Architecture critic Mark Lamster proposes a new pedestrian memorial park for Dallas

2020-01-29T13:16:00-05:00

In a recent column for The Dallas Morning News, architecture critic Mark Lamster proposes a new pedestrian-oriented vision for the district surrounding Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was murdered, and where the Dallas authorities are currently planning a new municipal memorial for the victims of racial violence. The memorial will be set in Martyrs Park, a grassy, triangular knoll surrounded on all sides by highway infrastructure and roads.

"Make no mistake: The geography of Dallas is a geography of race," Lamster writes, highlighting that historically speaking, "systematic discrimination forced African Americans into the least desirable spaces of the city—areas prone to flooding, near industry, caught on the wrong side of train tracks and highways, and always ripe for appropriation if and when the need arose" and that the same logic is currently at play with regards to the location of the proposed Martyrs Park memorial.

Satellite view of Dealey Plaza and Martyrs Park ...

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Architecture critic Mark Lamster proposes a new pedestrian memorial park for Dallas