Cost of living and traffic

[Plutonic Panda]

Just out of curiosity here... Oklahoma City is known for low traffic and a low cost of living. That is a big selling point to people who are looking to move to the city for various reasons. I personally believe OKC has not hit it's high pace of growth and will hit an Austin type boom in the coming years that will make the previous boom something to laugh about.

But all of that aside, with the current growth rates or just your own personal intuition being if the city picks up growth or not, how much longer do you think low traffic and low cost of living is going to be prevalent in OKC? 5-10 years? 1-3 years?

I'm not too familiar with the rental rates though every once in awhile I will go to Zillow and check out home and rental prices and they seem to be on the uptick. I have also noticed traffic has drastically increased since 2012 even though it nothing compared to Los Angeles, it's still notable and is worse than St. Louis which is twice the size of OKC.

If I had to venture to guess, I'd say OKC has about 6-10 more years of enjoying these perks before they go away. Anyone else agree?

[ChrisHayes]

I've been wondering if/when we'll hit the kind of growth and development rates that Austin and Dallas are having. Why do you think we'll soon hit those kind of growth rates?

[Plutonic Panda]

Honestly I don't have much to back it up, I just feel OKC has the right ingredients to boom. Healthy economy(bit of a downturn, but still stable), good road and highway infrastructure to support growth, very business friendly, council that supports growth, progressive strides, capitol city, Tinker AFB, good schools and universities, and much more to come. We've already seen a little of it, but I believe it will take off within the next 3-5 years and even more so within the next 10.

[ChrisHayes]

I hope you're right. I follow the Dallas thread on here and would love to see development like that in and around Oklahoma City.

[Plutonic Panda]

Yeah it would be nice.

[bradh]

I work just SE of downtown and live in Deer Creek, and when people who live up there complain about traffic on I-44/OK-74 I just laugh. I get it if you've lived here your whole life, but coming from HOU, PHX and then DFW, this is nothing. Granted, I don't expect that to last.

[FighttheGoodFight]

I think to have Austin style growth we have to get some big employers in the state.

Austin took off as a tech hub when Amazon and Apple built big campuses down there. SXSW also helped a great deal.

[adaniel]

While rapid price appreciation can occur in smaller markets (see NW Arkansas last decade, Austin and increasingly Nashville now), there would have to be a perfect storm of several things to happen in order for a similar situation to occur in OKC. This area has no natural limitations to development, fairly pro-growth municipalities, and a robust local building industry. Even assuming growth bumps up to 2-2.5% a yr, I don't see something like this happening here.

Austin has, for better or worse, some pretty NIMBY tendencies and a lot of locales are very restricting in their building due to the water situation down there. So development is always working 6 steps behind from meeting demand. They have also been flooded with money from Bay Area equity refugees for at least 2 decades, which has completely distorted the market. Its not comparable to OKC.

Outside of one or two corridors, traffic is nowhere close to being an issue for OKC and won't for the foreseeable future.

[gman11695]

And I'm not sure we want Austin style growth... Thanks to their incredibly fast growth rate and influx of high paying jobs, Austin has become the most polarized city in terms of income. No other city has a bigger gap between the rich and the poor, and I would hate to see that happen in Oklahoma City. The prices of rent has skyrocketed and it continues to push people out of their homes.

Having been to Austin quite a few times, if you ever drive under the I-35, along E 7th downtown, or along Guadalupe, there are hundreds of homeless people on the streets and trash littered everywhere. It's really a sad sight. I have never heard of the city trying to combat it either. It has appeared to me that Austin is definitely catering to the crowd that will bring them the most money, than spending money on those struggling at the bottom of the bucket.

[Teo9969]

We're many decades away from becoming a metropolitan area that has bad traffic and a high cost of living, and probably never. When you look at the cities we most project to be like in the future in different tiers, we'll still be cheaper (see below).

Obviously as OKC grows, traffic will increase and so will cost of living. OKC's highway system with minimal investment would be able to handle well over 2 million people in the metro, and maybe even closer to 4M than 2M.

http://www.infoplease.com/business/e...us-cities.html

NYC: 159.0 (Queens), 181.7 (BRK), 216.7 (MNHTN)
Los Angeles: 136.4
Chicago: 116.9

San Fran: 164.0
Philly: 126.5
Atlanta: 95.6
Houston: 92.2
Dallas: 91.9


Portland: 111.3
Denver: 103.2
Phoenix: 100.7
Kansas City: 97.8
Austin: 95.5
Charlotte: 93.2

Raleigh: 98.2
Jacksonville: 92.9
OKC: 91.7
Tulsa: 88.4
Memphis: 88.2
Louisville: 87.7

[Teo9969]

That being said, OKC is very likely to have areas that have a high cost of living in the next 20-25 years. Currently, there's nowhere in the city selling for $500/sf or renting for $2.50/sf...that's going to change.

[Plutonic Panda]

We're many decades away from becoming a metropolitan area that has bad traffic and a high cost of living, and probably never. When you look at the cities we most project to be like in the future in different tiers, we'll still be cheaper (see below).

Obviously as OKC grows, traffic will increase and so will cost of living. OKC's highway system with minimal investment would be able to handle well over 2 million people in the metro, and maybe even closer to 4M than 2M.

http://www.infoplease.com/business/e...us-cities.html
Houston: 92.2
Dallas: 91.9


Portland: 111.3
Denver: 103.2
Phoenix: 100.7
Kansas City: 97.8
Austin: 95.5
Charlotte: 93.2

I'm willing to guess that's what people in these cities said before they blew up too.

[Teo9969]

I'm willing to guess that's what people in these cities said before they blew up too.

The traffic argument is more difficult because it depends on where growth occurs and how it occurs. So there's not a lot of legitimate forecasting available on that. It would seem that if OKC is ever going to have legtimately bad traffic it is going to be concentrated entirely between Reno/Waterloo and Bryant/Morgan Road. But we'll need a massive increase there, and once the I-44/235 interchange update is finished, that's going to massively help N/S congestion

As far as the cost of living...do you really think we're going to get much more expensive than Dallas or Houston? Those are cheap cities as well.

Like I said, the cost of "living the good life" is absolutely going to go up...but you will only have to pay that if you want to.

[adaniel]

As far as the cost of living...do you really think we're going to get much more expensive than Dallas or Houston? Those are cheap cities as well.

Like I said, the cost of "living the good life" is absolutely going to go up...but you will only have to pay that if you want to.

As someone who lives here, Dallas really isn't all that cheap anymore, so I can understand the question at hand.

But I do agree with the rest of your post.

[Plutonic Panda]

The traffic argument is more difficult because it depends on where growth occurs and how it occurs. So there's not a lot of legitimate forecasting available on that. It would seem that if OKC is ever going to have legtimately bad traffic it is going to be concentrated entirely between Reno/Waterloo and Bryant/Morgan Road. But we'll need a massive increase there, and once the I-44/235 interchange update is finished, that's going to massively help N/S congestion

As far as the cost of living...do you really think we're going to get much more expensive than Dallas or Houston? Those are cheap cities as well.

Like I said, the cost of "living the good life" is absolutely going to go up...but you will only have to pay that if you want to.

No, I think it depends on the cost of living. Isn't Austin and Denver above Dallas and Houston as far as rents go? OKC could get there if it gets really dense. It will be awhile before we get to where Dallas is at, which is fairly cheap.

[Teo9969]

adaniel, I don't live in Dallas and haven't shopped in that market anytime recently, but I imagine the equivalent of Midwest City in the DFW area costs about as much as Midwest City, perhaps slightly more. (In the link above, Dallas is marginally more expensive than OKC in every category except for Housing where OKC is significantly more expensive in comparison - though still cheap).

Again, if we're talking about the best areas to live, that's another question. And those are usually the densest places, but let's be real, Neither Dallas nor OKC will achieve high density in anybody's lifetime that is currently alive. Certain places may become quite dense like downtown OKC...but Urban Core OKC is not OKC, and Urban Core Dallas is not Dallas.

[White Peacock]

After Portland, Austin, and Denver reach Critical Californication, OKC will likely be one of the next cities to see the same trend. The trend of rapid growth is good in some ways, but that's mostly just due to the image of being a hip destination for relocation. It's bad for native locals in almost every way. People fleeing whatever wave of bad decisions are being made in California will sell their $1M+ home, giving them the capital to buy a larger home in a cheaper city at a higher bid than a local might be able to make, and thus begins the rapid rise in property value, ultimately forcing locals out of the market. Hell, in Portland, there are bidding wars on properties, sight unseen, and they end up going for far more than what the seller listed the property at. And traffic could be a nightmare when I lived there a decade ago; it's rising rapidly (up more than 6% between 2014 and 2015), making it even harder for residents to enjoy living in an otherwise great place.

If we do have a boom like these other places have, I hope it's nowhere near as large or rapid, because although it can bring some cool things with it, it doesn't necessarily make the place better.

[Plutonic Panda]

I would also venture to say Portland being one of the largest anti highway cities in the US might play a role in that as well. They are just now beginning engineering work to widen the 5 which they tried to tear down at one point.

[White Peacock]

I would also venture to say Portland being one of the largest anti highway cities in the US might play a role in that as well. They are just now beginning engineering work to widen the 5 which they tried to tear down at one point.

Most of my headaches were on 217; I can't even imagine the Hell that is trying to take the Tigard exit at rush hour nowadays.

[Plutonic Panda]

Surely it can't be any worse than the 101 here in LA :P

[no1cub17]

I would also venture to say Portland being one of the largest anti highway cities in the US might play a role in that as well. They are just now beginning engineering work to widen the 5 which they tried to tear down at one point.

http://gizmodo.com/6-freeway-removal...ver-1548314937

Maybe OKC will be on this list in 20-30 years after we tear the Boulevard down.

[Questor]

Austin has a lot of a lot of different things. It has lots of great creative culture, which attracts people who want to live there. It has large businesses. A lot of that is more recent. It has a very strong technological upstart community. It has a lot of old and new money... Venture capitalists... And other types of investors who have the funds to make things happen.

We still have a very uneven mix of these things here. I tend to think our growth will continue at a good, constant, but steady pace. Unless some major catalyst ignites and changes the game here. In some ways for Austin that was Dell during its heyday in the late 90s and early 2000s. So far the only times in my lifetime I have seen magnet companies like that here in OKC they've been oil related. Which kind of makes sense... There are lots of people here with smarts in that business sector, there is already a sort of local synergy here for that, and capital is there because it seems like you can't find a new upstart that isn't backed by so and so's billionaire oil uncle. Hopefully we will have all of that in some other industries here. When that day comes that is when we will see explosive growth.