collapse of the global economy, we'll need, want, and demand some form of air travel. Having experienced the comfort and convenience of high speed rail, I suspect airlines will eventually focus solely on longer distance travel and a rebirth of trains will cover the regional linkages, simply because trains are more efficient getting you from place to place without the time delays getting to and from the actual hubs (airport vs rail station).

Rail loses this competitiveness once you start getting over 500 miles or so, given current speeds. I actually did the math once (and I'll have to look it up again) and it shows that Dallas to St. Louis is about the cutoff point where you're better off flying than taking a hypothetical high speed train. Nonetheless, Dallas to Austin or Houston, city center to city center in an hour is pretty tempting. And far more comfortable than a plane. Because trains can be as long as they need to be without losing much efficiency.

I can't sleep on flights anymore. I don't know what happened to this former super power. My flight back from London, despite a bit sick (though not really hungover), turned into an opportunity to catch up on some reading. In this case, Greg Lindsay's Aerotropolis, perhaps inspired by Heathrow itself to scroll through my Kindle for Lindsay's book. Despite my trepidation towards John Kasarda's ideas that all cities will be aerotropoli, I found Lindsay's writing excellently measured, perhaps even approaching the subject matter as carefully as I did reading it.

The idea of the aerotropolis is real. Airports are hubs. Value is created by hubs, be there mere intersections, rail stations, or airports. The challenge, like all global/regional hubs is the infrastructure is as much disruptive as it is connective, particularly to local networks.

However, reading about the Heathrow controversy, its need to expand, and the general loathing by locals and frequent flyers alike towards the airport, I was struck by a singular moment. The dropoff. Heathrow Terminal 3 drop-off is surprisingly welcoming, a plaza lika space formed by the arms of the terminal.

Except that was really the only nice part. Sure, the interiors have been redone to turn the airport into a shopping mall with for-pay wifi stations and the like, but I was most impressed with the drop-off. The real problem is everything surrounding the airport:

And that's when it hit me. The real problem with airports isn't the flight paths. Though, if you've ever golfed at Bear Creek golf course near DFW, you can smell the jet fuel in the morning. Not so pleasant. And a big portion of land value is about emotion, decreasing dissatisfaction and increasing satisfaction be that through social or economic exchange. I suspect airlines will eventually work out the issue of jet fuel, perhaps even sound, because it is in their financial interest long-term to move away from fossil fuels. I don't even mind the sound of jets taking off and landing. It reminds me of being in a city where things are happening. People are coming and going.

And that's when I realized the bigger issue facing the idea of "aerotropolis," or the city built around, by, and service of the airport. As I've written a number of times, regional/global infrastructure has to be tangential to the local fabric and functions of the city, less those connections become disruptive. It isn't the flight paths that prevent the idea of the aerotropolis, and I don't even really like that term, it's really just about land value responding to interconnected networks, ie city, but the ground connections to/from the airport that are far more disruptive:

Outside of DFW has become this basically:

So the real question becomes, how can we maximize the value of an airport to a city via minimizing the disruption it has upon that city and decreasing "dissatisfaction" through the inconvenience of getting to/from the airport to our actual destinations within the city?

So in this sense, any airport has three primary barriers preventing a maximization of its convenience and value to the city:

1. Flight Paths - as we've discussed, this is already minimal.

2. Land Mass / Security:

As you can see in any map of the DFW area, DFW airport is more identifiable from satellite than either downtown FW or Dallas. Larger in area too. The massive land mass limits the amount of value that can cluster near the airport.

Furthermore, the rigid boundary creates a vast perimeter "border vaccuum," in Jane Jacobs' words. What she intuited by this is that the value is at the center of places and centers are impossible at edges of places. Think of downtown Dallas. The value is on Main Street, not along the perimeter of the highway loop:

And,

3. Disruptive nature of the regional connectivity, mostly car access and infrastructure.

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The question becomes, can we limit the effect on city fabric of an airports inevitable appetite for land, decrease the regional infrastructural disconnectivity, while maximizing the convenience of the airport?

Reagan National in DC is one I'm most familiar with that comes close. The airport is built out into the Potomac on new and otherwise worthless land. In other words, nice and flat space, out on what would otherwise be a barrier itself, the river.

The Arlington, VA/Pentagon City area isn't the world's most urban place, but it is steadily improving, be it in isolated bubbles of pseudo-urbanism fragmented by overly wide/fast roads. What other examples are there like this? LaGuardia too, is set out on the water, but isn't connected by rail and is disconnected by highway. Aerotropolis discusses the project in South Korea, New Songdo, where the airport is built off the coast on an island and the "aerotropolis" is a new city from scratch connected via ferry.

It makes sense, being that it is between Seoul and the airport. However, it isn't immediately adjacent. The question remains, can an airport immediately interface with a city, much the way Reagan does in terms of proximity, but better? Can we apply the welcoming plaza of Heathrow T3, except without the rest of Heathrow's spaghetti and parking garages around it?

Something like this:

The regional road/rail connection could even be decked to further minimize the disruption and connection. As for our local airports, Love Field is pretty well landlocked, but small and convenient enough that the city is pretty close to the terminals. Except, it is still a mile away. Hardly adjacent. Also, the new DART line has a stop, but it too is nearly a mile away. We can't really infill between without removing runways.

Would there be value to infilling the oodles of land within DFW proper? Quite possibly. Even with the assortment of new rail lines scheduled to deliver people to the airport, none of which will be more convenient than driving (though less costly given parking costs). DFW suffers by being far away. As airports inherently serve regions, its regional infrastructure is quite bad upon its surroundings. Can we then build closer? Can there be express trains to the airport?

There is also the necessary point that all of the surrounding land uses around airports are fairly undesirable. This is at the heart of my early trepidation towards overvaluing land near airports. It is mostly cheap motels, used car lots, and the like. The areas immediately around airports are about as desirable as around many of the train stations in Europe, ie not the nicest parts of town. Is that because of its nature as a hub? Is it because of the logistical network of global economic exchange? Is it because of that border vaccuum effect? I suspect it is all of the above.

In other words, the efforts to build aerotropoli are pure experiments in speculation. However, it is also equally certain that they could be built far better than they are if they follow the simple rules:

1. Minimize disruption to the physical surroundings

and

2. Maximize convenience getting to and from Gates to micro-destinations within the cities themselves.

The best places are always governed by the simplest and most elegant of rules.

The Urbanology Show

We've finally gone and done it. Kevin Buchanon of FortWorthology and I have started a podcast. The first episode is here and as Kevin describes it:

Episode 1′s topics include: designing streets for people vs. designing them for traffic movement, a brief introduction to Fort Worth’s Near Southside revitalization district, how the Internet and social media is affecting urban revitalization, the polycentric nature of cities, lack of transportation choice, building lighting, demand-driven urbanism vs. supply-driven urbanism, Deconstructivism, the revitalization of Bilbao, Woody Allen, the Enlightenment, and inappropriate Winston Churchill quotes.

Kevin has podcasted before so for me I suppose it was about getting the hang of it. We had been getting together about once a month over beers to talk about the very same things so we decided to start recording and putting those convos on blast, y'all. Though we both tangent trip by nature, the wide variety of topics listed above was surely caffeine induced, as the show was recorded at Avoca Coffee in the Near Southside area of Fort Worth. Next time, it will be over beers, meaning it may be more jovial and/or sanguine.

DMN's Sprawl Series, Part 1

I'm going to use this space to respond to various aspects of the series the Dallas Morning News is running on sprawl. I don't know exactly where it will lead since I haven't yet read parts 2 or 3, but after reading part 1, there were so many inaccuracies and lazy assumptions that rebuttal is necessary.

Note: All of this is behind the DMN's paywall. I will not do a full fisking, which would require cross-posting the entirety of their content. So I will limit what I post to the most critical strikes and gutters.

And to be frank, I'm having other people feed me this content since the DMN doesn't seem to have an itunes inspired pay per column idea and I can't convince the capitalist in me to spend above and beyond what I perceive to be the value of the content. This series does nothing to dissuade that opinion.

Apologies beforehand if anything herein hurts anybody's feelings, but I care about two things: the city I live in and the profession I work in. So yes, I get angry. Without proper understanding of the issues and dynamics at hand, both of those two things are badly weakened.

If the DMN wishes, I will replace quotations with paraphrases, but some information and debate needs to be in the public realm.

My words in a nice claret red.

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At current growth rates, the North Texas suburbs will reach the Red River someday.

I see their going for rhetorical bombast in their lede. It won't. One, you can't make the same mistake economists make far too often. Trendlines don't extend to infinity. Only timelines do. Cities are inherently restricted by transportation technology and the time humans are willing to spend making the connections necessary in their daily lives. This is why cities throughout history are an hour wide (and here I'm referring to cities in the sense that they are the physical manifestation of interconnected local economies, ie the amorphous, contiguous body you see in satellite imagery). So unless teleportation technology is invented or the planet's carrying capacity somehow manages to increase exponentially this will not happen. And as for the assumption that the internet is like teleportation technology allowing us to further disperse, I counter that here. The internet facilitates and caters to clustering moreso than it does dispersal.

Cheap land, good schools and other strengths have fueled an era of suburban development in North Texas, spurring unprecedented job growth, prosperity and a high quality of life.

Incorrect, lazy conventional wisdom. As I joked this morning on twitter, it is amazing it took civilization to find the valhalla of great schools that existed out in the wilderness for millennia. Had we only discovered them earlier, it would be unicorns for all. Yes, schools draw famillies. But, first the families drew the schools out there and provided the tax base for them. Similarly, the young, engaged families that moved into North Oak Cliff over the past five years have transformed the local elementary school.

Furthermore, land was/is cheap outside the city because it was not viable for anything but agriculture or wilderness. It was only when transportation technology and infrastructure was created that repositioned this land as viable for improvement. The highways also downgraded the value of all the land near them. They linked disparate places but disconnect local ones. The math on that is that one connection was made, but dozens upon dozens were lost. Sum degree of integration diminishes and therefore accommodation (built uses) also diminish. Look at any overvalued highway frontage property and its inevitable life cycle from office building or hotel or whatever until its death rattle as a gas station or triple X shop.

The drawback of course is that much of this was cannibalistic and merely growth for growth's sake. How many people moved specifically because of that growth boom and the various related industries? And without that, we go the way of the rust belt. Ultimately cities are about desirability and opportunity. The opportunity is instilled by network interconnectivity. The driving force of the suburban "growth" will be the demise of both the brief blip of growth which cannot exist without purpose, opportunity, or a magical solution to cheaply transport us from place to place.

"Other strengths." Like what? Name them. Here seems like a good place to point out the difference between sprawl and a legitimate suburb that is attached to a "host city" but is not parasitic, like Torrent, Spain outside of Valencia. It is also more family-oriented, but also provides a range of market-oriented housing types and built-in mobility, as provided through proximity and legitimate transportation choice. There are also jobs, a quarantined but nearby industrial sector (really the only use (Locally Undesirable Land Uses or LULUs) that ought to be "zoned", a legitimate downtown, connected to Valencia by rail, and local food production/agriculture immediately abutting development providing stability and food security while we have about 3 days worth of food at any one time.

Imagine if there are significant disruptions to global food supply and shipping? Imagine how expensive food will become as fuel costs rise. The only way cities survive, let alone grow, is if they are adaptable and durable. Sprawling sun belt cities provide neither.

The pro-growth culture is so strong that planners foresee a day when development reaches out 100 miles from Dallas. Yet given the long-term costs behind such a layout, some community leaders believe that unchecked growth is unsustainable.

These "planners" are smoking something, lest they be wholly incompetent. This idea is so deliriously malinformed, I can't take it seriously, but have to because it threatens to discredit my profession. Me. Infastructure of sprawl is badly failing because by its very nature decentralizes, reducing tax base while increasing tax burden. This does not, nor will it ever add up, particularly in a world of increasing pressure on finite resources. But go on thinking forever growth is possible. Whatever sell you want to make to keep bringing in federal transportation dollars for massive projects providing the seeds of our own destruction.

Yes, Detroit can happen here. It is like we are following Lewis Mumford's playbook toward Necropolis to a T. Perhaps our industry is more diversified, but is housing?! Is transportation?! Detroit, at root, died because we ran out of a need for cars as hundreds of thousands sit idle at ports, both foreign and domestic. So what happens to a city built for cars and cars alone?

It is critical that we distinguish quantitative growth from qualitative. We can still "grow" the economy without expanding, nay, fracturing the fragile bonds of the economy. In fact, the ONLY way we can grow is to grow back inward and recluster. And no, that can't be coerced via Urban Growth Boundaries. That should be dismissed out of hand as politically unfeasible. Nor is it particularly desirable. However, we can build in nudges to make infill more desirable. We have to. Because right now, all policies (be those taxing, zoning, transportation planning, funding, and design) steer us to sprawl. To forever growth. And since forever growth is a contradiction in terms, toward our own demise.

Commute times are rising. Air quality has declined. Water supplies are strained. And as subdivisions continue to sprout up on the Texas prairie, older communities closer to downtown Dallas have struggled to turn around aging neighborhoods and declining school enrollments and replace outmoded infrastructure.

First portion is all true. As for the second part, SOME central areas have struggled. On the other hand, I give you uptown Dallas, which added $2 billion with a B in tax base and investment. I give you North Oak Cliff, where the cool kids hang out. And then there are countless other places like Deep Ellum, Greenville, Knox-Henderson, etc etc. which are trying against all odds (infrastructural burden and isolation) to come back. The deck is stacked against them. Sprawl is NOT the market's choice, but the inevitability of badly misguided policies intended to provide relief from the dystopia wrought by industrialization that continue to this day (despite there no longer being much industrialization to speak of).

The Dallas-Fort Worth area has more people, about 6.5 million, than all of Texas did during World War II. More than half of that total now live beyond the city limits of Dallas and Fort Worth.

Aside: I just deleted several graphs of DMN content. Did the DMN focus group (verb) that people will only read one staccato-like one sentence machine-gun paragraphs? My senses are dulled by the onslaught of textual MTV.

And the region is slated to almost double in population between 2000 and 2030, according to the North Central Texas Council of Governments. Most of that growth has been on the edges. The region now measures roughly three times the size of Rhode Island.

We'll see if that growth ever occurs. And is that desirable? Do we want to be like Mumbasa? I'm not against population growth in DFW, but who would willingly want to jump into a city at McDonald's and WalMart wages to pay off the debt of our own infrastructural burden? "We can't afford to live like we've been. Move here!"

Collin County, the nation’s fastest-growing from 2000 to 2007, is the epicenter. The county’s population has tripled in size since 1990 and is now comparable to that of San Francisco or Detroit. Frisco’s population, which was a mere 6,000 in 1990, stands at about 120,000.

Weird juxtaposition. Intentional? If so, I'm impressed by the subtlety if it exists. By 2030, where will Collin County be? Where will San Fran? Where will Detroit. Three separate places with three different dynamics. Only one of which currently appeals to the human need, facilitating social and economic exchange with minimal "movement tax" of time, distance, and infrastructure. San Francisco has 66 neighborhood commercial centers where 5,000-7,000 people live within a quarter-mile, walking distance. San Francisco removed a highway (albeit a damaged one in the Loma Prieta earthquake). San Francisco has some of the most valuable real estate in the world. And as long as we're talking about market forces, price = demand = desirability, much of which stems from opportunity inherent within a legitimately networked city.

The search for good schools, cheaper housing, more space and easy road access has driven the migration. The consolidation of smaller suburban school districts after World War II helped propel the surge.

Horsesh!t. All of it. "Cheaper housing." Nothing is more expensive than cheap. The resale value of said houses at the edge are plummeting, fast approaching zero as we realize there is an inherent locational cost factor previously ignored in housing. Something called, "transportation." It only seems cheap on first blush. Economics are so much easier when you can ignore externalities too. Damn the torpedoes.

Prices have begun correcting around the country for the imaginary influx of capital injected into the housing market, inflating the bubble. That is one part of it. Many places around the globe suffered through this housing bubble. But many also built internally, providing quality construction that can be passed on through generations, retaining value. We built bird nests out of sticks and spit that will blow away with the next stiff breeze of reality and changing generational preferences. The second part of the price correction yet to be fully felt is the locational one.

Hot Damn! Look how expensive housing gets when you factor in transportation. If you can't see or enlarge this graphic, darkest green is over 60% of pre-tax household income. Meaning after taxes, housing costs, and transportation, many people have nothing left to save or invest. Sweet system we're setting up. We couldn't sack this city any better if Attila were in charge.

Sherie Hammett, a mother of three who lives in a large Plano home, is one of many North Texans attracted to cozy suburbia for those reasons.

She said she sometimes drives up to 100 miles a day running errands. She keeps clean clothes and a small refrigerator stocked with water in the back of her Chevy Suburban.

“It’s the quality of life,” Hammett said. “It’s the safety of knowing your kids can be out front. You get a little bit of everything up here: The schools are good, you can get the space and still have money for others things.”

Lulz. This is the bit where we convince ourselves we love our captor. Nobody ever self-diagnoses Stockholm Syndrome. Extra money to spend on things like driving 100 miles per day. Life cycle of a highway section is only a few decades. This wasn't a down payment, but layaway. Bills are coming due.

Here is also a good point to show the data that sprawl is the least healthy, least safe place to live, particularly for kids. Diabetes and obesity are directly linked to sprawl. Oh, and the leading cause of death for teenagers? Car crashes. So if this woman is driving 100 miles per day, should we call Child Protective Services? (rhetorical)

We're rational people and Ms. Hammett made a rational decision, because it is better than the alternative, anything near the cities. Our policies don't allow us to build safe, desirable, attractive, walkable urban neighborhoods, which would proliferate if given half the chance.

Yet perhaps more than any other factor, the rise of big job centers amplified the pace and scale of development here.

Derp. Jobs follow housing, employment bases. People create demand

“He had the resources to do whatever it was he wanted to do,” said Robinson, who is now 72 and lives in Plano. “To build a city from scratch was just an incredible opportunity. It was just cow fields at the time.”

Little did Robinson and his boss think Legacy might jump-start an entirely new ring of suburbs. Combined, Legacy and Richardson’s nearby telecommunications corridor have almost as much office space as nine Empire State Buildings and are home to about 100,000 workers.

The corporate office campuses are failing badly. They needed a walkable core, hence Legacy Town Center. Not many places can pull off a Legacy Town Center. Not many places/people have the resources, land, will, and foresight to pull it off. Legacy Town Center will remain, much like Torrent, Spain exists. Everything around it has a far more uncertain future. Other sprawling municipalities will find the going much more difficult to recluster and will have to think differently while learning from Legacy's lessons both good and bad, while acknowledging they likely won't 1) have an EDS at its height nor 2) the 90's and 00's building/housing climate.

A commute from a subdivision in Prosper to downtown Dallas takes about 45 minutes without traffic. The drive from Prosper to Frisco is about 10 minutes.

If my aunt was my uncle she'd be my uncle. "Without Traffic." Let that one simmer a bit.

The funny thing about so many modernist policies is they establish some impossible ideal and frame that as reality. Free markets also function perfectly when no people are involved. Communism too. Pick your -ism.

These "corridors" funnel people toward certain roads thereby inducing traffic. There is very little route choice. Furthermore, since the hideously inhumane roads we build are sociofugal, meaning they decentralize and disperse us, meaning more and more Vehicle Miles Travelled for everybody. More cost for individuals, more infrastructure costs for cities, more taxes (eventually) on all of us. Have a nice day!

These are facts and they are indisputable. As proven by two recent studies. One by a Brown U. economist which showed every intra-city highway led to 18% population reduction (dispersal). And another showed that with every doubling of per capita lane miles, VMTs increased on a related 1:1 proportion. Double lane miles (with the intent of reducing traffic), people just end up driving more and further. And the bigger roads just fill up again with induced traffic. Mission: FAILED.

Dallas and Fort Worth have some of the highest lane-miles per capita in the country, trailing just Kansas City. This is badly misguided government spending at its worst. You'd think at a time like now, we'd choose pragmatism over profligacy.

The fundamental flaw in modernist road planning, building, and design is that it works best, optimally, when only one user is on the road. Everybody and everything else is an obstacle. This is why you (okay, I) get so subconciously angry whilst driving. Everyone else is the enemy. Someone to be bested.

Now, let's think about the real purpose of roads, of networks. And that is to facilitate social and economic exchange generating as much positive return on our investment as possible, with minimal "taxes" like congestion, delays, operations and maintenance of vehicles, etc etc.

If these roads work best when no one is on them, they are failing economically. When they are crowded, they cause traffic delays, congestions, wrecks, etc. and are failing socially.

Because property tax revenue is the lifeblood of local communities, cities are desperate to raise new cash through development. It is often the only option, as many Texas voters are averse to tax-rate increases.

Good thing our policies reduce tax base while increasing tax burden so your tax dollars go less and less far (snark). Walkability is a tax cut, people.

“Anyone who supports an increase in taxes is not a very good person and should not be re-elected,” jokedMichael Morris, transportation director for the Council of Governments. “So cities have to get their revenue from more development. … It’s hard for them to turn down any type of development.”

So let's plan, design, and fund transportation networks that ensure that development's life cycle will be as short as possible (snark). Integrated networks create opportunity, drive demand, ensure long-term utility and durability of an area, which manifests itself in development. Upward growth and maximization of land rather than outward growth.

Plano’s tax base has leveled off in recent years. So leaders have funneled millions in grants and tax abatements annually to encourage businesses to relocate, expand or just stay put. Collin County commissioners last year talked about granting tax breaks to almost every new business that opens its doors, an unprecedented measure. The county eventually settled on a scaled-down abatement.

You reap what you sow. Like there will always be another strip center, new and further down the road to cannibalize, there will always be another city willing to bet the farm on smokestack chasing. Meanwhile, other cities are experiencing an influx of talent and entrepreneurs, starting businesses, meeting demand, seizing opportunity, merely because they WANT to be somewhere. This lasts. Appealing to emotion is durable. Appealing to wallets is temporary. Necropolis.

“Texas has always been a very strong property rights and pro-growth state,” said Dave Gattis, historian for the Texas chapter of the American Planning Association. “It’s growth at any cost.”

The mindset of cancer cells.

Texas zoning laws have seen few changes since the 1920s, when a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Euclid vs. Ambler, laid the foundations for modern zoning practices.

Cut n pasted responses to industrialization.

Since then, most Texas cities have adopted rules that guide everything from setbacks and landscaping to the number of parking spaces required. Many also have drafted informal long-term visions for their communities.

Arbitrary, pointless, and often destructive themselves.

In many ways, the loose regulations complement this state’s long-standing culture of self-rule. Since the days of Sam Houston, Texas landowners have built as they have seen fit.

Which is why there was no sprawl until many of the restrictive policies and regulations were enacted, thus creating a singular homogenous product of sprawl. If the DMN is suggesting Texas libertarianism is the cause of sprawl, they couldn't be more off-base, ignorant, and misleading. Shameful.

The flip side is the perpetuation of a system that, from top to bottom, not only enables sprawl but encourages it.

“If there were no regulations at all, then people would be moving as far away as possible — assuming they could get public services,” said Gattis, who also serves as deputy city manager for Benbrook, a Fort Worth suburb. “There would be no protection of open space, no density. It would all be sprawl.”

See my last statement, this is wrong. 100% incorrect. Otherwise, they would be living in Montana or Alaska. Social and economic exchange, meeting our needs and wants is only possible around other people.

“You used to be able to tell the difference between McKinney, Allen, Plano, Richardson, Dallas. There was cropland between each one,” she said. “It’s all covered up in concrete now.”

And we're still running with the premise that this is market forces, that this is desirable, DMN? Hmmm? If you beat it into my head one more time I might start to believe it.

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Parts 2 and 3 to follow later this week as time permits.

A Couple Riffs on Super Bowl Week in DFW

Let's get what has been recycled over and over again on every medium imaginable ad nauseum over with: yes, a lot of things went wrong. So, what? Do I care that Olivia Munn had a bad time because she wasn't the biggest famewhore fish in the room? She's a comedian that isn't funny and famous only for looks. Warning: this might be a theme developing here.

First of all, our own expectations for an event that is really little more than a year-long, roaming international party for vapid celebrities and inheritance-laden progeny who do virtually nothing productive for society to have their picture taken in front of an ever revolving screen of corporate alcohol/party/energy drink sponsor logos. Sounds like a blast.

Actually if you think about it, and then read this article by Sally Jenkins (progeny, who worked hard and possesses real ability), it turns out that Dallas is the PERFECT place to hold a Super Bowl. All superficies, little substance. (Oh, hi Olivia. Tell me about your Prada glasses.) It's just a shame the two grittiest, most loyal fanbases had to make it and ruin all the pretty with their snow and beards and team jerseys and Brett Favre-stench.

But that is not the real Dallas I know. It isn't Oak Cliff. It isn't Deep Ellum. Nor Fair Park. It isn't Lakewood or Little Forest Hills or Oak Lawn or West Dallas or the Design District. It's not the downtown of anybody that actually LIVES in downtown. And hell, it isn't even uptown (which if you've ever been to Crooked Tree CoffeeHouse you'll notice State Thomas is maturing into full flower). But, that IS the Dallas the rest of the world thinks it is, and for some bizarre reason, we misguidedly play along.

"Yeah, we're glitzy! We're like the Paris Hilton of cities! Us too?! Us too?! We're Victory! Oh, you don't like it that much? Oh, well, I guess we don't like it that much either..."

/notices empty buildings in Victory...

/sheepishly puts hands in pockets

/kicks rock

We are exporting a false persona and the world sees right through it. If we weren't ashamed of what makes us us, we might actually try to project some reality of what is beneath the mannequin-like botox of shiny glass buildings.

Which brings me to the second problem. Smearing the entire thing across 60 square miles. That's like having a party and inviting everybody to Connecticut. Where? Uh, there. It dissipates the energy across too much territory to too many disconnected, isolated places where visitors are expected to get to via what? $60 cab fare? Personal propulsion pack? Successful, resilient (and therefore interesting) urban places are built upon many quick, easy connections, between people, between labor/employment, between destinations, etc.

Finding a cab and hopping on a highway only to sit in traffic because the city was built for easy motoring only to later find out that puts everybody else on the road, is not an easy connection. The effort to build a city full of easy car connections has the opposite effect. Have we learned this yet? Or must I brand it onto a Louisville Slugger and start imprinting it onto foreheads?

But the city (and by city I'm referring to the economic entity, the entire metroplex, not the individual political bodies) and its event infrastructure IS spread out and those areas with real character (and I'm surely leaving several out as I belt this out in one quick draft) are too small by themselves to support a huge event. They're small mostly because they've been strangled by a tourniquet of a transportation system that values the distant connection over the short connection, the exact opposite of the way living systems, like cities are constructed.

So maybe Dallas as we know it today, isn't prepared for a Super Bowl. But, what American city really is? The commonly held stipulations for a Super Bowl are:

1) Lively, interesting city with a unique character,

2) Warm weather in February, and

3) Big, kickass stadium with loads of luxury boxes to host the grand finale of that roving, weeklong, international digital camera, flashbulb, and red carpet convention.

New York is supposed to have it soon. They just built a new stadium, but people are already complaining about the weather. Plus, the stadium is built on the swamp where Tony Soprano now rests. (Yes, he died at the end.)

Atlanta has held it, but their weather is just as unpredictable as Dallas's, the town outside of a few hipster enclaves in East ATL lacks as many interesting little small town clusters as here, and the Georgia Dome is a dump. But, at least it is downtown and they could host the entire thing in downtown/midtown.

NOLA passes 1 and 2, but the Super Dome doesn't stand up to today's modern mega-palaces to roid-raged guys giving each other early onset Alzheimer's.

Miami has 2 in spades. 1 - sorta... in South Beach and a few other places, but they're equally spread out and the stadium sucks and is up in the middle of nowhere. I know it sucks because my seat in it broke during the opening kickoff.

San Diego is short on 3.

LA could work but they don't have 3 nor an NFL team.

The Bay Area might work, but the new stadium they're proposing to build is way off in the valley or Reno or somewhere.

Indianapolis is about to host it...I'll leave the jokes to you.

My point is, there really isn't a perfect city that meets all criteria and makes everyone happy. Certainly individual aspects could've gone better. We were hit by a freak once a lifetime ice storm that I moved here specifically to get away from. Oh, hey look out the window! More ice!

However, that doesn't apologize for the controllable things that did go wrong. Most importantly, splitting the teams across cities. That is a suburban mindset with suburban results. Think about the Texas Rangers. They move to Arlington (for among other reasons - ahem, financial incentives) to be "in the middle of it all." And to capture both fanbases from Fort Worth and Dallas. Instead, they got neither, but 5,000 lonely souls per game until the first Autumn cold spell woke us up in late October and we realized that they were still playing the New Francisco Giants (sic) as coached by Bill Walshcells.

We tried to make everyone happy and instead made none. How very socialist of us. We need more competition amongst our cities so that one or two or three or four can focus on strengthening the real assets, the beating little pulses of real, authentic neighborhoods. Enough connecting Waxahachie to Celina via another new highway and instead let's work on connecting two neighbors from across the street.

Cities are a pyramid of connections, the most, at the bottom, are the local connections. They are the foundation of our neighborhoods. Nothing hits upon this point better than Ed Glaeser's new book, cited by David Brooks today:

That’s because humans communicate best when they are physically brought together. Two University of Michigan researchers brought groups of people together face to face and asked them to play a difficult cooperation game. Then they organized other groups and had them communicate electronically. The face-to-face groups thrived. The electronic groups fractured and struggled.

Cities magnify people’s strengths, Glaeser argues, because ideas spread more easily in dense environments. If you want to compete in a global marketplace it really helps to be near a downtown. Companies that are near the geographic center of their industry are more productive. Year by year, workers in cities see their wages grow faster than workers outside of cities because their skills grow faster. Inventors disproportionately cite ideas from others who live physically close to them.

"Screw you two. We're building a new highway between you. Good luck crossing the road, chicken. That's economic development as I know it!" Instead, build upon our real assets, our people, and project the product of the resultant neuro-chemical reactions called creativity and individual expression to the world.

Maybe then, when we our truly proud and ready to share what we've got, rather than merely boastful (Biggest! World ClAss! Shiny thing!), we'd be really ready to host a Super Bowl. I'm thinking in about ten years. And in that short time-span, it's time to get busy and start building: small, incrementally, authentically, and from the ground up.