An article in last Thursday's Dallas Morning News, "A new code for business," says the City of Richardson is considering enhancing code enforcement for businesses. This would follow earlier efforts to strengthen code enforcement in neighborhoods (10 years ago) and for apartments (two years ago).
 
Reporter Ian McCann observes, "Code enforcement has become an effective tool for Richardson, Irving and other aging cities as they try to stave off decay in older neighborhoods and along major thoroughfares."
 

Code violations can contribute to neighborhood and city decline. This example is not from Texas.

It is the first-tier suburbs that are seeing much of the decline but it is true for the core cities and will eventually be true for the exurbs.
 
Garland is a first-tier city and is not an exception. We have active code enforcement programs, probably more so than most other area cities. The proactive enforcement program in neighborhoods has been very effective. It sweeps whole neighborhoods looking for those code violations that left unaddressed do lead to decline and unsafe living conditions. Also, we have had an apartment inspection process for many years and have recently started giving business areas more attention.
 
If decline is thought of as an illness, then code enforcement is a band-aid. It may block more infection and slow the decline, but it won't cure the illness.
 
I received this rhetorical question from Bill Lucy, co-author of Confronting Suburban Decline, a few months ago: "... [T]he first problem faced by elected officials of aging, and often declining, suburbs, is that they do not understand what is happening to their community or, if they can describe the problems, they do not know why they are occurring, and, therefore, they do no know where to start to cope with the problems. They often start with what is most obvious—code enforcement to deal with visible problems on deteriorating and declining individual properties and in certain neighborhoods. Then what?"
 
Mr Lucy suggested preparing a handbook for public officials that could address aging housing, population loss, the problem of small houses, and outmoded amenities—which are sometimes concentrated in one area. He mentioned expanding design options, enhancing walkability, downtown revival, and shopping center conversions as ways to start effectively reversing the decline.
 
Garland has made some healthy steps in the right direction and I don't see right now why we can't be running in the near future. Other communities have made some strides too but there isn't a marathon underway anywhere. Still, there is positive news: good examples do abound, as documented in Retrofitting Suburbia, by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson (available here).
 
We do need to bandage the patient to stop the decline but getting the patient back to health will take a different course of care than just code enforcement.