 "Photo: Caleb Miller")
The UT School of Architecture sponsored a lecture Friday from Theresa O'Donnell, director of development services for Dallas and co-author of the forwardDallas! comprehensive city plan.
The plan aims to provide a blueprint of future city actions in three main areas: land use, transportation and economic development, according to forwardDallas!'s Web site.
UT students, professors and Austin city officials attended.
"Austin is working on the same issues as Dallas, but without a comprehensive plan," said architecture assistant professor Elizabeth Mueller.
ForwardDallas! is unique because it coordinates individual city government departments, such as transportation, housing and education, to improve the overall infrastructure of the city and provide for future urban growth, O'Donnell said.
Austin passed the Austin Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan, which is comparable to the forwardDallas! plan, in 1979 and attempted to update it in the late 1980s, but there is currently no comprehensive plan regulating development in Austin, said Carol Haywood, manager of Austin's neighborhood planning and zoning department.
"Even if you don't call it comprehensive, there is a plan for development," said David Sullivan, chair of Austin's planning commission. "The separate plans exist, and we're working on pulling them together."
O'Donnell likened the challenges cities face as a result of unplanned urban growth to attempting to run up a down escalator.
"If you do nothing, you go down," she said. "You have to work hard to stay in place and even harder to move forward."
Dallas is the ninth-largest city in the U.S. and has serious and growing traffic problems, O'Donnell said. In a citizen survey conducted by forwardDallas!, 53 percent of respondents in Dallas said they would like to be able to use rail transit.
Keeping downtown as the financial center of the city is one of forwardDallas!'s goals, but as commuting becomes more difficult, offices are likely to move elsewhere. The plan seeks to ease daily commutes and to develop the southern region of downtown, a historically lower-income area, O'Donnell said.
New road construction does not address the real issue of traffic congestion, O'Donnell said. Only alternative transportation modes, including streetcars, buses and bicycles, will alleviate traffic congestion, she said.
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