First impressions - Dallas

Arriving in Dallas yesterday, I was struck firstly by how wooded and green it is on the outskirts. This often strikes me about the US. I assume that, as a country that has been settled longer than Australia and with a more rapacious attitude toward nature, it would be over-cleared. No, that is Australia's dubious honour.

Downtown, though, is one of those bleak cityscapes that you'd find in a Jeffrey Smart painting -

carparks, glass towers,

at night: not a soul. How do US cities get to this degree of urban desolation? The people drive their cars into underground carparks and then straight up into their towers?

I crossed Elm Street last night, and there were sequences of charming old Art Deco or 1920s buildings, but it's a bit like a mouth that once had a set of good teeth.

Yet, Dallas is a cultured city. It has a symphony orchestra and an opera. Its opera company commissioned Therese Raquin, the piece by Tobias Picker and Gene Scheer that in some respects is the most successful contemporary opera - because Picker and Scheer figured out that lyricism's true province is the broad depiction of love and death.

It will be interesting to see how my impressions vary over the next few days.