Klyde Warren Park is Dallas’s new town plaza which has literally and figuratively bridged the city’s downtown cultural district with the burgeoning mixed-use neighborhoods to the north, reshaping the city and catalyzing economic development. The park brings Dallas-sites together in new ways, with dozens of free activities and amenities to offer every week, from concerts and lectures to games and fitness/ yoga classes, all within a beautiful five-acre urban oasis. The park decks over the sunken Woodall Rodgers Freeway, which had been an imposing barrier between downtown and the densely populated Uptown neighborhood. Spurred by a study in 2002 that confirmed the feasibility of a “deck park” over the freeway, leaders of the Dallas business community formed the non-profit Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation, which was responsible for the operations and maintenance of the new park with its operating hours from 6am to 11pm. After ten years of planning, design, fundraising, and construction, Klyde Warren Park opened in the fall of 2012 and was immediately embraced by the community, cementing its place as a world-class urban park.
Cultural Innovation and Local development: Matera as a Cultural District
