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Following nearly 20 years of delays and setbacks, plans are finally underway to begin construction of the 10,000-acre Trinity River Park, which could become one of the largest in the United States. If built to plan, the $600 million riverfront park will be 11 times larger than New York City's Central Park. Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Trinity River Park is set to be a massively transformative project for Dallas. Its completion would place the city among the nation's greenest, which is no small feat for a city that has long been a maze of concrete overpasses and elevated expressways surrounded by suburban sprawl.
Running several kilometres, the Trinity River cuts roughly east-west through the centre of the city, with downtown located to the north, and the more industrial suburban south side of the city located below. Trinity River Park will serve to reconnect the city to the riverbed and to itself, as a series of five new bridges will be built in an effort to help facilitate easy passage from one side of the river valley to the other.
While much of the proposed $600 million will go into infrastructure costs, a sizeable amount will go towards the massive undertaking of rehabilitating and naturalizing the riverbed. The restoration of the Trinity River's traditional foliage and inherent flood prevention capabilities will be a major part of this multi-year project.
Aside from the planned infrastructure and riverbed rehabilitation plans, the majority of the 10,000-acre parkland will be covered in a series of green spaces, gardens, arboretums, playing fields, playgrounds, and outdoor venues, all of which will be well connected by a series of walking and cycling paths that will meander throughout the length of the park.
A highly transformative — not to mention ambitious — project for the city, the real-life benefits will be many-fold. They go far beyond the purported flood-proofing, and include beautification, the addition of much-needed green space, reconnecting the city to the river and to itself, improving access to parkland for all residents, and perhaps more than anything, working to majorly boost the city's long-beleagured public image by making Dallas one of the greenest cities in the United States.
The Trinity River Park project will be completed in stages, with the central Harold Simmons Park segment slated for completion in 2021. The full build-out will likely not be finished for several years, as the massive amount of engineering work ahead will likely push completion as far out as the late 2020s. Nonetheless, the Trinity River Park project signals an exciting new chapter for Dallas, and for modern city-building in general.
SkyriseCities will be sure to return to this project as progress continues. For more information, check out the associated Database file and Forum thread, and as always, feel free to join the conversation in the comments section below.
