It wasn’t the first time the river had flooded. But after the 1957 flood, city leaders had a new idea: divert the river from its original channel to canals on the outskirts of town. Flooding would be forever solved, and the original river bed would be turned into a winding, seven kilometer park cutting through Valencia’s heart.

That park now looks and feels like everything Dallas’ own river-to-park project hopes to be. At any given hour of the day, the paths, overhung with orange trees, are crowded with joggers, bikers, and dog walkers. Every few hundred yards there’s a soccer field or a playground filled with kids. The park houses the city’s music hall, and at its end, in the wide expanse of the former flood plain between the city and the coast, architect and Valencia native Santiago Calatrava has built his stunning, chalk white city of the future: the Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias.

It’s Calatrava that brings the mind back to Dallas’ own ambitious park project. Like Valencia, we hope to adorn the Trinity River with what Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller jokingly called “eye-candy:” Calatrava’s three suspension bridges.

At the beginning of February I spent a week in Valencia, and it didn’t take long to notice how vital the park was to the city—an observation shared by Carlos, a young intern with Valencia’s trade office.

“We don’t have many parks,” he said. “So this is really our only place to go.”

The same could be said about our city. For me riding a bike along the park’s paths, it was exciting to imagine this kind of place in Dallas. But as the week went on, Valencia’s park also began to raise questions about the Trinity River Project.

Like Dallas, Valencia’s park project was linked to a revitalization initiative. Factories that once sat in between the city’s port and the city center were long ago razed for new condos, hotels, and a high-rise shopping center. But the park also runs past “established” neighborhoods –an almost comical label considering it‘s applied to structures that date back to the Romans.

The point here is that the park draws its vitality from the surrounding neighborhoods. More than just exercisers use the paths. Businessmen cut through it on the way to lunch appointments. Mothers idle along with strollers, stopping at benches to chat softly over their sleeping children. Kids released from school pour down the ramps, bickering and shoving, bouncing soccer balls on their way to a field.

These simple scenes reveal why parks are vital to urban life. The park is not merely a place where people go for recreation; rather, it functions like a great front yard where strangers participate in the common rituals of daily life. Private lives play out in public. By their proximity to each other, individual lives feel shared in some way. We begin to hold not only the physical place in trust with our neighbors, but also our shared memories and experiences within it. A collective memory is formed, one that deepens our sense of identity and holds us more accountable to each other and our local society. When we are asked what it means to be from somewhere, our imagination is grounded in concrete ideas.

The United States’ great urban spaces also share this dialogue between life and leisure. Chicago’s Millennium Park, New York’s Central Park, and D.C.’s National Mall are all gathering places and popular destinations, but their utility as places of recreation are matched with an organic, casual use. They are used and lived-in places. The hope is that Trinity River Park will become this kind of place.

In the planning materials prepared by the park’s promoters, there’s no shortage of discussion about the park’s future role as a gathering place, a place where we will come together and celebrate our city. But it is not so much the large gatherings as it is the small, day-to-day experiences that have a deepening effect on a local culture. To that end, it is not the Trinity River Park itself but its surrounding developments that will feed life into the park. These are the key to the Trinity’s success.

And that is what is worrying.

Even if developments are realized along the Trinity, it is likely that it will take a generation before the Trinity River Project becomes a true urban park. In the meantime, it’ll continue as a recreation destination, much like White Rock Lake.

Don’t get me wrong, if it is built, the park will be fantastic to visit. But in a city starved for public spaces, we need to realize that despite all the time and capital feeding the Trinity Project, we might end up with a disconnected green zone, cut off from the life of the city by highways, construction zones, and parking lots.

This possibility also puts a lot of pressure on future developments along the levees to realize the full potential of the Trinity River Park. It is not only a question of getting development along the Trinity, but getting the right kind of development. City planners are creating zoning maps and land use plans to this end. But as the nearby Victory development has taught us, ultimately the developer holds the cards. Even a simple design flaw can destroy the functionality of urban space.

Despite the debates over the Trinity, the much smaller Woodall Rodgers Deck Park gives Dallas a greater chance of realizing Valencia’s vision of a shared urban existence. Unlike the Trinity, the deck park is on the fast track for completion—it’s received federal stimulus funds. The deck park will draw in visitors from all over Dallas, and it will also receive overflow from nearby businesses, residencies, and gathering places – notably the Arts District.

As soon as the Deck Park is completed, life will spill onto it from adjacent streets and buildings. We will take to our public stage, gathering on the deck park as strangers together. We’ll listen to music together, eye each other’s picnic offerings, and maybe see a kid lose a soccer ball to the highway under the ledge. In the distance, there will be the towering Calatrava steel. And even if that bridge still passes over an empty floodplain, we’ll have our park, and with it, a deeper love of our somewhere.