So there’s an article on the neighborhood Little Forest Hills on the Front page of the Dallas Morning News. It was title ‘We got discovered’. I knew the article was coming out, but didn’t know when. The mention of Subdivided by local documentary film maker Dean Terry was in there. It was made as an artistic and personal piece but really turned into something that is powerful and gets you to think.

The film had been broadcast on PBS’ KERA for the Dallas Metro area the beginning of this year and has garnered awards including the World Fest Award for Creative Excellence (and another one that has not been announced, so I can’t mention yet). It was also selected in the Utopia Film Festival which runs October 26-October 28 in Maryland. The film has been quoted as “absolutely beautiful” by Rober Wilonsky of The Dallas Observer. The film has touched many and brought out feelings they were not able to pin point before. It features interviews from Andres Duany (Suburban Nation), Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone, Better Together), and others who had studied the effects of sprawls and suburbia. The DVD has extra interviews that were left out of the final cut.

I personal know the story and I lived it just as the film was made. I lived in Little Forest Hills a month or so prior to finding our first home in North Dallas. The mistake we made was looking for a kind of house (contemporary) and didn’t spend as much time with researching about the neighborhood. At Little Forest Hills, we took afternoon walks and people waved and says hi (yes even if you don’t know them). Far different in far North Dallas. People don’t wave hi or say hi, they sometimes walk across the street to the other side of the sidewalk to avoid any eye contact (yeah, amazing but true). This is of course my experience and I can’t say the same for others, but it really was a “cold” feeling living in North Dallas. Luckily, we found another neighborhood that had the friendly vibe of Little Forest Hills, but I’m not going to say where since I don’t exactly want it to be “discovered”…at least by the developers (although you can tell they are sneaking in).

Majority of the people at Little Forest Hills have been trying to get the neighborhood to be a conservation neighborhood and they’ve been using the tagline of “Keep Little Forest Hills Funky”. Which is a perfect fit. It is indeed “funky” and you just can’t create neighborhoods like this and developers are coming in and building the McMansions. This does ruin the neighborhood’s feel of funkiness and uniqueness. Alot of people want the conservation to go through just to provide guidelines for rebuilts (a lot of houses are on the small side, but rebuilding does not mean it has to be huge and look like every other house), but because of some that don’t, it makes it hard to get it done. The City of Dallas should just make the call and save this neighborhood and maintain it’s funky charm. I mean, does Dallas really want all the houses to turn into McMansions?

*Subdivided DVD is also available at some libraries: Harvard, UT Dallas, Dallas Libary, and more. But of course, you should support independent art and buy the DVD!