THE GRUEN PLAN
This month, we hung an exhibit at the Center for Architecture that showcases the 1956 Gruen Plan for Downtown Fort Worth. When the Gruen Plan was presented to the City of Fort Worth, it was viewed as an aggressive plan intended to change the way we think about downtown areas. At its core, it was intended to create a pedestrian island and enliven the streets with variety and detail.
In 1958, the writer/activist Jane Jacobs wrote the article, ‘Downtown Is For People’. Here she praised the power of Victor Gruen’s plan for Fort Worth and held it up as a model for downtown planning. She wrote, “Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination. Rarely before has the citizen had such a chance to reshape the city, and to make it the kind of city that he (she) likes and that others will too. If this means leaving room for the incongruous, or the vulgar or the strange, that is part of the challenge, not the problem.”
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