Comparing OKC's new urbanism to other U.S cities

[Pete]

I've said before that OKC should seek much higher standards than constantly contrasting against the state of our own central city in the 80's and 90's.

You could even argue that OKC had one of the absolute worst downtown's in the U.S. during those decades, as virtually all of Midtown, Auto Alley, Bricktown, Uptown, the Plaza... All of them were almost completely abandoned in terms of commercial development and many residences were unoccupied or razed.

So the question becomes, how do we stack up against other cities in the U.S. and what should our new standards become?

You can find tons of great urbanism not only in the meccas of Seattle and Portland and San Francisco and Brooklyn but also Wichita and Little Rock and Ft. Worth and Des Moines. New Urbanism has come to virtually every American city in dramatic fashion over the last 2-3 decades.

For quite a while we had *ONE* hotel in the entire downtown area. That's about as bad as it gets.

And frankly, while some great things are happening in Tulsa, their standards probably aren't good 'stretch goals' as they are smaller in every way and growing far less robustly; also much slower out of the gate with their Vision 2025 initiative.

Maybe OKC started from a deeper hole than almost anywhere else -- even dying cities like Detroit still had lots of great buildings and infrastructure already in place -- but what evidence do we have that we doing better than peer cities or even keeping up?

I personally like numbers as they are at least objective and offer an empirical form of measurement. Which is why I compile and maintain the Urban Project Summary, and downtown hotel and housing summaries.

But simply put: How does OKC measure up?

I believe it's a very important question instead of us constantly pointing back to our sad, sad past as the key point of comparison. And even more important with the new general obligation bond coming up for a vote in the fall, along with the future of MAPS to be decided as well as a new mayor.

Enough with the blind cheerleading and time to take honest stock and set our sights higher than "it's much better than it used to be".

[stlokc]

Pete, I totally agree with your post. Every word. OKC should celebrate how far we've come but that's not good enough. We have reached a point as a city that we really should be benchmarking. What would be your preferred numbers and how do we look at that? Some thoughts I have: numbers of downtown residents and the change from 2000, average per capita income of downtown residents and change since 2000, number of retail outlets downtown per capita and the change since 2000, office vacancy at all levels and the trend (controlling for the buildings that have been taken out because they've been converted to other uses), private-sector, non-institutional construction, amount spent on streetscapes, etc. What are some other thoughts?

[stlokc]

Also: number of vacant buildings and the trend, percentage of the metro area's population that lives downtown and is that growing faster than the city at large and how does that compare to other cities...

[stlokc]

Finally, I think it's important to look at all cities across the country instead of just comparing OKC to the usual suspects. I wonder if such a database for these types of questions already exists.

[Pete]

It might be an interesting exercise to force rank the top 50 cities or so in terms of their urban cores and especially the cities nearest our size.

For example, is OKC better than Ft. Worth (not sure). Milwaukee -- absolutely not. Louisville -- probably not. Memphis -- probably.

Are there smaller cities that do a better job? Des Moines - probably. Little Rock - in some ways. Wichita -- probably not.

Are we even close to bigger cities in our region? San Antonio -- no way. Kansas City -- no way. Denver -- no way.


Just some thoughts to spur discussion and maybe start working towards an honest forced ranking that shows how we stack up. I think that alone would open eyes about how we are not doing this in a vacuum and in some ways still have a long way to go.

[stlokc]

Totally agree and one last thing before I go into work ...
We need to figure out how to be "relentlessly honest." For example, it's easy to take certain numbers and make it appear that our office vacancy rate has plunged. But just because Sandridge may own an entire building doesn't mean the building is full. Taking First National off the office rolls doesn't magically mean the space is no longer vacant. I don't know how to get at those types of comparisons. Different sources are going to be looking at things with different metrics.

[Bellaboo]

For comparisons, you probably need to add an affordability factor to the equation. How much bang for the buck per location, if that's possible. I have a son in Seattle, with their family income is right at $250 k annual, and he says in no way can they afford housing (purchase) in the central core.

[stlokc]

So Bellaboo, that's an interesting thought. To what degree is it important that center city vitality be for the whole community? I mean, I've been to Seattle and it would be hard to argue that they're not on another planet compared to OKC. But is that a function of so many people there having so much more money? Is $250K even considered a high income in Seattle? Is it important to a city that a high degree of its population be able to afford to buy in the center city? How many people that flood Seattle's sidewalks are tourists as opposed to residents? Actually that brings to mind another metric: number of hotel rooms, trend, and the ongoing occupancy rate of said hotels.

[Pete]

A reminder that lots of well paid people in OKC can't afford to buy anything in our downtown.

[Anonymous.]

The company that the modern streetcar puts us in, is something remarkable. It is a complete game changer and most of the OKC population has no idea what it is or that it [will soon] exist.

[stlokc]

So if we're looking at a metric, I would say something like average rent in center city vs. suburban rents and average purchase price in center city vs. suburbs and what is discrepancy and how does that compare.

I'm totally making this up. But let's say in OKC the average rent downtown is $1500 for a 2BR and in the suburbs it's $1000. So we can display that as a percentage. Maybe in Kansas City the average rent downtown is $1600 but in the suburbs it's $1300. Smaller percentage. That can be a point of comparison.

[stlokc]

Anonymous- I think the streetcar is awesome and it will put us in a different league. Having one by itself will be an interesting comparison point. A comparison point in the future will be ridership vs. other cities' transit options and the amount of private investment along the route compared to others.

[shawnw]

Boise kicks OKC's butt IMO, for whenever we get to comparing those two.

[LocoAko]

This might be totally off base as I don't consider myself incredibly well-informed on new urbanism principles, and I don't know how you'd easily measure this, but is there some measure of how continuous our streetwalls are? The two things I still notice after years here -- and that visitors always point out to me -- are a) how many gaps still exist in our fabric (grassy lots, surface parking lots, etc) and b) how few pedestrians we have. Of course I believe the two to be related to an extent, since walking past empty fields and large surface lots is foreboding and not conducive to pedestrian life. Even in our most well developed urban corridors it can be surprising how empty they are compared to other cities. I assume it could be done from a satellite view, calculating a percentage of downtown that is empty lots?

[HangryHippo]

If we're being frank, I think we're getting smoked on the rate at which we're improving. Look at Omaha or Milwaukee, not to mention Austin, Denver, San Antonio, or Kansas City.

[catch22]

It's not fair to group Denver in with OKC ^ Denver is twice the size of OKC and has several advantages both natural and man made.

[HangryHippo]

It's not fair to group Denver in with OKC ^ Denver is twice the size of OKC and has several advantages both natural and man made.

It's completely fair. We have to compete against them for jobs and economic developments. It sucks they have the Rockies and we don't, but as you said, that's not their only advantage over OKC. And some of the advantages are because they've made choices we haven't and it's helping them boom.

[sooner88]

First National is going to be a big step forward in getting residential into the CBD and hopefully activate more of a 24 hr. pedestrian life. I have friends that come into town during the week for work and stay downtown, and while there may be pockets of activity at Mahogany/Flint overall their comments have been how dead it feels. Although Midtown, AA, Plaza are all a 5 minute drive away, it will be great to have another option, especially for people here on a short visit.

[catch22]

It's completely fair. We have to compete against them for jobs and economic developments. It sucks they have the Rockies and we don't, but as you said, that's not their only advantage over OKC. And some of the advantages are because they've made choices we haven't and it's helping them boom.

You may as well compare us to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Denver is simply in a different league, for many reasons which OKC will never be able to replicate. You can't expect the OKC Blue to keep up with the Spurs. Need to be realistic.

[Pete]

I've said many times Denver is the city we would do best to follow because the city itself is flat and there is no navigable water.

And yet it's urban core is absolutely fantastic.

[Teo9969]

I think we'll be better poised to address this issue in 2020, as MAPS 3 begins to wind down. Even if everything is not completely functional, it will be mostly complete and I think your average citizen will be more aware of what exactly is happening downtown.

The problem is that the scale of the municipal projects we have in front of us is quite massive for our city and I think it's creating a bit of paralysis in knowing just how significant an impact it is going to have on the shape of downtown.

Beyond that, a big problem we have in our downtown area is that too few people own the land and people are not excited to get rid of their properties whether they don't have the capital to do anything with it or they are too occupied with other projects to make movement on empty land. It seems 90% of the projects come from the same 10-15 developers, and they're rarely smaller projects.

I appreciate what the "pioneer" developers have done for OKC, but many sit on their properties too long and they get locked into a particular vision too easily. The Brownstones were clearly dead by 2012, and it wasn't until like last year that some of those lots finally started getting built out by non-Brownstone development. There were no lack of people wanting to build in Deep Deuce in 2012-2014, especially before oil plummeted...but I guess they wanted to make sure moving forward was not realistic...I dunno, really.

One thing that I think will be important is some of the spec development we've seen proposed (Broadway Condos, Cummins building, etc.) need to get built and find success if we want the pace to pick back up and fill in the various holes that we have downtown.

[Teo9969]

What I think OKC needs to focus on right now is their design districts/standards and review committees. If we can shore that up over the next 3 to 5 years, then I think we'll find that by 2030, this city will be considered one of the hottest in the country.

[catch22]

I've said many times Denver is the city we would do best to follow because the city itself is flat and there is no navigable water.

And yet it's urban core is absolutely fantastic.

There is a difference between following a lead and trying to get ahead. With that, I agree that Denver has good urbanism (downtown) that is a good model to follow.

[stlokc]

There is no reason we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to Denver, Kansas City, Indy, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Nashville etc etc - cities in the next tier up. That's where we want to get to. Because it's not about where we currently are relative to them - obviously we're behind - it's about our rate of growth vs. theirs. Are we "gaining" on them? I care less about sheer numerical comparisons and more about the trend lines.

[stlokc]

Also, all those cities are undergoing their own urban renaissances. They are all going about it in different ways and are at different points. Which of those are moving ahead in the smartest - not even necessarily the fastest - ways? Which are making the greatest strides in the specific areas in which we are the furthest behind?