By Ayesha Hana Shaji
Texas Metro News Team
Forward Dallas, as a part of their public engagement, LunchNLearn sessions, addressed the city’s long-term plans focusing on environmental justice issues.
The comprehensive plan for Dallas – Forward Dallas aims to guide the growth and development of the city in the upcoming years. In existence since 2006 but Andrea Gilles, assistant director of planning and urban design at City of Dallas said significant changes have occurred in the city over the last 15 years, particularly in the areas of environmental justice and racial equity and they wish to adequately address them.
In the session, Gilles conveyed the updates regarding the plan’s land-use policies to ensure they communicate past racial injustices and inequities. Forward Dallas proposes future land uses to implement adopted city policies such as CECAP, Housing Policy, Economic Development Policy, and the Racial Equity Plan, Gilles said.
The reason for the update of the plan is because inequities in land use were not addressed, nor was there a clear path for integrating neighborhood and area plans into the comprehensive plan. Forward Dallas wants to create a future land use map that will guide zoning decisions and outline a clear path to integrating smaller area plans into the comprehensive plan.
According to Gilles, the plan would incorporate the goals and visions of smaller neighborhood groups to ensure their perspectives are represented.
Gilles said they’ve been doing a lot of community engagement with property owners about how the city should handle incompatible land use and how they can identify them in the citywide plan.
Throughout the meeting the importance of implementing equitable land-use policies, particularly in addressing the issue of industrial areas next to residential areas, was stressed.
