May Day! May Day!

... There's a political freight train running through City Hall right now called the "comprehensive plan" for Dallas. We're one of the few large cities in America that doesn't have one.
... And how do you feel about just bending over backward to load the city up with more and more apartments? That's the major thrust of the so-called comprehensive plan.
   This plan is all concept, like lecture notes from Planning 101. It looks like something you could plop down on Seattle. In fact, I just came back from a wedding there: It looks sort of like Seattle. But it does not look like anything that grew organically out of what is on the ground now in Dallas, Texas.
... Michael Jung is a zoning attorney ... Jung and others like him think people who already live and own property in a neighborhood should get first dibs on what happens there. In other words, people far away from them--bureaucrats, planners, land speculators, necromancers--should not be able to wave their Harry Potter wands at a single-family residential neighborhood and say, "Poof! I dub thee apartments and retail!"
... Jung says the comprehensive plan about to come to the city council is not based on this same kind of arduous consensus-building. But it includes a map of major changes for neighborhoods and areas all over the city, apparently reflecting the wishes of city staff and the city's consultant, Fregonese Calthorpe Associates of Portland, Oregon.
... Jung says no matter what anybody calls the map now--vision illustration, ink blot, bubblegum joke--developers will use it as a statement of city policy in the future.
... City council member Angela Hunt represents District 14 in East Dallas and Oak Lawn rimming the Park Cities. She thinks the overall thrust of the comprehensive plan will be pressure for massive redevelopment.
   "As we increase densities in the city and have more concrete in Uptown and State-Thomas, for example, it's essential that we require developers to set aside concentrated green space," Hunt said last week. She says this plan doesn't do that, and city staff and the consultant have told her they don't want to do that.
... staff and the consultant have been happy to regulate in the other direction. For example, the plan goes into exhaustive detail on parking regulations in order to allow developers to provide fewer off-street parking spots.
... Virginia McAlester is a nationally recognized author and expert on urban residential architecture and for years has been one of the most influential voices for neighborhood preservation in Dallas. ... She thinks the comprehensive plan is a great idea in theory, but she says the city will pay in blood if the plan gets rushed through the approval process before the kinks are out.
... I also spoke last week to former council member Veletta Lill, who represented District 14 before Angela Hunt. Lill, a strong supporter of the plan, ... The plan is just a plan, she said several times. "This is not zoning." She said the map really isn't a map. "It's blobs of color on a page." She said a process is already in place, once this initial stage of the plan has been adopted, to do focused mini-plans for specific neighborhoods providing the level of detail and reassurance that McAlester, Hunt and Jung look for.
... Somebody needs to to stop this train and let it cool its wheels a little. Let people look at it and talk about it. Or, failing that, jump it off the track and watch it smoke.
   We can survive with no plan. But a sloppy one could kill us.