Dallas Has Plenty of Problems. So Why Do Residents Still Love This City So Much?

Decades ago, urban-planning activist Jane Jacobs wrote that "cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." And yet in this city, residents — taxpayers with skin in the game — willfully surrender their right to shape Dallas' future to the relative few, the wealthy somebodies who bankroll campaigns and the Twitterati chirping complaints and conspiracies into the echo chamber. The in-betweens choose time and again to sit this one out, then that one, then that one. Which is strange, inexplicable. There is considerable proof that people are paying serious attention to what ails this city. And there is just as much evidence they love the city and want a hand in its future. Sitting on my desk are more than 200 pages of freshly mined data that reveals registered Dallas voters care deeply about cops and crime, how hard it is to get around town and the state of public education. Those same numbers also reveal voters believe City Hall should be "very involved" in smoothing the streets and getting the homeless off of them.  Continue reading...