Find me a few studies or articles that explain why a community like Norman can win the future by focusing on making it easier to get around by car and continuing to encourage sprawl development. Who is saying this other than angry Agenda 21 people who think preferences for urbanism are a UN conspiracy? (Hint: Joel Kotkin is the only editorialist I can think of who might come close.)

Which sprawling college towns are making big strides by widening roads? (Hint: I can only think of the Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, where research parks sprawl across two highway-laced counties and people have gotten so tired of retreating by car to their walkable home neighborhoods at the corners of the triangle that they just passed a $1.4 billion transit plan.)

Boulder and Ann Arbor have focused intensely on increasing bicycling and walking and now they're considered among the best places to live in the country.

Meanwhile, even the AUTO INDUSTRY knows most young people do not want to rely on cars. Our local Chambers of Commerce, economic developers, and major corporations know this too and are preparing for it. See Oklahoma City.

Why Young Americans Are Driving So Much Less Than Their Parents - Commute - The Atlantic Cities (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/why-young-americans-are-driving-so-much-less-their-parents/1712/)

"A study by J.D. Power and Associates, most well-known for their quality rankings of cars, confirms what young people tell me: After analyzing hundreds of thousands of online conversations on everything from car blogs to Twitter and Facebook, the study found that teens and young people in their early twenties have increasingly negative perceptions “regarding the necessity of and desire to have cars.”

"There’s a cultural change taking place," John Casesa, a veteran auto industry analyst told the New York Times in 2009. “It’s partly because of the severe economic contraction. But younger consumers are viewing an automobile with a jaundiced eye. They don’t view the car the way their parents did, and they don’t have the money that their parents did.”

A survey by the National Association of Realtors conducted in March 2011 revealed that 62 percent of people ages 18-29 said they would prefer to live in a communities with a mix of single family homes, condos and apartments, nearby retail shops, restaurants, cafes and bars, as well as workplaces, libraries, and schools served by public transportation. A separate 2011 Urban Land Institute survey found that nearly two-thirds of 18 to 32-year-olds polled preferred to live in walkable communities."

You don’t need studies or an article to know that Lindsey Street is seriously congested several times a day.

People with even elementary common sense and eyes can see it for them self’s.

Of course Lindsey Street is congested. There are a lot of things we can do to address that and Norman has already chosen one- They're going to 5-lane it. They have chosen this solution while simultaneously rejecting higher density housing in walkable areas, failing to build the level of bike infrastructure that other college towns and attractive cities are, and continuing to allow huge, disconnected automobile-only residential and retail developments. All of these things will make congestion worse.

Norman is in the process of choosing a path, and contrary to your opinion, the path it is choosing is NOT the modern, forward-thinking one (that is where the articles and studies come in!) Norman is no longer capitalizing on the slight college urbanism advantage that made it just unique enough among Edmond, Yukon, Moore, and a thousand other identical places in America. So getting back to the subject of this thread, that is probably why Norman is starting to lose to central Oklahoma City, which has chosen to pursue the modern and forward-thinking path of quality urbanism that sets it apart from every other part of the metro.

Of course Lindsey Street is congested. There are a lot of things we can do to address that and Norman has already chosen one- They're going to 5-lane it. They have chosen this solution while simultaneously rejecting higher density housing in walkable areas, failing to build the level of bike infrastructure that other college towns and attractive cities are, and continuing to allow huge, disconnected automobile-only residential and retail developments. All of these things will make congestion worse.

Norman is in the process of choosing a path, and contrary to your opinion, the path it is choosing is NOT the modern, forward-thinking one (that is where the articles and studies come in!) Norman is no longer capitalizing on the slight college urbanism advantage that made it just unique enough among Edmond, Yukon, Moore, and a thousand other identical places in America. So getting back to the subject of this thread, that is probably why Norman is starting to lose to central Oklahoma City, which has chosen to pursue the modern and forward-thinking path of quality urbanism that sets it apart from every other part of the metro.

The part of Lindsey Street that is the most congested will not be 5 landed. It will stay exactly like it is…..
This is in spite of the fact that it has been labeled as the most congested street in Oklahoma and the part that’s not being widened is the worst stretch of Lindsey, by a very wide margin. It doesn’t even have sidewalks.

Traffic is worse in Edmond, from what little time I've spent there.

Its been a long time, but from memory there were plans to widen the stretch of Lindsey from Berry to Elm? But I've never heard of any plan for the stretch of Lindsey that goes right thru the OU campus. There was also a plan to 4 lane Flood from Robinson to Main, that would be a mess, now that I think on it.

i have always felt that the county services between Robinson and Alameda should all be relocated to the outskirts of norman and all of that land sold for redevelopment ..

i have always felt that the county services between Robinson and Alameda should all be relocated to the outskirts of norman and all of that land sold for redevelopment ..


When built these were on the outskirts, and then some. If sold for redevelopment, wouldn't the price need to include the relocation of those services? Sitting where they sit doesn't cost the stakeholders, but rebuilding would. If the relocation is factored in, is the price of the newly available land still viable for redevelopment?