Category: Planning

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Review of “Dallas 2019” PBS Mini-Series

New Documentary Pulls Back the Curtain on the People Who Make Cities Run

‘Dallas, 2019’ makes it personal, following the real-world drama and complexities of day-to-day city management.

Growing up in the early 1980s, I remember tuning in every Friday to the nighttime soap opera Dallas, famous for the “Who shot J.R.?” season finale cliffhanger.

At the time, this titular Texas city represented something exciting and new, an ambitious, bold, brash city-on-the-move — a jolt of energy for a country eager to escape the pervasive ennui of the 1970s. Dallas was the future, or so we thought.

Soon, the bloom was off the rose as the show struggled to answer the essential questions of money and power in America.

But this spring, nearly five decades later, television returns to Dallas to tell a very different story — one with a lot more heart and soul, packed full of drama but free of unnecessary glitz and glamour. Billed as “an observational study of a city and its people,” the PBS/Independent Lens documentary miniseries Dallas, 2019 takes the time to sit with real people struggling with hard problems.

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Tearing Up Over Teardowns and Gentrification: Review of Monica Sorelle’s “Mountains”

‘Mountains’ explores the life of a demolition man in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood.

As planners across the country address the nation’s growing housing crisis, communities from Minneapolis to Austin are beginning to embrace the wisdom of a pro-development agenda. But while we’ve started to make progress addressing the root causes, and new housing construction numbers are edging up, there is still a long way to go to make up for decades of chronic under-building. Though estimates vary, experts agree we need a lot more housing, somewhere in the ballpark of four to seven million additional units, to meet demand.

Paradoxically, a surprisingly high amount of “new construction” is built on the site of existing homes, simply replacing older stock. According to a 2022 report from the National Association of Home Builders, over nine percent of new homes built the previous year resulted from teardowns. (In the Pacific region, that number is over 20 percent, despite having some of the strongest pro-housing movements at the local and state levels.)

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It’s Time to “Punch 9 for Harold Washington”

The story begins in 1976 with the unexpected death of Mayor Richard J. Daley, who ruled every aspect of life in the city for over 20 years. His name was synonymous with the concept of the political machine. But by the 1980s, in a city with over one million Black residents — many of whom came north during the great migration seeking safety, political freedom, and a fair shot at the American Dream — a change seemed long overdue. They hoped to shun the old lines of patronage and ethnic politics and to represent the changing demographic landscape…

Read my review of Punch 9 for Harold Washington in the October issue of Planning Magazine.

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Review of “King Coal” in Planning Magazine

The film paints the rise and fall of the coal industry with broad strokes. In the 1930s, over 140,000 people were directly employed in mining in West Virginia. The industry fueled the regional economy and the expansion of manufacturing, transportation, and urbanization across the country and around the world. Today, fewer than 12,000 of these jobs remain, but the region remains steadfastly loyal to its roots. Told partly through the perspective of two young girls growing up in the shadow of “King Coal,” the film leaves the viewer to ponder not just the past but also the future of this industry, lifestyle, and culture.

See the full review in Planning Magazine.

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Review of “Concrete Utopia”

Concrete Utopia is a thrilling ride with real personal drama and deep insights into both human nature and the communities we build, all presented in a visually stunning and surprisingly fun package. Bonus: it has one of the most uplifting endings of any disaster film ever made, through a stroke of filmmaking genius that will literally change the way you look at the world.

See the full review in Planning Magazine.

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