Why does everyone seem to hate Frisco? (Dallas, Plano: to buy, subdivisions)

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by RJ312

Frisco is an abomination of urban planning. It had a population of ~6,000 in the early to mid 1990s & now it is 160,000. That growth rate is insane. Tons of prairie land torn up needlessly. There should have been urban renewal & infill growth before needlessly tearing up land, and contributing to the urban heat island effect.

I'm not an environmentalist but seeing the way Sun Belt cities have grown firsthand has been underwhelming.

Not a chance.

And for even a second are you saying/claiming urban planning in say Boston was better..........Boston had its last v-shaped open air clay lined gravity fed sanitary sewer (parallel with storm sewers BTW) removed less than 20 years ago - I know one of the contractors who has pictures.

Also from an economics perspective the best way to handle massive amounts of concrete is to coalesce it into dense areas.

Frisco's physical boundaries were set many decades ago. As needy hands are everywhere very low density cities are a dream.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by DTXman34

1. How does one add over a million people? Easy. Better urban planning! Have you seen the acres upon acres of surface parking lots in Downtown Dallas? Dallas alone could've absorbed most of the multi-family housing growth. Not having 6-8 lane arterial roads and expanding public transit/improving walkability would also help. Making SFH neighborhoods more walkable and connected to a business center. Only if you think "good" urban planning is built on the basis of "drive to everything" would a place like Frisco be justified.

2. Political factors in northern cities? If this was true, NYC, Chicago, and Boston would be declining. No, it mostly has to do with geographical/terrain constraints along with the fact each city is different from another with a totally different history.

I like you but please think before you post.

Chicago is declining losing 13,000+ people last year. Chicago's population is down slightly since 2010 and way down since 2000 even in nominal terms.
Boston Metro (not Boston proper) added around 1,200 people from 2010 - 2017. That's a loss relative to US population growth.
NYC has added ~450K over that same span.


All of these numbers are proportionally and/or nominally dwarfed by DFW which grew by not quite 1MM people from 2010-2017.


FWIIW the place that is really shedding population relative to TX is California. I'll explain that if you'd like.

[TheOverdog]

FWIIW the place that is really shedding population relative to TX is California. I'll explain that if you'd like.

That seems like a really short-duration comparision. 1980 CA lead by 9.4m, 1990 by 12.9, 2000 by 13.5, 2010 by 12.09 and 2017 by 11.24. Texas still needs to gain another 2 million to equal 1980. And California is not shedding population like the midwest, it's just not gaining as fast as Texas while approximately maintaining its difference in standard of living.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by TheOverdog

That seems like a really short-duration comparision. 1980 CA lead by 9.4m, 1990 by 12.9, 2000 by 13.5, 2010 by 12.09 and 2017 by 11.24. Texas still needs to gain another 2 million to equal 1980. And California is not shedding population like the midwest, it's just not gaining as fast as Texas while approximately maintaining its difference in standard of living.

I'll get into it later tonight or tomorrow. But CA is 90% likely to lose a US House seat in 2020. Looking at nominal numbers just does not cut it and for context TX is 90/95% likely to pick up 2 seats in 2020.


And what do you mean by maintaining its difference in standard of living? CA has the BY FAR the worst true poverty metrics in the country - dwarfing Arkansas, West Virginia or Mississippi proportionally. Keep in mind until last year nearly 1/3 of all people in The USA on welfare lived in CA.

[Treasurevalley92]

I think there are legitimate concerns over irresponsible growth. Anyone who follows the work by Strong Towns would be aware that much of the way that we build: single use, box stores really have longevity issues with the inevitable cycles that development will go through.

You see that in alot of inner ring suburbs where the location and age could justify and increase in density, but you are stuck with older SFH. Even more of an issue in my opinion, is the concern that at lower density once a home cycles down to lower value, the property Taxes don't cover the cost of the infrastructure. (water, and roads are big ones) This has been a big issue developing in Houston, Houston simply can not afford to repair all of it's roads.

I'm as much of a fan of bigger lots in the suburbs vs smaller ones, the bigger the lot= more road you drive on every time you go somewhere= more expensive repairs. Honestly most suburban streets should be narrowed or go back to gravel. I know everyone hates that, but it's probably what you pay for.

Even really run down areas built more traditionally are much more productive: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...est-investment

All that said, I get that the city is going to need greenfield if we are adding a million people in less than 10 years and I don't want to over regulate because that will just drive prices up.

At the same time, not wanting to over regulate doesn't mean I think we should be subsidizing poor decisions. If you let real, unregulated market forces work, you get historical neighborhoods which are very efficient to this day. People have built incrementally for Thousands of years. Dallas's best neighborhoods were built with much less regulations than today. They were also built, largely before the GI bill when we began subsidizing home ownership and before the highway boom.

I don't think you can force everyone into new highrises in downtown Dallas, there will be greenfield development.

I think there is a legitimate concern that in the interest of short term growth we are allowing a ton of things to be built that quite frankly won't pull their own weight in the long run.

I don't mind if people prefer a suburban lifestyle, but we need to quit unfairly subsidizing it and try to use what we already have. Cities need to quit being greedy about capturing growth that will become a maintenance liability for the next generation. Frisco is a ticking time bomb.

[tcualum]

Frisco is the quintessential Generica and I have no desire to live somewhere like that.

[DTXman34]

Originally Posted by Treasurevalley92

I think there are legitimate concerns over irresponsible growth. Anyone who follows the work by Strong Towns would be aware that much of the way that we build: single use, box stores really have longevity issues with the inevitable cycles that development will go through.

You see that in alot of inner ring suburbs where the location and age could justify and increase in density, but you are stuck with older SFH. Even more of an issue in my opinion, is the concern that at lower density once a home cycles down to lower value, the property Taxes don't cover the cost of the infrastructure. (water, and roads are big ones) This has been a big issue developing in Houston, Houston simply can not afford to repair all of it's roads.

I'm as much of a fan of bigger lots in the suburbs vs smaller ones, the bigger the lot= more road you drive on every time you go somewhere= more expensive repairs. Honestly most suburban streets should be narrowed or go back to gravel. I know everyone hates that, but it's probably what you pay for.

Even really run down areas built more traditionally are much more productive: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...est-investment

All that said, I get that the city is going to need greenfield if we are adding a million people in less than 10 years and I don't want to over regulate because that will just drive prices up.

At the same time, not wanting to over regulate doesn't mean I think we should be subsidizing poor decisions. If you let real, unregulated market forces work, you get historical neighborhoods which are very efficient to this day. People have built incrementally for Thousands of years. Dallas's best neighborhoods were built with much less regulations than today. They were also built, largely before the GI bill when we began subsidizing home ownership and before the highway boom.

I don't think you can force everyone into new highrises in downtown Dallas, there will be greenfield development.

I think there is a legitimate concern that in the interest of short term growth we are allowing a ton of things to be built that quite frankly won't pull their own weight in the long run.

I don't mind if people prefer a suburban lifestyle, but we need to quit unfairly subsidizing it and try to use what we already have. Cities need to quit being greedy about capturing growth that will become a maintenance liability for the next generation. Frisco is a ticking time bomb.

It's funny you mentioned the "unregulated free market." I attended Dallas's urban symposium last month and one of the speakers from DC was bewildered by the fact that "for such a capitalist city, Dallas and DFW has some of the strictest, most burdensome zoning laws, which prevents more mixed use and more efficient ways of planning and building." In fact, it's most likely illegal to build a neighborhood from the 1920's & 30's today. Much of Dallas east of Downtown has a lot of older SFH neighborhoods with walkable mini-business districts at the intersections (e.g. Bryan & Peak). You see that a lot in North Oak Cliff as well.

We are subsidizing waste. And once the bill comes in, we'll just move on over to the next undeveloped town and start the process all over again. Places like Frisco DO NOT want to work for the good of the region. They're solely in it for themselves.

[michaeltx9412]

Originally Posted by tcualum

Frisco is the quintessential Generica and I have no desire to live somewhere like that.

It's the most sterile and bland suburb I've ever seen in the DFW area or in Texas in general. No, it's nothing like Katy, TX. The historic downtown of Frisco might have some character, though, but everything else has a way too "planned" feel for my liking. It should be a textbook example of Anywhere, USA IMO.

[Treasurevalley92]

Originally Posted by michaeltx9412

It's the most sterile and bland suburb I've ever seen in the DFW area or in Texas in general. No, it's nothing like Katy, TX. The historic downtown of Frisco might have some character, though, but everything else has a way too "planned" feel for my liking. It should be a textbook example of Anywhere, USA IMO.

The actual historical downtown of Frisco is literally about 12 buildings.

I agree, it is the most sterile bland place I've ever been as well. Maybe it will develop charter later as Arlington and Irving have? Time will tell, but I don't think so.

[Treasurevalley92]

Originally Posted by DTXman34

It's funny you mentioned the "unregulated free market." I attended Dallas's urban symposium last month and one of the speakers from DC was bewildered by the fact that "for such a capitalist city, Dallas and DFW has some of the strictest, most burdensome zoning laws, which prevents more mixed use and more efficient ways of planning and building." In fact, it's most likely illegal to build a neighborhood from the 1920's & 30's today. Much of Dallas east of Downtown has a lot of older SFH neighborhoods with walkable mini-business districts at the intersections (e.g. Bryan & Peak). You see that a lot in North Oak Cliff as well.

We are subsidizing waste. And once the bill comes in, we'll just move on over to the next undeveloped town and start the process all over again. Places like Frisco DO NOT want to work for the good of the region. They're solely in it for themselves.

Dallas has terribly backwards zoning laws. I think it was 2 years ago that the city tried to add patio space to the square footage that calculates parking requirements.So stupid. Stop telling businesses how much parking they need. ugh.

It's very true though. Even old school single family home neighborhoods were more "fine grained" With apartment buildings and stores sprinkled in on the busy streets. The vast majority of Chicago is like that. The older Dallas neighborhoods are like that.

I live in a 50s neighborhood that while it caters mostly to the car, but considers people somewhat, the zoning was fine grained enough I can walk to a small strip mall, CVS and a few restaurants on the edge of my neighborhood not ideal, but sorta workable. It's fairly bike-able actually.

New developments are on massive land tracts, the scale to build and finance these things is just different. Sure they might have jogging trails and be "Walkable" but the point is that walking is for recreation, not getting places.