What Will Demolishing Dallas’ Highway 345 Do For Downtown’s Real Estate Market?

Share News:

A New Dallas

As you’ve no doubt heard, there’s a movement afoot to tear down Highway 345 — a stretch of elevated asphalt that spans from Deep Ellum and north to Woodall Rogers Freeway. Doing so, proponents claim, will connect the east side of the city center to downtown and create a more walkable environment.

I’m all for more walkable neighborhoods, especially in our urban core, but I do want to know how we can make this work when projections show that the population of Dallas will double in a matter of a few decades, putting strain on our housing inventory and transportation infrastructure. Basically, just tearing down a highway isn’t going to cut it.

The Vision

We should be thinking about density with a more connected mass transit system, and I think that’s the main selling point for demolishing the highway. Not only will it bring a slower thoroughfare through downtown, but it will also create more real estate that can be developed into mixed-use buildings, as well as offering a hub for bringing back the streetcar to downtown Dallas (and yes, we should definitely bring streetcars back). We’ll need massive reinvestment in transportation and infrastructure to make it work, but where will the money come from?

What do you think of the plan?

 

 

Joanna England is the Executive Editor at CandysDirt.com and covers the North Texas housing market.

22 Comments

  1. […] was just three months ago that all anyone in urbanism forums or on staff at city magazines could talk about was this “A […]

  2. […] was just three months ago that all anyone in urbanism forums or on staff at city magazines could talk about was this “A […]

Leave a Comment