Footpaths in Fort Worth

Like most U.S. cities, Fort Worth (pop. 434,000) suffers downtown indigestion. Its business district, boxed in by railroads and the Trinity River, is fed by freeways that carry motorists into a honeycomb, where parking space is inadequate and traffic motion slows to a crawl.

Last week Fort Worth civic leaders heard a Los Angeles and Manhattan community planner unveil a bold solution to their problem. They were advised to dig deep into the heart of their beloved Texas to create subterranean truck lanes, park every arriving automobile, and turn streets within a downtown square mile into a pedestrians' paradise of shrubbery, statuary, malls, covered walks and sidewalk cafes. The cost ($100 million, according to some guesses) would be partially paid in parking fees and through higher tax values.

Author of the plan is Victor Gruen, who has pioneered some of the boldest new architectural projects in the country, e.g., Detroit's 11,500-car Northland shopping center, largest (163 acres) in the nation. Charting Fort Worth's growth, Gruen's planners estimated that 1970 would see 152,000 cars downtown, twice today's total. They advised against widening streets, instead visualized a beltway from which cars would pull into multistory parking garages pronged toward the heart of the site; no central city building would be more distant from a parking space than 2 1/2 minutes' walking time. Small shuttle cars would carry the infirm and lazy.

For trucks, Gruen's planners suggested a subsurface road network linked to the beltway. Recessed drives would connect with cellar entrances for deliveries. The taller, high-value buildings in the area today would remain, with new skyscrapers added. Disappearing to make way for the beltway and garages, whose roofs would serve as heliports, would be shabby, less desirable structures.

When Gruen finished, his audience of Fort Worth community leaders enthusiastically appointed study committees. They were so impressed by the Texas-like immensity of the project that none stopped to chide him for an undiplomatic slip: his report had said that "Fort Worth now finds itself not keeping pace with Dallas."

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