Could Tulsa be North America's Next Vancouver?

[rdj]

Oklahomans love land conservation!  That is if it's protecting their hunting or fishing leases!

[LandArchPoke]

An Urban Growth Boundary would halt a lot of the suburban development we see today. This however would need to be a joint effort between Tulsa County, Wagoner County, Creek County, Rogers County, Osage County, and others.

For people who might not know what an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) : Its a boundary that is controlled by a city, regional, or state government that encourage high density development with in the boundary and low density outside the boundary (and when I say low density I mean similar to what you see now in area undeveloped where large tracts of land are under single ownership, a suburban neighborhood would be considered to high density).

Portland, Oregon is a good example of an UGB. The state government requires it for every city/county in the state though.

Our suburban city should take a vested interest to this as well beside it won't take longer for Coweta to over take growth from Broken Arrow, Collinsville and Skiatook to take over growth from Owasso. Similar to what is happening to Jenks and Tulsa. If we put in growth regulations in a regional scale this would ensure the healthy growth of ALL cities in the metropolitan region and help Tulsa become a more urban city as well since it is the primary city.

With increasing inner city land values and densities mass transit lines would become viable in the Tulsa region, similar to what happened in Vancouver and Portland.

Artist do you think that with a better regional policy, it would in turn make the City of Tulsa's policies become more "up to date" with actually adopting more of the PlaniTulsa? That is sad to hear that they are destorying a lot of that to go back with old comprehensive plan. Since I'm not sure if you are calling me stupid and quote "thinking in lala-land"   .. this is just something I wrote to get people to think about our regional policies and maybe what it would take to actually get something progressive done at a regional scale, it doesn't mean that I'm say hey lets start a petition today to get this going, but to not think of the whole picture is pretty short sited and one of the things that keeps us going in the wrong direction. Stronger regional policies in my oppion would lead to strong policies inside the City of Tulsa.

[Conan71]

One of the things I like about Tulsa is that it caters pretty successfully to people who want the suburban lifestyle and to those who like urban density.  As well, there's plenty of development happening in both directions.  The only thing we don't have to support both lifestyles is smart public transit. 

Honestly, our automotive lifestyle doesn't bother me so much when I think of what real congestion is like in Houston, Dallas, LA, Miami, Denver, KC, etc. ad nauseum.  I think that's the main reason no one is terribly serious about getting light rail in Tulsa any time soon. 

[carltonplace]

Today that's true, but if we don't plan ahead we could end up with the same types of snarls other cities have. Already evening traffic in Southern Tulsa is congested and slow. Ever been stuck on Sheridan or Memorial anywhere from 41st St South from 5PM on?

[Conan71]

Today that's true, but if we don't plan ahead we could end up with the same types of snarls other cities have. Already evening traffic in Southern Tulsa is congested and slow. Ever been stuck on Sheridan or Memorial anywhere from 41st St South from 5PM on?

No way.  I'd rather have a hot cheese enema than drive south of 41st on any N/S main road in Tulsa during rush hour. I do recall when most of the roads south of 61st St. were still two lanes and that did suck.  It seemed like it took forever for road widening to catch up with development.

I agree, it's never too soon to plan for smart public transit.  Tulsa, for being so auto-centric has actually done an admirable job of trying to be pedestrian and cycle friendly.  We've got really good existing rail lines which could be used for passenger rail within the metro.

[rdj]

No way.  I'd rather have a hot cheese enema than drive south of 41st on any N/S main road in Tulsa during rush hour. I do recall when most of the roads south of 61st St. were still two lanes and that did suck.  It seemed like it took forever for road widening to catch up with development.

I agree, it's never too soon to plan for smart public transit.  Tulsa, for being so auto-centric has actually done an admirable job of trying to be pedestrian and cycle friendly.  We've got really good existing rail lines which could be used for passenger rail within the metro.

I just involuntarily clenched.  Thanks for ensuring I won't poo for the next 24 hours.

[we vs us]

In a word: No.

To be a little more forthcoming, you're talking about a completely different set of cultural and social expectations and values.  Living densely is an accepted norm in the metro PacWest - it is a cultural aesthetic there.  It's fostered by the obvious natural settings but has now taken on a life of it's own.  Having been to Portland and other parts up there urban living and preservation of the natural habitat is ingrained broadly in the culture.  They, by and large, value the qualities you speak of.  Here, not so much even on a marginal scale nevermind broad.  And I wish this wasn't true but I've been here long enough to finally get it.  In a state like Oklahoma forget about discussing growth boundaries and land conservation.  It's just not going to get much traction, unfortunately.  

I've come to accept that in Tulsa the best hope is to find others that have a passion for all (or even parts) that is urbanism/ sustainability and work together to cultivate a slice of the pie.  There are some small efforts afoot in the Brady (district and heights), Pearl District, Owen Park, Crosby Heights, Kendall Whittier...to move towards an urban model.  PlaniTulsa (and FastForward may) helps but until we get 'the champion' in the City to move that dialog into civic policy and investment I'm not convinced it's going to take us far; though it does support others who wish to try to get there from the private sector side and our pending zoning code rewrite should help further.

You could substitute any other North American City in place of Tulsa and make the similar, if not in most cases stronger arguments.

You just summed up the core lesson of my Tulsa experience to date.  Very well said.

[heironymouspasparagus]

OurTulsa,
Yep.

All,
Seems to me that maybe the whole idea of "more" or "grow" may lie at the core of a big part of the problem.  Rather than "growth", how about "improvement" or "better"??

In other words, instead of catering to builders, realtors, and county governments (property taxes) and building McMansions as far as the eye can see, make better designs and features in smaller spaces.  Have tried to buy a couple of pieces of land in last three or four years and have been thwarted by restrictions that say I must build at least X number of square feet.  Typically in the 1,500 to 2,500 square feet.  It could be ugly, bare, unpainted sheet rock inside, just as long as I have the footage.

Rather than a nice little comfortable cottage of about 800 to 1100 square feet, with exquisite walnut paneling in the small formal front room.  Imported Italian tile in the entry and kitchen.  Hardwood floors throughout.  High ceilings.  Plastered walls.  Stained and varnished hardwood trim throughout.  Massively efficient HVAC equipment with building features to match.  Slate roof, maybe.  Or maybe a copper standing seam metal roof, with cupola.  Custom, hand made brick.  And something seldom seen today - NO garage on the front as an architectural element.  In fact, no attached garage at all.  Detached, with access from the alley way.  Then, with no street at the front of the house, there is room for an attractive park like setting for all the cottages on the block.  Sidewalks wide enough for walking AND particularly bicycling!!

I could afford all those things if I didn't have to build 2,000 + square feet of nonsense.

But no, that wouldn't "fit" the neighborhood.  Oh, now I get it...it would be too nice and too well built to go into any of the McMansion neighborhoods....

[LandArchPoke]

Essentially what started the process in the northwest was their concern of the loss of farmland around the cities. To me from the experience I've had talking to a lot of farmers or people in the agriculture business they are concerned about this.

Considering this is one of our main industries as a state why not try to preserve the land through growth restrictions?

After growth restrictions were in place in the Pacific Northwest especially, then through other urban planning policies they tried to preserve views and open spaces inside the city as the development got denser and grew upwards instead of outwards.

The Tulsa Metro Area is in a much higher value land area then say Oklahoma City because we are surrounded by natural aspects they are not. Here in say 20 years it's not hard to imagine that the development in South County could be all the way past 161st and overflowing Glenpol into places like Keifer, Mounds, and Liberty. The growth in the Northern parts of Tulsa could be overflowing Collinsville and all of a sudden Oolagah, Vera could be the new northern exurbs. Same thing with Haskell, and Porter. At what point do we wake up and realize all the valuable land we have destroyed when we could have had policies in place to protect them?

In the next 5 - 10 years is the right time for Northeast Oklahoma to look at policies to control growth management policies or we'll be the next "Houston of North America" where they are talking about destroying one of North America's last Tall Grass Prairies for another outer loop highway.

[heironymouspasparagus]

No, it can't.  This area is WAY too conservative (think Jim Inhofe) for progressive moves like Vancouver to ever work here.  At least, not in the lifetime of anyone here now.

Farmers and ranchers recognize the problem with disappearing land, but the builder/realtor/county cabal is way to entrenched to put up with that kind of progressive nonsense.

Have looked at OKC area for land, as well as Luther/Wellston and on this direction.  Very expensive there just like here.  Way too much for ranching.  You can look at many of the realtor signs there and see the phrase "Commercial potential".  Lot of that here, too.

[OurTulsa]

You're right there was concern for loss of farmland in the PacWest but there was also and still is a hardcore passion for the natural and urban environment - Gov. McCall (R-Oregon) was an unabashed environmentalist.  Can you imagine Gov. Mary pushing that?  To augment that idealist zeal the PacWest has some seriously visible and unsurmountable natural impediments to urban growth - ya' know oceans, mountains, big lakes...things like that.

Can Tulsa be Vancouver?  No.  I'm certain if Vancouver didn't have the natural constraints to sprawl they'd look more like a smaller version of sprawling Toronto.  Again, I love the enthusiasm in your question.  I would love for Tulsa to be more like...maybe not Vancouver...but much more compact with lively streets and plaza - oh say like Paris...ok, I feel better I said it.

Again, I think our best bet is to get those interested to create some real synergy and focus on reinvesting in some urban neighborhoods/ districts and doing it well to the point that it's very pleasant and desirable - in high demand to the extent that we try to replicate that pattern elsewhere around the core or along a given transit corridor. 

We have to market the hell out of a vision of a future Tulsa.  The Pearl District is doing that right now.  I think they're on the verge of really turning the corner.  The City's supporting them with public investment and a new development code that will ensure future development fits an urban mold.  People are interested.  I hear some talk like the Pearl IS the city's best urban neighborhood though in reality it's still by and large crap (sans park and incomplete townhouse neighborhood).  Something similar is going on in Blue Dome.  Let's be honest it's not that great right?  There's a smattering of good/fun restaurants in a kinda concentrated area.  It's not really identifiable.  There aren't tons of people walking/hangin' around, the streets still look like boring downtown Tulsa streets but the chatter is starting to grow and interest in visiting and hangin in the Blude Dome appears to be growing and I'm hearing that there's more interest by retailers/ restauranteurs.  So a couple a pretty smart entreprenuers are making their visions of a restored urban entertainment district a reality.  They've got a TIF so there's some public support.  It's one big frickin snowball that we've got to create first and then push off the mountain.  I'm in.

[LandArchPoke]

No, it can't.  This area is WAY too conservative (think Jim Inhofe) for progressive moves like Vancouver to ever work here.  At least, not in the lifetime of anyone here now.

Farmers and ranchers recognize the problem with disappearing land, but the builder/realtor/county cabal is way to entrenched to put up with that kind of progressive nonsense.

Have looked at OKC area for land, as well as Luther/Wellston and on this direction.  Very expensive there just like here.  Way too much for ranching.  You can look at many of the realtor signs there and see the phrase "Commercial potential".  Lot of that here, too.

Well I can see your point in that the leadership in Oklahoma is to conservative for something like this, because they would probably view it as "anti-development" when it really isn't, it's just a way to guide developers into doing smart, sustainable, urban development. I don't really see why realtors would be against this, because policies like this tend to make land in the cities more valuable (in turn higher commissions for realtors). The volume of units isn't going to change either it would just be more condo developments instead of tract housing and mcmansions. I could see some push back from home builders because they would have to rapidly adapt to new standards of building and change their business models.

The point you made about ranching and how expensive the land is around the cities even though Luther/Wellston is still a good distance from Oklahoma City feeds into the argument that we need land growth policies because the lack of this is driving people out of business (the common man who you are saying wouldn't go for this because they are to conservative?) yet it is directly beneficial to them.

I don't see much push back from people besides some politicians because the majority of them are pretty out of touch with the real world. You just have to show them how it benefits them.

I guess my whole push for something like this would be that it would VASTLY accelerate the development of downtown and other urban neighborhoods to the point where Tulsa could have a similar downtown to say Portland in 20 years down the road with transit lines that are successful with high ridership. Or else Tulsa will probably look more like downtown Austin in 20 years, which isn't to say a bad thing because we all know how much love Austin gets, but it's still filled with vacant surface lots and is not a great model for transit either. The BA expressway will be something similar to I-35 in Austin during rush hour.

Maybe it's just my skewed perspective because I am in the "young professional" age group and my friends all tend to be active and enjoy nature. So to me it feels like there is a shift in Tulsa that it has more of a mindset that values things like this.

Tulsa will develop in a more urban way but it will also sprawl endlessly, I just wonder how long it will have to happen before people start to stand up and fit back against it.

[we vs us]

Maybe it's just my skewed perspective because I am in the "young professional" age group and my friends all tend to be active and enjoy nature. So to me it feels like there is a shift in Tulsa that it has more of a mindset that values things like this.

Things are going to change rapidly when the boomer cadre is finally out of political power.  Apologies to all you boomer forum folk out there, but there's a marked generational difference between some of the boomer development values and what Gens X, Y, and the Millennials want out of their cities.

[TheArtist]

An Urban Growth Boundary would halt a lot of the suburban development we see today. This however would need to be a joint effort between Tulsa County, Wagoner County, Creek County, Rogers County, Osage County, and others.

For people who might not know what an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) : Its a boundary that is controlled by a city, regional, or state government that encourage high density development with in the boundary and low density outside the boundary (and when I say low density I mean similar to what you see now in area undeveloped where large tracts of land are under single ownership, a suburban neighborhood would be considered to high density).

Portland, Oregon is a good example of an UGB. The state government requires it for every city/county in the state though.

Our suburban city should take a vested interest to this as well beside it won't take longer for Coweta to over take growth from Broken Arrow, Collinsville and Skiatook to take over growth from Owasso. Similar to what is happening to Jenks and Tulsa. If we put in growth regulations in a regional scale this would ensure the healthy growth of ALL cities in the metropolitan region and help Tulsa become a more urban city as well since it is the primary city.

With increasing inner city land values and densities mass transit lines would become viable in the Tulsa region, similar to what happened in Vancouver and Portland.

Artist do you think that with a better regional policy, it would in turn make the City of Tulsa's policies become more "up to date" with actually adopting more of the PlaniTulsa? That is sad to hear that they are destorying a lot of that to go back with old comprehensive plan. Since I'm not sure if you are calling me stupid and quote "thinking in lala-land"   .. this is just something I wrote to get people to think about our regional policies and maybe what it would take to actually get something progressive done at a regional scale, it doesn't mean that I'm say hey lets start a petition today to get this going, but to not think of the whole picture is pretty short sited and one of the things that keeps us going in the wrong direction. Stronger regional policies in my oppion would lead to strong policies inside the City of Tulsa.

My apologies, I threw out a bunch of frustration because of what was going on with the comprehensive plan that happened to land here but was not meant to be to you or what your talking about.  Actually any topic that gets people talking and learning about good urban design and growth can be a positive.  But, at the same time its critical that we don't, by starting to talk about these other things, let that take away or distract us from any effort to get the new comprehensive plan passed.

Here is a great article in Urban Tulsa Weekly if you haven't already seen it.

http://www.urbantulsa.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A39838 

Again, if we have an old plan that makes good infill IN the city illegal or practically impossible, all the urban growth boundries/regional plans in the world are not going to mean a danged thing.  How good can your mass transit be if its illegal to build pedestrian friendly development in most parts of the city?  How good can your pedestrian friendly areas be if its illegal to have mixed use structures in most parts of the city?  How can you build up affordable density if you have to contend with suburban style "minimum parking requirements"? etc. etc. etc.  An urban growth boundry will not work if we drop the ball on getting the new comprehensive plan, we have already worked on, passed.     

[Gaspar]

I have spent a lot of time in Vancouver.  It's the launch point of most of my fishing trips. 

You have to start at the base of the pyramid. . . Vancouver is fueled by the logging industry.  Not the lumberjacks, but tens of thousands of executives. 

Over the years billions of dollars have been funneled into Vancouver from the US housing industry.  Home ownership may be difficult and expensive there, but money from YOUR mortgage payment makes living there wonderful for Canadians.  "Big Wood" has millions and millions of acres in the temperate rainforests of the islands to the west of Vancouver, and the vast wilderness to the North.  Millions of tons are cut and shipped every day to fuel our suburban lust!

Additionally, most of the paper in front of you came from those trees too. 

Sure, we have the resources domestically to produce these products, but BC enjoys far fewer regulations.  Fly a small aircraft North of Vancouver and you will be horrified!. . .or better yet, just get on Google Earth and explore it for yourself (see attached).  Discussion of BC's "environmental responsibility" is laughable.  Vancouver was built on the destruction of millions and millions of acres of pristine wilderness with no real policies to restrict it.   

As for Tulsa. . .Vancouver's economic base is far broader than the oil industry offers Tulsa, and stacked on top of it, you have the film industry (much cheaper to make films and do production in BC).  You also have tech, and much of your credit card processing, but the heart is still logging.  The vast eroded rocky runs that used to be forest are responsible for building a dense urban lifestyle you admire.