Pedestrian Diaries: Discovering Public Space in Downtown Dallas on Foot, Through Ink and Paper

“A transplant to both Texas and Dallas, long walks downtown and in its surrounding neighborhoods have been my favorite medium to become more familiar with my new home.”

 Studio Outside’s Meghan Obernberger moved to Dallas in June 2022. Since then, she has sought to explore the city by walking, often without a destination in mind, but always recording her experiences in her sketchbook.

A JOURNEY BEGINS

 “Coming to Dallas, I was warned about the car-centric scale and planning of the city. While this reputation is fair, I have been pleasantly surprised by the walkability and public parks within Downtown Dallas.”

 As she sets off from her home, Meghan finds plenty of infrastructure in place for the pedestrian. Sidewalks line the roads, and pedestrian crossings are aplenty. Oak and sweetgum trees provide some much-needed shade along several streets, while dandelions cropping up through sidewalk cracks delights the eye. This should feel like a promising start to a journey, yet she quickly recognizes a potential problem - even the presence of this infrastructure is not enough to encourage a culture of walking, and Meghan often finds herself the sole pedestrian.

 ENCOUNTERING OBSTACLES

 “These spaces can still feel like a psychological and physical threshold – not to be crossed and preventing further connections both within and outside of Dallas’s downtown.”

To go downtown, Meghan must walk through a series of freeways and highways, with bridges streaking overhead, their imposing presence hard to ignore. Underneath them, the DART light rail track winds through the street traffic. The sidewalks here can feel like an afterthought – they are often broken, obstructed, or simply absent, making the whole experience intimidating and distinctly uninviting.

DISCOVERING RESPITE

“The parks and public areas directly interface with Dallas’s freeway system – each taking a unique approach to activating an otherwise hostile space for pedestrians.”

Despite the streetscape's overlooked condition, Meghan finds moments of relief in the form of parks and public spaces scattered throughout downtown. These spaces break up the monotony of the railroad bridge complex, providing an escape from the concrete jungle. The carefully designed parks revitalize the public areas, a stark contrast to the undeniable air of neglect felt when walking underneath the I-75.

The first of many such spaces is Carpenter Park. Once she’s traversed the crossing underneath I-75, Meghan finds herself drawn into an oasis of trees and fountains. Carpenter Park- with its earthwork punctuating the highway, provides a welcoming atmosphere compared to its imposing surroundings. No longer uncertain or apprehensive, Meghan continues her walk beyond this park, newly invigorated.

INTERLUDE

“It can be hard to get a moment alone in this park. Even in the early morning hours, a team of custodians scours the grounds.”

In Klyde Warren Park, there is an immediate sense of arrival. Food trucks line the perimeter of the park, and markets pop up all around. The air is filled with shrieks of delight from children as they play in the fountains, and the lawn invites park-goers in. The commotion of activity in the park drowns out the highway, making visitors completely forget it. Klyde Warren Park often makes itself a destination in Meghan’s journey.

GOING THE DISTANCE

“The sprawling view of the Dallas skyline, expansive Trinity floodway, and towering Margaret Hunt Hill bridge adjacent provide a natural attraction at the site through all hours of the day.”

As she rambles beyond downtown, Meghan finds a space that parallels the highway. On the Ronald Kirk Bridge, the adaptive reuse of a former freeway is evident. Meghan admits that the bridge is hard to access as a pedestrian but still finds that the canopies and the skyline attract plenty of people. Once there, the linear structure, the moving traffic, and the shifting views create a public place that invites her to stay and to keep moving forward – a perfect culmination of what a pedestrian experience should be.

Meghan’s Downtown Walks

Interview with Biohabitats

Studio Outside is pleased to share a conversation with Erin English, PE Practice Leader & Senior Engineer at Biohabitats, an ecological restoration and regenerative design firm that operates in various bioregions across the nation. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Erin works alongside clients as well as landscape architects to advance innovation in nature-based infrastructure with a focus on water and ecology. Erin has led the construction of wetlands, wastewater, rainwater, and water reuse engineering for award-winning projects that achieved the Living Building Challenge™ and net zero water. Biohabitats recently received the ASLA Firm Award for 2023, highlighting that ecology has a powerful role in the planning and design of human places, communities, and regions.

sO: What got you excited about pursuing sustainable water management? What inspires your work and passion?

EE: I spent five years studying chemical engineering and started working for Dr. John Todd, the creator of the Eco-Machine™, designing with natural, living systems. That early work got me excited to take a unique path and find ways, as an engineer, to partner with nature.

sO: What are the challenges that you’ve faced during your time in this field?

EE: We have a responsibility to create safe and sustainable systems. You want it to fail safely if you fail. The biggest challenge is balancing looking to nature for a solution in a way that is safe for public health while not losing the ability to truly innovate using a natural systems approach. We all need to continue to learn how to reintegrate ecological systems into our infrastructure.

sO: Being based in New Mexico, a landscape that performs with little water, how has that shaped your approach?

EE: When traveling, I often get weird looks that a water engineer would live in New Mexico. I love working here because of the preciousness of water in this arid place. New Mexico has not experienced a huge population boom like Arizona or Las Vegas. Its strong land-based culture is credited to the Native American Pueblo and Northern New Mexican communities, which have informed much of my perspective on protecting and valuing water. It’s celebrated; it’s sacred. It’s important to have conversations about water conservation when building a city or development to make sure that it is respectful of the land and the ecology that it’s in.

sO: What has been a favorite project and why?

EE: The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. It’s the first Living Building in the South. It’s a university building used for classrooms and lab space in the middle of an old campus parking lot. The building is connected to an adjacent high-performance landscape called the “Eco Commons,” a ribbon of green infrastructure that Georgia Tech is revisioning as a core part of their campus’s response to stormwater management and combined sewer sheds. The project itself is net positive water and energy, treats all its own waste, harvests its own water, and vastly reduces stormwater runoff that impacts downstream communities and ecosystems. We had a great design team, and we were able to engage university students in the process. This shows that true ecological innovation can happen in the Southeast.

sO: Which sector, (public, private, non-profit), do you think will be the most impactful moving into the future?

EE: Most innovation comes from the private sector because it is nimbler and can move faster. I think that the private sector can do more and there is a growing need for that leadership. The work is gigantic! Getting ranchers and larger landowners on board could really move the restoration effort, and water efforts, forward. With over 95% of land in Texas being privately owned ¹, the responsibility falls largely to the private sector. It’s important to understand the place, look at what you have and the regional context around you and ask how your project can add to the ecology, and benefit the watershed-without taking anything away. Embedding this knowledge within the landscape is possible.  

Studio Outside has enjoyed collaborating with Biohabitats on Galveston Island State Park and Iain Nicolson Audubon Center as well as many others across the country.