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No place like home: in the now infamous Dallas suburb, redevelopment is king, the lawns are immaculate, and illegal immigrants are no longer welcome.

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Last year Farmers Branch, a Dallas suburb of some 26,500 people, erected a giant American flag on the edge of town, in the middle of a few acres of mowed grass. "You need a little imagination to see what this is going to become," I was told by Tim O'Hare, a first-term city councilman and candidate in this month's mayoral election, as we drove past. He was showing me the town--or, rather, two towns, the one that exists and the one that he envisions. The field had been christened Liberty Plaza, and following the construction of a long-awaited Dallas Area Rapid Transit station, it would one day anchor a bustling new neighborhood. Instead of a scruffy strip of land, "there will be residences and offices and shops," he said. "It will be a mixed-use little urban living area. Farmers Branch will actually have a downtown"--albeit on the town's eastern periphery. O'Hare has spent most of his 38 years in Farmers Branch, where he believes he must have been, at five feet eight, the smallest wide receiver from his high school ever to make first-team all-district. Now an attorney with his own practice, he is clean-cut and confident and says he doesn't think of himself as a politician, though this is a statement seldom uttered by anyone but politicians. Clearly he has given some thought to how his town is seen by outsiders. As we toured around in his sizable black SUV, he kept gesturing in one direction or another to indicate hypothetical passers-by--people coming in from DFW Airport or driving along Interstate 35 or traveling by light-rail--who he hoped would take notice of the improvements, which would be "neat" and "nice" and "incredible" and "unique." Of Liberty Plaza he said, "Eventually we're going to get a giant sculpture. We haven't picked what yet, but when I say 'giant sculpture,' I'm talking about an Iwo Jima-type memorial. It will be the kind of thing that when you're watching the Dallas Cowboys play on Sunday, they'll show it during the commercials. You know how they show the landmarks of their city? It will be that."

In fact, O'Hare had already drawn considerable attention to Farmers Branch after suggesting in August 2006 that the city...

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