RealEstateJournal | Cities Look to Rivers As Key to Redevelopment

RealEstateJournal Cities Look to Rivers As Key to Redevelopment

By Thaddeus Herrick From The Wall Street Journal Online
DALLAS -- This city has long turned its back on the Trinity River, on most days a brownish stream bound by levees and straightened by a channel.

But now the river that Dallas has for much of the past century both controlled and neglected is at the center of a $1 billion plan to revitalize the city's downtown. Leaders envision bridges soaring above a vast greenway, with lakes, parks and a waterfront promenade. The city already has raised well over a third of the money it needs, and is ready to begin construction on the first bridge.
Dallas Mayor Laura Miller says the overhaul is the most important project the city will ever undertake. "I believe that," she says.

Increasingly, the nation's cities are viewing rivers as economic assets that will attract tourists and locals alike rather than as polluted, flood-prone liabilities. In cities east of the Mississippi River with substantial waterways, such as Detroit, that often means reclaiming sites on the banks that were once used by factories or mills. But in the West, cities often have to revive the river itself.