Kevin Walthall

Columnist

Editor's note: Kevin Walthall is a Bremerton resident and will be writing occasional columns in 2019 that look at the city's ambitions for growth and development. The intention is to spur residents to share the visions each of you have for the community. Read his first column here. Readers are encouraged to email comments for publication to letters@kitsapsun.com.

The Dallas Cowboys took the field in a glistening modern coliseum to moderate cheering. The applause died quickly as the fans took to their phones or stared at the various screens in the vacuous chamber of AT&T Stadium, a place commentators have noted lacks true “home-field advantage.” The multi-million-dollar displays flash on. The speakers costing a fortune drown out all semblance of humanity. Any enthusiasm from the crowd would pale in comparison to Jerry Jones’s own, so no one bothers trying. It’s like a shopping mall with football players in it. These fans will not trigger small earthquakes with their noise. Opponents have no trouble calling audibles at the line.

Aerial footage zooms out to reveal nighttime in Arlington, Texas, part of what’s known as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, or DFW. Arlington is neither Dallas nor Fort Worth. It is the nation’s largest city without public transit, a borderline non-entity wedged between cities that has bet its entire tax base on amusement parks and sports venues. As the blimp’s cameras zoom out, they reveal acres of parking lit with Orwellian orderliness. Thousands of parking stalls circle the stadium as if bowing before a cockroach-shaped god made of concrete and glass. It’s no surprise to me why Dallas fans are known for their apathy.

This is where I grew up.

The stadium and its fans are much like the rest of the city, though it’s hard to talk about Dallas as a “city.” DFW is a collection of suburbs totaling around 7.2 million people, with only 1.3 million in Dallas proper. At a population density of 3,876 people per square mile, even Dallas proper is not particularly urban (Seattle: 8,398).

Until age 12, my family lived near the city limits of Dallas. Then we left the drugs and crime of south Dallas for a very Texan ideal: a larger, newer house on an acre in a “countryburb,” where fellow refugees from decaying suburbs took another step further away from the city center to play cowboy. It wasn’t a bad thing, but I fear it symbolizes a persistent false dichotomy of dangerous, crowded cities versus safe, green suburbs.

The problem is, when millions of people play cowboy at once, it’s no longer the wild west, it’s a delusion. They create suburbs and exurbs that don’t have a small-town sense of community, big-city sense of vibrancy, or rural connection with nature. They try to have it all, and create boring, dead mazes of strip centers. These suburbs sprawl out in a 25- to 45-mile radius all around downtown, full of chain restaurants, parking lots, and plot sizes large enough for isolation, but not large enough for a country idyll. Massive highways full of cars divide towns, and the sky turns gray with the smog of luxury cars and pickup trucks. It isn’t uncommon for people to spend three hours a day commuting alone in climate-controlled, mechanical bubbles. Dallas is where the American fantasy of wide open spaces and independence smacks against the brick wall of the realities of population growth.

Dallasites live their lives behind the steering wheel, the white picket fence, and McMansion walls in boringly artificial hazes of entertainment. It kills all semblance of natural community. It’s isolating. Dallas suburbs are more than a development pattern, they seem to be a lifestyle of keeping a safe distance from anything uncomfortable, uncontrolled, and messy — in short, life.

The antiseptic coddling of Dallas’ youth often has the opposite of its intended effect. It was a known irony that the most affluent suburbs were where the worst things happened. Kids go crazy in their quests for authenticity and connection, dropping acid and having orgies behind the picket fences of the Bible Belt. In the countryburb, teenagers held “crap-kickers” (edited for PG audiences). In the absence of actual entertainment, kids get wasted, brawl, and fornicate in cow pastures. I sought more productive pursuits.

In the city I found music, conscientious friends and the charity Invisible Children. Ultimately the culture and life I sought in the city cost money to participate in, and I found that the districts known for culture almost felt like tourist destinations: we were all commuting to a place where we could feel like New Yorkers and live out the scenarios we saw on "Friends." But it wasn’t New York; downtown Dallas be cut-and-pasted from anywhere. There was no identity, no sense of place. The closest thing to identity was being a nationwide capital of things like credit card debt, plastic surgery and shopping malls per capita.

Silver-bullet attempts at change failed. Dallas Area Rapid Transit built the nation’s largest light rail network (72 miles of rail) and the payoff was underwhelming: DART has among the lowest riderships per rail-mile in the U.S. (Editor's note: The initial publication of this column cited financial struggles of DART. The service has never lost money and the implication of struggles is inaccurate. Financial reports for the system may be found here.) Shiny new skyscrapers keep being built, but urban energy remains elusive. As soon as one neighborhood gains a reputation for being unique and fun, developers come in, tear out its heart, and put in a Jack-in-the-Box.

That horrid clown torments me.

The most successful additions to DFW lifestyle came in small, grassroots trends, like beer gardens, where people gather under the shade of sweeping oaks to escape the heat with cold beer and friends. They often incorporate elements of the “crap-kicker” with playful irony. There’s also been a return to the Texas courthouse, reviving old-west squares built around stony monuments of frontier justice. Rustic, industrial aesthetics have become popular nods to local heritage as a cotton, railroad, and oil town. The best developments in place-making are built around local history and climate.

Whenever a Kitsap native praises Dallas, they seem to imagine a fanciful conservative bastion of Beaver Cleaver wholesomeness. It isn’t. I appreciate Dallas’ business-friendly climate and basic sense of Southern friendliness and propriety, but there are better ways to include safety, community, and nature in our town’s makeup than to sprawl.

Kevin Walthall is a financial advisor with AXA Financial in Bremerton and a huge fan of the nonprofit organization "Strong Towns" and its mission to create financial strong and resilient communities. His experiences includes teaching, non-profit work and entrepreneurship, as well as life in Turkey, Texas and the great Pacific Northwest. Contact him at kswalthall@gmail.com.

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