Your OKC Wish List

[stlokc]

OK, I did not mean necessarily that the landscaping had to be trees in the medians. You could have nice plantings, shrubberies at the bridge supports and the exit ramps. The most important thing is that along the highways, the grass is mowed and the trash is picked up. Also, look at the buildings that are visible from the highways and try to keep them in good shape. Easier said than done.

As far as comparing us to other cities, Wichita and Omaha and Colorado Springs are all making progress. Every city is investing in their downtowns and in corporate relocation. The only way for any city to get ahead is to do it faster and smarter than the competition.

My question, and maybe this is a topic for another thread, or maybe it's decided and I just haven't heard (I am an OKC ex-patriate living in St. Louis)is: What is Maps 3 going to be? The Maps for Kids tax has to be winding down. OKC is used to paying that tax. What is the next initative? What is the next great civic undertaking? (OKC is miles ahead of STL when it comes to rallying citizens around big-thinking goals) I would think it should be some combination of continuing downtown's progress and true economic development, identifying clusters and recruiting companies. Biotech/medical would be an excellent start.

[tnajk]

1. A Major league football team

2. COLD, 6 point Beer,wine and all alcoholic beverages available.

[HOT ROD]

here here to STLOKC's list.

My top 3 are:

1) a business/political climate in OKC that does not bow to the rural OK and Tulsa all of the time when it comes to or prohibits development and urban ness of Oklahoma City. This state should have taken a 1 big city approach to begin with, then we wouldn't have the problems we have with WRWA, lack of perm major league team(s), downtown skyscrapers, and urban amenities.

2) OKC residents to continue to build "true" pride in their city. I mean that found in NO, Seattle, STL, Chicago, heck any other major city in the nation. All of those citizens stick up for their city and make it like it is the centre of the universe (Chicago has a true legitimate claim actually). Too often, OKC gets chomp'd on by smaller cities and we just sit and let it happen (if not agree with them). While I know we have made significant improvement, we are still a long way to go as a city - just as long as we are still disconnected between suburb and downtown, north and south; so on. How about OKLAHOMA CITY pride!!! And that goes for the OKC suburbs as well, stand up for your central city!!

3) Additional world class companies locate in the city. Now that it is 'assured' that OKC shall have a major league team (finally, given the SONICS/STORM and Hornets situation), hopefully this will keep OKC on the radar of hip/expanding companies worldwide and we will continue to get business/(and residents) from it. This will only make things better for OKC, get our Congressperson BACK, more revenue for the city, more income/economy for the city, so on. And all of this from exposure of the sounds of "your Oklahoma City SONICS!!!" and "Oklahoma City STORM", heck even "New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets" has given us tremendous momentum of publicity - you can't even account for it.

If my 3 were to take place (2 and 3 are already happening, 1 still needs some help tho), I'd see OKC rising to the status of big cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, Tampa, and San Diego. Perhaps not so much in history but moreso on its cultural offerings, urban sophistication, corporate stability/power, and substantial ecomomy of a large urban center.

Will we every be Chicago? No, but I think Denver is very reachable, even without the Rockies being next door!!!

You can do it, OKC. Continue the Renaissance!!!

[HOT ROD]

I'm telling you, we are under-estimating Wichita (and Omaha!) at our own peril. I have detailed why in this and other threads. Today, CNN/Money Magazine released their annual "Best Places To Live" issue. This year, you had to have a population of under 300,000. But, they had a, "Ten Best Big Cities" section and here is the Top Ten:

1 Colorado Springs, CO 369,800
2 Austin, TX 690,300
3 Mesa, AZ 442,800
4 Raleigh, NC 341,500
5 San Diego, CA 1,255,500
6 Virginia Beach, VA 438,400
7 Omaha, NE 414,500
8 Columbus, OH 730,700
9 Wichita, KS 354,900
10 New York, NY 8,143,200

Complete Details on this year's rankings:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/money...006/index.html

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Im sorry, and no offense, but I have to question any list/ranking that has the likes of Wichita/Omaha/Raleigh/the Springs in the same universe as New York city, not to mention ahead of it. One immediate clue is look at the populations, I think they should have had ranking of cities based on a more appropriate population measure:

small >49,000
medium 50,000-499,999
large 500,000-1.49M
major >1.5M

Im sure, the Wichita/Omaha/Raleigh/Springs would be much more appropriately called medium sized cities, while New York would be more appropriately called major. For that list to mean anything, NY should be compared to Chicago and LA and Houston and Phila; not cities that dont even make up a neighbourhood in NY like Wichita or Omaha.

And OKC (532,000) would be in the large city comparison along with Portland, Seattle, Denver, and Columbus OH, and the city probably would fare in the top 20, i bet.

[writerranger]

Actually, OKC did horribly in these rankings.

Crime, median income, education, lower-than-average job growth - many reasons. Sonics, Hornets, or not, we still have MANY problems.

Examples:

Crime:
Personal Crime Risk OKC: 227
Best Places Average: 45

Property Crime Risk: 237
Best Places Average: 74

Personal Crime Incidents: 823
Best Places Average: 228
Almost tripled!

Education:

Poor reading and math scores

The rankings are explained in the methodology section. It was greater than 300,000 and less than 300,000. That's how Wichita ended up competing with NYC. Remember, these were "Best Places To Live" rankings and placed a lot of emphasis on livability and less stress. It's actually a very interesting section in MONEY.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/money...006/index.html


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[HOT ROD]

I just think those same quality of life issues differ greatly from Wichita (one of the nations' smallest legitimate cities) and New York (the nations' largest).

Wichita should be compared with similarly sized cities and New York should be compared similarly respectfully.

Those positive issues in Wichita Im sure were big negatives in NY, while there is so much to do in NY and very little in Wichita that it made up for NY being unsafe, rather not educated, and so on.

NY should have been compared with peer cities like Chicago, LA, and Phila to get any prospective on the scale/score. Comparing it to Wichita (with Wichita winning).... Im not sure what it's saying.

[jdsplaypin]

Sorry to be so blunt, but colorado springs is by far the ugliest, worst maintained city i've ever been to. Wichita might come in next. As a sidenote, i'm a grad. student in urban planning so i'm not just throwing out an unthought opinion.

[MikeLucky]

Well, having grown up in Wichita I can give a perspective on that.....

When I first saw it on the list I literally laughed out loud. Wichita has a couple of things that will forever doom it's growth.

First, is that the airport is doomed to never grow. See usually the airport in a gowing city will be prodded by the local businesses and rich people that need a vibrant airport to fill their travel needs. But, in Wichita all the important and rich people/businesses are aircraft companies. They already have their own airplanes so the airport is really not a concern for them.

Second is the city mentality. They have resisted growth for decades in Wichita. A large casino company wanted to come into the downtown riverside area and build a casino and pay for a luxury high-rise hotel attached to the convention center. This would have spurred a really good downtown revitalization and the impact to tax-payers would have been minimal. While Wichitans realized they needed a luxury high-rise, they didn't want the help from the "immoral" gambling trust, so instead they voted down the measure but did decide to pay for part of the Hyatt Regency with tax money. But there was still little reason to go downtown anyway, so it didn't really matter.

Then there is the "arena" issue. Wichita wanted an arena for years and years, but the tax payers kept voting it down. Now, after the benefits of a decent downtown arena have been proven to them by the likes of OKC, Omaha, etc. they finally voted for an arena so they could bring in the big concerts and athletic events. Then what do the brilliant city leaders do? They decide to build the arena with bigger seats so people will be comfortable, but it brought the capacity down to around 15,000. So now they won't even get a sniff of the big concerts or athletics events they are building it for in the first place.


Now, what Wichita does have is a decent amount of rich folks. But they tend to stay in their own little cocoon that is the East side of town and they could really care less if Wichita does any type of civic based economic growth. The rich people are trying to build up their cocoon while the city leaders see the value of the downtown riverside area, but can't get the big money down there.....

Just my opinions....