Plano Goes Urban

D Magazine, Mar 01, 2000 by Walmsley, Ann

In Texas the idea of endless land has been a kind of birthright. As his small share in that birthright, the Dallas renter has long found happiness in the so-called garden apartment.

The flagship of the cheap and cheerful garden apartment craze in Dallas was Lincoln Properties' The Village, which opened in 1968 near Greenville and Lovers Lane--a twosquare-mile maze of some 7,200 units surrounding grassy areas. Similar dwellings are still going up throughout Dallas-Fort Worth, although these days developers call them "apartment homes" and outfit them more luxuriously with nine-foot ceilings and crown moldings. The newly-opened Villas at Spring Creek in Plano, for example, may have high-speed Internet access and flashy stone cladding, instead of the brick and wood typical of older buildings in The Village. But, like its predecessor, this development is really selling lawn, parking, and fences--without any forethought or consideration of where its renters shop, go to school, or work.

Challenging the garden apartment orthodoxy is a handful of stylish new higher-density, mixed-use developments in and around Dallas designed to liberate renters from their cars and give them the opportunity to live and work in a compact, culturally vibrant town setting. At Addison Circle four-story red brick buildings house retail on the ground level and apartments above, reminiscent of traditional European or Manhattan apartment buildings. The same idea is underway in Uptown near the intersection of McKinney and Allen and in the new Legacy Town Center under construction on the front lawn of EDS' headquarters in Plano. These developments-no less appealing for young families-follow the rules of The New Urbanism, a set of development principles that eschew suburban sprawl and encourage a return to neighborhoods that mix housing, offices, libraries, theaters, and shops in a compact, walkable grid. Instead of the lawn, tenants of New Urban apartments have inner courtyards or nearby parks. Instead of the security fences, New Urban renters have front stoops and pedestrian-filled sidewalks. Instead of strip malls, New Urban apartments have ground-level retail.

"The principal amenity of garden apartments is the yard and the gate," says Andres Duany, the Miami-based urban planner who is seen as the father of New Urbanism. "If we say we are replacing those amenities with a neighborhood and a walkable street, then it's an even trade."

Duany and his wife Elizabeth Playter-Zyberk are the designers of Legacy Town Center, Dallas's most dramatic experiment with New Urbanism. On what was once a cotton field at Legacy Drive east of the Tollway, EDS is supervising the construction of a pedestrian-oriented downtown of shops, apartments, and civic space for the 32,000 employees of the blue-chip corporations in the Legacy business parkemployees whose 24/7 work style sometimes makes them virtual residents of the business park. The Town Center and its 2,500 apartments will also serve as a retrofit for Plano, one of the fastestgrowing cities in the United States.

Duany knows his New Urbanist theories may cause some suburbanites to take offense. "It is one of the most unpopular things you can say to any American-that their suburb is homogenous and their house is interchangeable with others in California, Florida, Pennsylvania," he says. He denounces car culture and what he calls "dead worm streets" that curlicue through gated communities and isolate residents-the very thing that some Dallas area residents love. But his prescription offers an inviting idea: to not have to drive to work, school, or the theater, and to meet your neighbors out walking. In Seaside he planned for houses with front porches, sidewalks everywhere, and varying street widths. At Legacy his regulations specify, for example, that several architects should execute the facades so that the town looks as though it were built at different times. "Avoid stubby little awnings" is one commandment.

"To invite pedestrians in, awnings should extend as much as possible." These ideas are quickly entering the vernacular, with New Urbanist town sites in the works across the country and two new books about Celebration, Duany's 10,000-acre town outside Orlando: The Celebration Chronicles by Andrew Ross and Celebration, U.S.A. by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins.

It is intriguing to watch these conflicting visions sparring in Plano. Last October at the official Legacy Town Center groundbreaking under a high blue prairie sky, the city fathers congratulated themselves for their vision in zoning this 155-acre town site some 15 years ago, when EDS first bought the land. Yet elsewhere in Plano, carreliant gated developments that would be anathema to Duany continue apace.

Mayor Pro Tem Rick Neudorff agrees that it is too late for Plano to embrace Duany's theories of New Urbanism everywhere in town. "Plano is almost built out," he says. "Only seven per cent of our land is not committed." Also, there are no other areas of concentrated employment to support more town centers. Meanwhile, homeowners associations, while admiring the corporate campus, bristle at the idea of the town site's contemplated 2,500 apartments, fearing more traffic.