Our Q&A with David Spence, Oak Cliff resident and founder of Good Space, which renovates commercial and residential spaces in the neighborhood.

Last week, you celebrated your 10th anniversary working to revive Oak Cliff. What big changes have you seen since then?

No big changes, just lots of steady little ones. Oak Cliff suffers from [developer Thomas] Marsalis syndrome: Too often, the planning efforts are always looking to hit a home run. I have a lot more confidence in incremental changes. The Bishop Arts District is a nice little finite example of neighborhood renewal. It's working with something that's there.

A lot of people north of the Trinity still see Oak Cliff as the wrong side of the tracks.

If you define "wrong side of the tracks" as meaning, on balance, poorer, more subject to crime, with old infrastructure and housing stock and fewer consumer amenities, you're right. But that doesn't account for any of the advantages of Oak Cliff. You have a lusher landscape, you have a richer historical landscape, you have a much richer racial landscape, you have economic diversity that is real-world. If you think Oak Cliff looks bad after 100 years, what till Richardson and Plano are 100 years old. You'll find that Oak Cliff, with its real wood houses and thick concrete streets, has held up very well. And I think the same thing is true about race relations. Oak Cliff has a lot to teach the rest of Dallas about how to pull off diversity.

Will Oak Cliff ever stabilize as a solid middle-class neighborhood until it becomes a good, safe place to raise and educate children?

Keep in mind that the Hispanics who are very rapidly becoming the most powerful force in Oak Cliff are a tremendously upwardly mobile group. I take a little issue with the idea that our only chance of reaching middle-class status is through imports.

Well, how do you keep Hispanics who reach the middle class from heading for the suburbs?

First, let's admit that we will never be able to compete with Plano, but I think we do it the same way we keep anybody: by keeping the streets safe, the schools serious, the shop windows clean, and the grass mowed.