Urban Design, Early Lessons

After college I had the good fortune to work in the Dallas firm of Pratt Box Henderson. James Pratt was the principal with whom I spent most of my four years at the firm. One of the most valued lessons there was one of James' urban design projects, The Core Boulevard Plan.
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This was a conceptual design for, among other things, a system of boulevards linking the high-rise core of downtown, Baylor Hospital, and Fair Park. Significant street realignment, and some relocation, was proposed in the Fair Park area, and an upgrade to boulevard configuration was recommended for east Main Street and a corresponding length of Canton Street, with Canton and Marilla merging into one Canton Boulevard.
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Other goals set forth in the plan addressed inclusion in this boulevard network of the newly identified Arts District, the old Farmers' Market and the Convention Center.
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The Arts District was, in the early 1980's, only a proposal for a concentration of museums and performing centers. Since that time, substantial investment in this District by Dallas interests in the arts has resulted in a large collection of built work by world-class architects.
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The Farmers' Market has belonged to the City of Dallas since the 1930's, but its presence on increasingly valuable downtown property meant that the city had to decide whether to honor its historic location or move it to less pricey real estate. In the years since the 1980's it has become a more fully institutionalized presence, having grown and achieved permanent residence in what at times had seemed a tenuous location.
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Dallas Convention Center has become a huge complex immediately west of City Hall.
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At various points along the generally east-west, half-mile long axis of the plan, potential locations of plazas, sculpture or dense landscaping were noted. In particular, the intersections of Canton St. and Exposition Ave., and South Harwood St. and Young St, at the Scottish Rite Building, were recommended as landscaped plaza locations. The Canton/Expostion plaza was built several years later.
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The "lessons" contained in this project were, for me, numerous. First, the fact that design on this scale is perfectly within the purview of architects. Second, the enthusiasm of the people and institutions who are natural stakeholders in such projects is potentially huge. Third, the natural and direct process of forming and developing a conceptual plan which links and benefits large systems within a city is precisely the same process, with only a few additional considerations, as that of designing a building and its site plan. Finally, clear understanding of the potential for each downtown "district" was brought into focus in a plan which sought to create physical connections between them. Both the functional uitility and the urban aesthetic of the connecting corridors built on each district's potential and fostered a transcendent one for the overall Downtown. So, a vision was expressed that held obvious benefits for all the stakeholders involved.
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In considering a project of this type, it's interesting that a hierachial view of potential spatial emphasis seems to arise naturally from skilled observation of the project's path. The presence or suggestion of iconic structures, their relation to traffic corridors, history, landscape feasibility, amenities of shade, water features, sculpture, all blend into the repertoire of the potential project.
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Attention to spatial opportunites, coupled with a broader vision than that of, say, a single intersection of streets, can give rise to synergistic combination of traffic corridors, existing and new architecture.


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Core Boulevard Plan, Pratt Box Henderson and Partners, Dallas, Texas. 1980.