Dallas Set to Break Ground on Country’s Biggest Urban Park Because Texas

Do they care that it sits on a floodplain? Negative.

November 28, 2016 9:00 am

Texans often brag that all is rendered more prodigious in their state.

For once, they’re definitely right.

Dallas has a new Nature District on the books that when completed will meaure 10,000 acres, making it the largest urban park in the country.

It’ll have 73 miles of trails, a 1,000-acre golf course, fields, playgrounds and river access. There will also be a nature center for kids and horse stables.

Dubbed Trinity River Park, the land serves a vital function, too, by doubling as a shock absorber for the floods that plague the region. Naturally, not everyone sees it that way, and many think that the investment — made by a billionaire whose fortune was built polluting the earth — will be washed away in a flood.

That criticism sort of misses the mark, though. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, it was noted that Louisiana’s wetlands, which had been eroding for decades, would’ve shouldered much of the surge that breached the levees. Furthermore, Michael Van Valkenburgh, the architect, has designed the park so that it will “transform natural disaster into a breathtaking spectacle.”

If nothing more, that’s an improvement on the public spectacle they seem to be.

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