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Oklahoma City has a lot of promise, and is currently still trending toward the positive, but that progress is precarious because of the drop in oil prices and the gross incompetence of Oklahoma's state government. The last 20 years have been marked by the wild success of the various MAPS (Metropolitan Area ProjectS plan) initiatives, each a 1-cent sales tax meant to fund various capital improvement projects, such as renovating public areas and spaces (parks, the Civic Center Music Hall, libraries, etc.), improving schools, building various sports, convention and other entertainment venues, repairing roads/sidewalks, etc., with the current project being a (rather limited) streetcar meant to connect entertainment districts with newly-developed mixed-use residential/commercial neighborhoods. The MAPS initiatives were spurred in large part as a response to the bombing in '95 when city leaders realized that there was a good opportunity to capitalize on a surge in civic pride and interest in the wake of the tragedy. Attracting an NBA franchise to the city is widely seen as evidence of the success of the initiatives. As a life-long resident of central Oklahoma, I can personally attest to the "livability" of OKC skyrocketing, both in material and emotional senses, since these development projects began. However, a lot of Oklahoma City's recent success was driven by sky-high energy prices. The largest employers were all energy companies: Chesapeake, Devon, Sandridge et al. When prices crashed recently all these companies announced thousands of layoffs. Besides the otherwise expected economic "ripple effects" these layoffs would cause, as mentioned these MAPS projects are all sales-tax based. During the last 20 years OKC has diversified its economy substantially, attracting large non-energy employers like Dell and Boeing, but energy still makes up the largest sector of the economy, and thus the large contraction in this sector spells ill for the future of MAPS, not to mention the city's overall economic health. One positive trend I don't see reversing is the construction of more dense residential areas in the city center. OKC is a huge, sprawling mess--one of the least-population-dense metropolitan areas in the U.S. For many years the city center and peripheral neighborhoods were functionally "dead zones," where people would work but were otherwise completely devoid of leisure/recreation opportunities as well as actual homes. The first MAPS initiative rebuilt "Bricktown," one of the city's first industrial areas, into the city's principal entertainment district. Since then multi-story, mixed-use development has been burgeoning around Bricktown, and more recently has spread out to other inner-ring neighborhoods. I've seen lots of complaints about these kinds of buildings in other cities, and for good reasons: gentrification (primarily), greater traffic/congestion, and also aesthetics (they do tend to be pretty drat ugly). But for OKC, such dense living within the urban core barely existed at all before 20 years ago. The environmental benefits of more dense living, with the prospect of (hopefully? maybe?) better public transit will further increase the "livability" of the city. One negative trend I don't see reversing is the ultra-conservative nature of state politics. In case you weren't already aware, our state government is a loving joke. Rather than list all the ways our government is horrible and wretched, suffice it to say that gross mismanagement on their part will have (and has had) a negative effect on life and living in OKC. One quick example: the state government passing a law recently banning municipalities from passing local minimum-wage increases, something that had been gaining traction previously in OKC. As such, it's hard to say where OKC will be in 10 years. Diversification of the economy, success of the MAPS initiatives and continued high levels of civic pride (and thus support for the aforementioned sales taxes that fund MAPS) keep the outlook bright, but bright enough to overcome the dark clouds of what looks to be a protracted slump in energy prices and one of, if not the single worst state government in the U.S.?
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Sep 8, 2016 02:42
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 02:49 |
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