Texas A&M University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Oak Cliff's Tenth Street Neighborhood, a historic freedmen's town in South Dallas, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, is one of the nation's Freedmen's Towns known for its collection of modest folk and vernacular dwellings dating from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. The neighborhood faces ongoing threats, including disinvestments, demolitions and gentrification pressures, which makes it one of America's most endangered historic places (2019). 

At the request of the Southern Dallas Progress CDC, Texas Target Communities received funding from Dr. Walter Peacock with Bryan Mitchell's Master Builder Endowment by hosting the Mitchell Interdisciplinary Studio 2024. This initiative was launched to advocate for housing, support and leverage academic research, and involve practitioners to assist with the preservation and restoration of historic landscapes, spaces, and buildings. The project spanned four design studios at the graduate and undergraduate levels, which included joint virtual guest lectures, shared final presentations, and the exchange of self-generated documents and information. Students participated in a field trip, featuring two walking tour sessions led by a former landmark commissioner, visits to renovated historic houses, lunch discussions with residents, and a visit to Preservation Dallas where primary documents were shared in addition to a joint visit by the City of Dallas's current landmark commissioner, Chief Preservation Planner, and Senior Planner.

Additionally, we assembled a task force comprising community representatives from various organizations (Office of Historic Preservation of the City of Dallas, represented by the Chief Preservation Planner and Senior Urban Planner, the Director of the Historical Foundation, the Director of Programs from Preservation Dallas and their Archivist, former and present Landmark Commissioners for District 4, representatives from the Tenth Street Residential Association, local nonprofit community design organizations BCWorkshop and Rayo Planning, the ULI mTAP efforts, and neighborhood residents).

As part of this initiative, students and faculty produced the following:

3D Model of the neighborhood: The team organized, digitized, and spatialized historical information and present conditions of Tenth Street to create a Digital 3D model and physical model. 3D and 2D thematic maps were developed to showcase the complexity of the neighborhood's conditions over time, illustrating various aspects such as ownership patterns, vacancy rates, changes in topography, cultural landmarks, and socio-economic dynamics. 

Exploration of Housing Typology: The team investigated and updated the established housing typology in the neighborhood. The objective was to explore speculative housing design strategies that preserve the community's distinct character and address vacancy through infill strategies. This exploration involved the hybridization of housing types found in the neighborhood, testing the roles of new construction and design in relation to established housing typologies.

Development of a Design Guideline Template: The team created a design guideline template to preserve the historical integrity of Tenth Street. Currently, there is no such document with the City of Dallas. This template will provide guidelines and standards to ensure that the district's new developments, renovations, or alterations align with its historical character and preservation goals.

Courses:

ARCH 305 Architecture Design III Taught by Priya Jain and Tyrene Calvesbert

ARCH 602 Design Fundamentals II Taught by Benjamin Basske and Marcelo López-Dinardi

The City of Deer Park (pop.34,495) is located in Harris County, Texas, southeast of Houston, and experienced rapid growth from the 1960s to the 1980s due to the petrochemical industry. Since then, the City has developed an extensive parks and recreation system with 28 parks, which include playgrounds, walking trails, a golf course, a nature preserve, and open space. To maintain this network, the City adopted its comprehensive master plan for parks and recreation facilities in 2013, achieving over 90% of its goals and objectives in the past decade. With the current plan expiring in December 2023, the Parks and Recreation Department of the City of Deer Park contacted TxTC to develop a new long-term master plan for 2024-2034. 

Students from LAND 311 Land Design Studio and a third-year MLA student began the project in the fall of 2023 by assessing existing parks and recreational facilities and conducting a community survey to gather feedback on existing parks, community needs, and environmental concerns. They held a community charette to develop a shared vision, goals, and objectives for park and recreation facilities and green infrastructure. Using this feedback, they established an improvement program and created a spatial master plan framework for the city-wide recreation and park system. In Spring 2024, students from LAND 621 Studio created schematic site plans for priority areas identified in the planning process. They collaborated closely with Parks and Recreation Department staff and presented their work to the City of Deer Park Park Commission and City Council.

The new master plan is designed to uphold Deer Park’s CAPRA accreditation by the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), ensuring the city's parks and recreational facilities continue to serve the community effectively.

Courses:

LAND 311 Landscape Design III Taught by: Dongying Li, Boqian Xu

LAND 621 Open Space Development II Taught by:Boqian Xu

LAND 693, Final Professional Study for Master of Landscape Architecture - Grace Canady, Committee: Changshan Huang, Mike Arnold, Scott Shafer

In the second year of the five-year project, the SETx-UIFL focused on listening, measuring, modeling, analyzing, and designing to better understand future hazard risks from water, air, and climate, and the linkages between them and the Beaumont-Port Arthur region. Texas Target Communities is playing a crucial role in providing support for community engagement, researcher training, and outreach guidance. Specific activities took place: 

• The Co-design Team with Texas Target Communities, local Task Force members, and research team members met quarterly to discuss research results and identify points of particular interest to the community for flooding and air quality. 
• The Water Team installed nine new sensors for measuring water levels, which increased the SETx network to 83 sensors. They modeled 5000 hydrological scenarios over SETx. 
• The Air Team conducted two intensive mobile campaigns to assess community exposure to air pollution. They calibrated CAMx to model air toxics and criteria pollutants, focusing on their spatial patterns and emission source contributions. 
• The Climate Team identified and nearly completed the downscaling of the ten best climate models for SETx. 
• The Equity Team compared local social vulnerability indexes and identified local differences and drivers. 
• The Knowledge Management Platform is developing systems for effectively disseminating the data and modeling results. 
• Activities also included the first Summer Institute for graduate students, which Lamar University hosted.  

Named one of only four “urban integrated field laboratories”, the Beaumont-Port Arthur region faces regular “acute-on-chronic” hazards. The research team is made up of over 60 researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Lamar University, Texas A&M University, Prairie View A&M University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory​, and Texas A&M University and funded by the Department of Energy. Learn more at https://setx-uifl.org/. 

The Texas Target Communities Program (TxTC) is a high-impact service-learning and community engagement program. Since 1993, TxTC has assisted more than 60 underserved communities across Texas, invested 12,000 hours of student and faculty expertise per community, and connected communities to resources for assessing and leveraging community assets. TxTC is interdisciplinary to provide the tailored support communities need to solve complex problems. TxTC’s mission is to provide training, tools, and assistance necessary to facilitate the transformation of communities from high-risk/low-opportunity to equitable, resilient, and adaptive by mitigating threats to the economy, environment, and culture. For additional details about the programming completed in the 2023-2024 program year, please review TxTC annual report: https://issuu.com/txtargetcommunities/docs/annual_report_2023-2024

The Institute for Sustainable Communities (IfSC) produces transformative research that offers solutions for more sustainable and vibrant communities, translates the research to action through engagement, and creates high-impact learning experiences for students. IfSC works with communities in the Houston area to engage them in understanding and finding solutions for their urban problems. IfSC works closely with the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service (t.e.j.a.s.) to investigate the issues related to pollution and environmental justice along Houston's Ship Channel. Researchers (faculty and students) work closely with t.e.j.a.s to take water, soil, air, and particle samples to understand the heavy metals and petroleum chemicals in "fenceline" communities. T.e.j.a.s. guides the research, and IfSC translates findings for community members so they can make the most informed decisions about their own health. These communities were also flooded during Hurricane Harvey and our relationship has led to quick research response to understand the level of exposure from the flood waters. This relationship has led Texas A&M to apply and win a $10 million Superfund Research Center to further investigate the public health consequences of communities with chronic exposure from petroleum refineries.