OKC Selected by EPA for Assistance with Sustainable Community Planning

[Rover]

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress...5?OpenDocument

[soonerguru]

Awesome!

[Spartan]

Uh-oh. Sounds like U.N. conspiracy time in Oklahoma again!

[okclee]

The tools that will be used in the Building Blocks assistance include:

* Walking Audit: Assesses the pedestrian environment in a community and helps form a vision for short- and long-term improvements to sidewalks and streets.
* Sustainable Land Use Code Audit: Evaluates local land use codes, including zoning and subdivision regulations, for opportunities to incorporate community sustainability goals, remove barriers, and create incentives.
* Smart Growth Zoning Codes for Small Cities and Rural Areas: Offers a menu of quick fixes that rural and small-town governments can make to their zoning codes and planning documents to get development that protects their character and quality of life.
* Using Smart Growth to Produce Fiscal and Economic Health: Helps communities get better economic results from development and investments.
* Complete Streets: Teaches communities how to set investment priorities, draft policies, and implement changes to make their streets safe and appealing to all users, including drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders.
* Smart Growth Guidelines for Sustainable Design and Development: Helps the community understand the key principles and decisions at the location, site, and building levels that can result in a more sustainable plan or development proposal.
* Water Quality Scorecard: Helps local governments protect water quality through innovative approaches to land use and development that will also save money, help spur economic growth, and improve their community’s quality of life.
* Essential Smart Growth Fixes for Urban and Suburban Zoning Codes: Offers changes to codes that can help communities develop in a way that is environmentally and economically sustainable.

http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/buildingblocks.htm

[Spartan]

It would do more good if they didn't spend money on more studies telling us what we already knew, but instead gave OKC a check for the amount to be put toward more sidewalks...

But that's cool I guess. Would be neat to see them develop a Complete Streets strategy.

[okclee]

EPA selected the 32 communities from 354 applicants through a competitive process in consultation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

I'm very impressed that someone within the City of Okc offices applied for this and followed it through being that it was competitive process.

[bombermwc]

On one hand, it is really exciting to see something like this being done. But as Spartan said, it's really only helpful if we do something with the knowledge later. We've had so many "specialists" on various topics come through and nothing changed. There was mr. stoplights (that bond issue cash hasn't allowed any of the light timing to commence), mr. pedestrian who's ideas again only would have cost us a ton and wouldn't have really changed anything, etc.

Problem is, OKC like so many people, wants a consultant to come in and show some magic easy way to make a ton of money off doing very little. It just doesn't work that way.

However, community planning can help in the future by laying the groundwork for policies that govern how future development can help create a sustainable environment...which isn't always the cheapest method.

[Larry OKC]

I'm very impressed that someone within the City of Okc offices applied for this and followed it through being that it was competitive process.

Wouldn't that be our newly created "Office of Sustainability" (paid for by a Federal grant)???

[Spartan]

On one hand, it is really exciting to see something like this being done. But as Spartan said, it's really only helpful if we do something with the knowledge later. We've had so many "specialists" on various topics come through and nothing changed. There was mr. stoplights (that bond issue cash hasn't allowed any of the light timing to commence), mr. pedestrian who's ideas again only would have cost us a ton and wouldn't have really changed anything, etc.

Well, I get what you're saying, but I think that generally people want to follow the advice that Jeff Speck gave us. He gave us a streetscape masterplan that would have been absolutely incredible, but would have cost I think $400M, so you're right that it would have cost a ton. But again, it would have been incredible. I think his estimates were a little on the high side though because we actually incorporated many, many of his ideas into P180, for much much less. I am not sure that without Speck, Project 180 would be happening right now. Also I think he provided some excellent criticisms of C2S that City Hall needs to be constantly reminded of because they know he was right.

Speck was definitely one of the better cases of outside consulting. There have been many instances of federal planning processes that thought they were going to reinvent the wheel here. There have been a half-dozen studies just on the convention center. There was a transit study, the FGS, that was utterly worthless. There were other COTPA studies. There were other Core2Shore studies. Other walkability studies. We have planning department studies on all sorts of interesting prospective "urban renewal visions" including SW 44th Street, East Reno out to MLK, and others. We could fill libraries with an amazing amount of urban studies and visions. These all cost an incredible amount of money, though. I just wish there was less lip service, the city would be better off with less studies, more serious action, and putting more resources toward getting real results rather than pretending to care. Pretending to care for the last decade and a half or so has gotten to be very expensive, when you add up the cost of all these studies.