Growth is great, but Fort Worth must keep investing in older neighborhoods, too
From housing to transportation to education, so much of Fort Worth’s focus in recent years has been on dealing with population growth. It’s only natural to zero in on what’s new, especially when it’s as massive and sustained as Tarrant County’s boom.
But the city sent an important message Tuesday: We won’t forget about older neighborhoods.
The City Council voted to allocate $3 million from property taxes collected for capital improvements to the Rosemont neighborhood. Residents will help decide how to spend it, but it’s expected to result in basics such as better curbs, sidewalks and streetlights that make the area safer, more attractive and simply more pleasant for residents.
Rosemont is the fourth neighborhood chosen for such improvements, and each of the other three have seen tangible benefits, such as increased construction activity and cleaned-up lots.
These projects are important to the entire city, not just the residents who see their areas improve. And there are plenty more that could use this kind of sustained attention to long-standing problems. The council should continue to look for opportunities for such investments and build on what’s worked well in the neighborhoods already targeted, such as significant trash and brush removal in Ash Crescent and plans for extensive new sidewalks in Northside.
It’s important that Fort Worth’s sustained growth leads to widespread prosperity, not just in newly developed parts of the city. Boosting those neighborhoods could help encourage redevelopment rather than endless sprawl into Wise, Parker and Johnson counties.
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And correcting historical neglect, particularly in areas with large minority populations, is just the right thing to do.
The Rosemont plan comes at an interesting time in Fort Worth’s growth and development. Traffic congestion, spurred by growth that has often outpaced road construction, has some thinking about how to plan differently for the future.
In far north Fort Worth in particular, housing construction has boomed so fast that opposition to new developments has surfaced, based on frustration at increasingly longer commutes on roads that weren’t designed to carry so many cars or expanded to accommodate them.
Long-term, though, the answer is not simply to build more roads for more cars to spill miles out of the central city. Fort Worth and its neighbors need a more comprehensive approach to transit planning, especially for more mass transit options that reduce the number of cars on the road, or at least slow the growth of traffic.
That said, development can only be slowed for so long. Enticing more people to live in the core city would help alleviate some of these issues. But the city has been properly cautious to help improve neighborhoods such as Rosemont without promoting full-blown gentrification that drives out the residents who have lived there for decades in some cases.
It’s also important to realize that many neighborhoods need more than trash cleanup and new sidewalks. Some will take sustained efforts, and economic development is an important component, too.
It’s all a tricky balancing act, and Fort Worth needs to approach it with care. The improvements in Rosemont and other neighborhoods are a good model.