The Public Square

For our inaugural edition, we asked contributors to examine the shaping of cities and the people who call them home. What subsequently emerged was not a singular prescription for how exactly cities should work, but rather a collection of analyses and arguments for whether they are working at all.

Some of our contributors ask us to reconsider what counts as infrastructure in a thriving city. Justine Morina argues that the strength of public schools is seldom just an education system concern. That strength has influence on where families put down roots, whether businesses can attract employees, and whether communities are able to sustain economic growth.

Anthony Ormsbee-Hale takes that argument somewhere less conventional and asks readers to consider care itself as part of infrastructure. As America ages, he writes, housing, transit, and the caregiving workforce will increasingly determine whether or not residents can remain connected to the communities they helped build.

My own contribution looks a little closer to home, at Vickery Meadow, one of Dallas’ most diverse neighborhoods and an important arrival point for refugee and immigrant families. But persistent housing conditions raise a pressing question: How can cities preserve affordability without asking vulnerable residents to accept unsafe housing as its price?

Imelda Gutierrez makes a similar case for something we cannot touch at all: information. With over 50 million Americans living in communities with little-to-no access to local news, she asks whether local journalism should be understood as a public good essential to local democracy.

Other contributors confront what happens when cities encounter change faster than policy is able to keep up. Bryana Stephens examines the rapid expansion of data centers and the pressure they place on water supply and electrical grids, specifically in places where those resources are already strained.

In a conversation with Emma Bice, Phil Ritter looks at another industry transformed by technology and growth. The history of aviation in North Texas demonstrates how local interests, federal policy, public finance and private competition can collide.

And then there is the work of governing itself.

Dr. Victoria Farrar-Myers takes us from what she calls the “30,000-foot level” of policy scholarship to the ground level of policymaking. She builds on her experience as an Arlington, Texas, City Council member during the COVID-19 pandemic where she learned that theory rarely arrives in practice under perfect conditions. Decisions must be made when information is incomplete, but time is short, and the consequences are real.

Perhaps nowhere in this edition is that tension more conspicuous than in Ashlee Hueston’s conversation with former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert about the future of downtown Dallas. Hueston entered their conversation with a “Save City Hall” sign in her front yard. Leppert sees the site differently, as part of what he believes could be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a nucleus of activity. Neither leaves the conversation entirely converted.

This space to leave a conversation agreeing to disagree is the best example of why we chose to call this journal The Public Square.

A public square is not valuable because everyone standing in it shares the same thoughts. Its value lies in bringing people with a plethora of experiences, expertise, assumptions and solutions into the same space.

Public policy demands the same of us. The problems facing our cities do not fall into one discipline. Housing becomes health policy. Education becomes workforce policy. The Public Square is a place to analyze these disciplines, learn from them, and effect change.

Muntaha Sabir
Editor, The Public Square