Archive for April 2nd, 2009

I’ve been thinking for some time that there is space in this blog for a series of essays about where this city might want to be in 50 years. The essays will be talking about where the city should try to be in terms of education, transportation, local government structure, environment, lifestyle, and the arts.

The more I thought about it, the more I considered creating a “Dream Fort Worth” would be valuable. Putting ideas out there about what could be done, in a Utopian context, might produce some unworkable and even ridiculous ideas, but then again, some things that come up might be useful, or lead to other ideas that would be more practical.

I’m convinced that short-sighted local government decisions are a problem for everyday Americans. We really need to look at things like transportation, local government structure, planning for better schools, building and zoning decisions, and how we allocate tax money.By dreaming of 50 years from now, a more-rational type of decision is really being made, if what we care about is the city and our children, and not just ourselves.

Most of us don’t often think about local planning and government, and so we just allow things to continue as they have, trusting those in charge with making the decisions for us. Unfortunately, often the only people who care to discuss and plan such matters are often those who have huge amounts of money at stake — for example, say, real estate developers — who then create infrastructure, such as car-dependent suburbs, that will be a drag on the community in the future.

In the next few weeks I’ll be creating my Fort Worth Utopia essays and publishing them here. I hope they serve as a fulcrum for discussion, and even raise a few eyebrows.