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Settlements to Districts - Tracing the Identities of Downtown Dallas Neighborhoods

By Amruta Sakalker

Over the last decade Downtown Dallas has diversified its offerings from a single use office district to include cultural, residential, and entertainment opportunities 24/7. Today’s Downtown Dallas has a rich history of neighborhoods with unique identities and wide range of uses. As Downtown continues to evolve and strengthen its neighborhoods, it is critical to understand the lineage of socio-cultural character, design, and urban fabric that has given the neighborhoods their unique identity. While these identities are malleable, they can impact the direction of development in neighborhoods. Knowing the narratives of identities empowers neighborhoods to evolve stronger representational identities that emerge through their own stories and adds value to them. To illustrate the variety of these evolutions, we trace back Downtown Dallas Districts through this blog post.

POPonymy - An Interpretive Typology of Dallas Neighborhood Names

By Thomas Simpson

Dallas neighborhood names speak volumes about the city’s complexion. Just as our words offer insight into our character, the way the city describes itself and names its parts- its toponymy- offer insight into its anatomy, its aspirations, its values, and its history. Rather than a study of the origin of individual place names, this is a typology of toponymy, revealing the city’s values through categories of place names. Neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities; what information can we elicit about the city collectively from the kind of names it gives it components?

Instruments for User Impacted Space

By Andrew Tran

How can the effects of city regulations and zoning code on urban form be better understood such that they promote open space and improve place quality?

Plotting Our Foodshed

By Roger Mainor

What is the food landscape in Dallas, and how does this affect choice and the accessibility of food in the city?

The Geography of Digital Access

By Melanie Wood

How do local choices in digital connectivity shape both the way we access knowledge and our interactions with the city as a whole?

Psychology as a Design Tool?

By Jesse Miller

What tools can architects develop through research on psychology and social issues to more deeply understand clients and context, and to better address social problems? How can architects better work toward addressing social problems? By more deeply understanding and engaging clients and context.

The [Short] History

By Emily Axtman

Harlingen, TX is located in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which is comprised of 4 counties: Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy and Cameron. Both Harlingen and Brownsville are in Cameron County.  Harlingen, 30 miles west of the Gulf of Mexico and 15 miles north of the US / Mexico border, enjoys warm (or hot in August) gulf breezes and plenty of tropical vegetation — my favorite being the Sabal palm tree.

Dallas to Brownsville

By Emily Axtman

My name is Emily Axtman and I've been a bcFELLOW for 8 months at bcWORKSHOP, Since November, I've been working on the La Hacienda Casitas project, a low income housing development in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV). I've been lucky enough to work on this project from schematic design through to the construction documents and am now following the project down to Harlingen (where the project is breaking ground in one week!) to be a part of the construction process first-hand.