Amazon

[SXSW]

Artist, I think it's a great idea and something GKFF or another local philanthropy would probably support along with Mayor Bynum.  Maybe tie it into what TCC is doing at the Center for Creativity downtown.

[Oil Capital]

I see your points and like your overall optimism. However, I don't agree our downtown is 10-15 years behind comparable cities. It is ahead or far ahead of many medium-sized cities in nearby states like Shreveport, Birmingham, Wichita, ABQ, Amarillo, Baton Rouge, Springfield, NW-Ark or El Paso. There are definitely ways it could be better, but it has already gone through the revitalization needed to get it up to speed with most mid-sized regional cities. The Arts District is a different world than 10 years ago and the Blue Dome area is another bright spot that keeps getting better. It seems about the right size for our metro now whereas it used to be an embarrassingly desolate ghost town after 5pm.

As others have noted, most of the "comparable cites" you list are FAR smaller than Tulsa.  Not exactly reaching for the stars to compare ourselves to Springfield.

Tulsa metro population:  991,000
Shreveport:  444,000
Wichita:  645,000
Amarillo:  262,000
Baton Rouge:  831,000
Springfield:  545,000
NW Ark:  525,000

[AngieB]

Adobe Suite.  (Illustrator, In Design, Photoshop, etc.) I think every high school kid should graduate knowing how to do the basics of these types of programs, and any of them that have an affinity or talent for using them should have the opportunity for another year or two worth of classes in high school as well.

What a nightmare. There is a reason that the company I work for does not allow anyone outside of Creative Services to have that software. 

[ELG4America]

To come up with a realistic list of peer cities, I would suggest that there are fundamentally 3 ways of classifying peer citites:

- Population
- Economy
- Geography

Population being the easiest, I would suggest that almost every metro with between 1/2 our size (Lafayette, LA population: 491,558) and 2x our size (Indianapolis, IN population: 2,028,614) is a potential "peer" or "competitor" city. That's a list of 72 cities. Note: Tulsa is by population the 47th largest city, 54th largest MSA, and the core of the 48th largest CSA in the US.

Economy by measure of city GDP is next. Tulsa MSA ranks 58th at $55 billion. Again I will look at metros 1/2 as large (Portland, ME GDP: $28Bil.) to 2x as large (Kansas City - GDP: $114 Bil.) This is a list of 52 cities. Correlating the two lists and eliminating cities that are not on both lists yields a list of 45 metros from Virginia Beach (Population: 1,725,246 | GDP: $81 Bil.) to Portland, ME (Population: 532,083 | GDP: $28 Bil.) On this list Tulsa ranks 18th by population and 19th by GDP.

Finally I will measure distances between Tulsa and the cities on this list, eliminating cities more than 1000 miles from Tulsa (measured by road distance via shortest time route) this leaves a list of 20 cities including Tulsa. Tulsa ranks 8th on both population and GDP among these cities. Here is the list:

   Metropolitan Statistical Area             Population   GDP (in millions of $)    Road Distance from Tulsa (in road miles via shortest time route)
   Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI      1,576,236        91,962                    767
   Oklahoma City, OK                               1,383,737       67,714                    106
   Memphis, TN-MS-AR                             1,348,260       62,059                    402
   Louisville–Jefferson County, KY-IN           1,293,953       65,700                    657
   New Orleans-Metairie, LA                      1,275,762        67,023                    655
   Birmingham-Hoover, AL                        1,149,807       55,927                    637
   Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI                   1,059,113       52,734                    839
   Tulsa, OK                                               990,706           54,921                    0
   Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA                  933,316           56,229                    384
   Albuquerque, NM                                   913,113           38,523                    650
   Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin, SC            895,923           36,527                    929
   Knoxville, TN                                         877,104        36,179                    792
   Baton Rouge, LA                                    834,159        45,015                    576
   Columbia, SC                                         825,033        35,421                    997
   Dayton, OH                                           803,416        35,397                    754
   Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR  738,344           34,241                    274
   Colorado Springs, CO                             723,878           28,886                    676
   Akron, OH                                             703,505           32,386                    936
   Wichita, KS                                          645,628           29,610                    175
   Toledo, OH                                             603,668        28,300                    863


   

[SXSW]

^ Good analysis.  I usually think of similar cities within our same region as "peer" cities.  I've always thought Kansas City was very similar but bigger and Omaha also similar but slightly smaller.  All three are on rivers and at the edge of the Plains with similar topography though our climate is warmer. 

[ELG4America]

Kansas City is on the GDP list (where it ranked first at $114 Bil.) but is about 100,000 people too large to make the population list and obviously within the 1000 mile geographic radius. If you wanted to expand the list to Tulsa + 20 peer cities, it would make sense to add KC as an exception.

[TheArtist]

What a nightmare. There is a reason that the company I work for does not allow anyone outside of Creative Services to have that software. 

I wish every single one of my employees could use that software lol.  Am thinking that the next people I interview to work for us must be able to use it or you are not getting hired.  We are working on a new website and its frustrating when my employees can't do basic image things and ask me to create this, create that, do this for me, etc.I need them to do it. Our employee meeting this coming Monday is about Facebook & Instagram posts and upgrading everything from imagery, consistent use of fonts and colors, to good usage of Hashtags, etc. but again it would be much easier if they could create the imagery, and videos, for quality looking posts. We have 2 main Facebook pages with 3 secondary ones and each should have at least 1 post per day.  I can't sit around making 5 posts a day with the average, well created, post taking about 45 minutes to make. We often need signage around the store or in the museum. etc. I need to be using my time to be doing the higher level art stuff that makes bigger money, and not basic, simple, everyday things.

[Oil Capital]

To come up with a realistic list of peer cities, I would suggest that there are fundamentally 3 ways of classifying peer citites:

- Population
- Economy
- Geography

Population being the easiest, I would suggest that almost every metro with between 1/2 our size (Lafayette, LA population: 491,558) and 2x our size (Indianapolis, IN population: 2,028,614) is a potential "peer" or "competitor" city. That's a list of 72 cities. Note: Tulsa is by population the 47th largest city, 54th largest MSA, and the core of the 48th largest CSA in the US.

Economy by measure of city GDP is next. Tulsa MSA ranks 58th at $55 billion. Again I will look at metros 1/2 as large (Portland, ME GDP: $28Bil.) to 2x as large (Kansas City - GDP: $114 Bil.) This is a list of 52 cities. Correlating the two lists and eliminating cities that are not on both lists yields a list of 45 metros from Virginia Beach (Population: 1,725,246 | GDP: $81 Bil.) to Portland, ME (Population: 532,083 | GDP: $28 Bil.) On this list Tulsa ranks 18th by population and 19th by GDP.

Finally I will measure distances between Tulsa and the cities on this list, eliminating cities more than 1000 miles from Tulsa (measured by road distance via shortest time route) this leaves a list of 20 cities including Tulsa. Tulsa ranks 8th on both population and GDP among these cities. Here is the list:

   Metropolitan Statistical Area             Population   GDP (in millions of $)    Road Distance from Tulsa (in road miles via shortest time route)
   Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI      1,576,236        91,962                    767
   Oklahoma City, OK                               1,383,737       67,714                    106
   Memphis, TN-MS-AR                             1,348,260       62,059                    402
   Louisville–Jefferson County, KY-IN           1,293,953       65,700                    657
   New Orleans-Metairie, LA                      1,275,762        67,023                    655
   Birmingham-Hoover, AL                        1,149,807       55,927                    637
   Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI                   1,059,113       52,734                    839
   Tulsa, OK                                               990,706           54,921                    0
   Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA                  933,316           56,229                    384
   Albuquerque, NM                                   913,113           38,523                    650
   Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin, SC            895,923           36,527                    929
   Knoxville, TN                                         877,104        36,179                    792
   Baton Rouge, LA                                    834,159        45,015                    576
   Columbia, SC                                         825,033        35,421                    997
   Dayton, OH                                           803,416        35,397                    754
   Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR  738,344           34,241                    274
   Colorado Springs, CO                             723,878           28,886                    676
   Akron, OH                                             703,505           32,386                    936
   Wichita, KS                                          645,628           29,610                    175
   Toledo, OH                                             603,668        28,300                    863


   

Great list.  Very well done.  Just curious... why isn't Des Moines on the list?

[TheArtist]

To come up with a realistic list of peer cities, I would suggest that there are fundamentally 3 ways of classifying peer citites:

- Population
- Economy
- Geography

Population being the easiest, I would suggest that almost every metro with between 1/2 our size (Lafayette, LA population: 491,558) and 2x our size (Indianapolis, IN population: 2,028,614) is a potential "peer" or "competitor" city. That's a list of 72 cities. Note: Tulsa is by population the 47th largest city, 54th largest MSA, and the core of the 48th largest CSA in the US.

Economy by measure of city GDP is next. Tulsa MSA ranks 58th at $55 billion. Again I will look at metros 1/2 as large (Portland, ME GDP: $28Bil.) to 2x as large (Kansas City - GDP: $114 Bil.) This is a list of 52 cities. Correlating the two lists and eliminating cities that are not on both lists yields a list of 45 metros from Virginia Beach (Population: 1,725,246 | GDP: $81 Bil.) to Portland, ME (Population: 532,083 | GDP: $28 Bil.) On this list Tulsa ranks 18th by population and 19th by GDP.

Finally I will measure distances between Tulsa and the cities on this list, eliminating cities more than 1000 miles from Tulsa (measured by road distance via shortest time route) this leaves a list of 20 cities including Tulsa. Tulsa ranks 8th on both population and GDP among these cities. Here is the list:

   Metropolitan Statistical Area             Population   GDP (in millions of $)    Road Distance from Tulsa (in road miles via shortest time route)
   Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI      1,576,236        91,962                    767
   Oklahoma City, OK                               1,383,737       67,714                    106
   Memphis, TN-MS-AR                             1,348,260       62,059                    402
   Louisville–Jefferson County, KY-IN           1,293,953       65,700                    657
   New Orleans-Metairie, LA                      1,275,762        67,023                    655
   Birmingham-Hoover, AL                        1,149,807       55,927                    637
   Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI                   1,059,113       52,734                    839
   Tulsa, OK                                               990,706           54,921                    0
   Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA                  933,316           56,229                    384
   Albuquerque, NM                                   913,113           38,523                    650
   Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin, SC            895,923           36,527                    929
   Knoxville, TN                                         877,104        36,179                    792
   Baton Rouge, LA                                    834,159        45,015                    576
   Columbia, SC                                         825,033        35,421                    997
   Dayton, OH                                           803,416        35,397                    754
   Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR  738,344           34,241                    274
   Colorado Springs, CO                             723,878           28,886                    676
   Akron, OH                                             703,505           32,386                    936
   Wichita, KS                                          645,628           29,610                    175
   Toledo, OH                                             603,668        28,300                    863


   

Another thing to consider "Peer City" wise is "Age of the City" and "Built Environment"

I have been to smaller cities that feel like a bigger city because they are more dense and less sprawling.  A city with a population that is sprawled over hundreds of square miles versus one that is denser would "live", and compete differently.

Also age.  Tulsa is a very young city.  Cities that are older have had more time to build up institutional infrastructure. Grand museums, Libraries, Universities, etc. And the age of the city can also tie in with the built environment for cities that had a good amount of growth in earlier times can have denser, more urban feeling cores. More "comfortable" old neighborhoods and walkable areas, etc.

[AngieB]

I wish every single one of my employees could use that software lol.  Am thinking that the next people I interview to work for us must be able to use it or you are not getting hired.  We are working on a new website and its frustrating when my employees can't do basic image things and ask me to create this, create that, do this for me, etc.I need them to do it. Our employee meeting this coming Monday is about Facebook & Instagram posts and upgrading everything from imagery, consistent use of fonts and colors, to good usage of Hashtags, etc. but again it would be much easier if they could create the imagery, and videos, for quality looking posts. We have 2 main Facebook pages with 3 secondary ones and each should have at least 1 post per day.  I can't sit around making 5 posts a day with the average, well created, post taking about 45 minutes to make. We often need signage around the store or in the museum. etc. I need to be using my time to be doing the higher level art stuff that makes bigger money, and not basic, simple, everyday things.

Get a Lynda.com subscription and have them complete the courses. Otherwise, you should hire people who have had graphic design training or a degree. We don't need Carol the receptionist having that kind of software. Stretching logos, using ugly fonts (and too many of them) and otherwise creating unattractive and ineffective graphics.

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

   Metropolitan Statistical Area             Population   GDP (in millions of $)    Road Distance from Tulsa (in road miles via shortest time route)
   Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI      1,576,236        91,962                    767
   Oklahoma City, OK                               1,383,737       67,714                    106
   Memphis, TN-MS-AR                             1,348,260       62,059                    402
   Louisville–Jefferson County, KY-IN           1,293,953       65,700                    657
   New Orleans-Metairie, LA                      1,275,762        67,023                    655
   Birmingham-Hoover, AL                        1,149,807       55,927                    637
   Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI                   1,059,113       52,734                    839
   Tulsa, OK                                               990,706           54,921                    0



   

We will never compare favorably to places like New Orleans, Louisville or Milwaukee in urban development. New Orleans is so far ahead of just about any city in the entire region when it comes to urban/walkable development in their small area-wise but extremely dense midtown/downtown. Milwaukee is much older, far higher population and far beyond what Tulsa could hope to accomplish in an urban area in any realistic time line. It has triple the density of Tulsa. It's good to dream, but you also have to be realistic. Tulsa is still a suburban-based city and the culture and politics of Oklahoma will keep it that way for as long as economics allow it. Every time density gets high enough in any area, some Tulsans will move further out. Dense development is expensive. We still don't even have decent condos you can purchase in the IDL (far behind OKC, Little Rock or Des Moines on that one!).

Those are "shoot for the stars" peers for OKC. Should we start comparing what Tulsa needs to compete with Washington DC or NYC? Basically need everything they have so trillions of new investment. How about a multi-billion dollar airport? We need that to compete!

The Arts District is really neat and the Gathering Place is amazing and better than any city park in the US. Will those lure many from larger cities? Maybe they'll help tip the scales to add to far less traffic, cheap real estate and lower cost of living. Those things can put us ahead of places like Shreveport, Birmingham, Wichita, ABQ, Amarillo, Baton Rouge, Springfield, NW-Ark or El Paso. Those are the places where people might look to Tulsa as a "step up" and those are places Tulsa has to beat in education, crime and economic development (SPOILER: Tulsa ISN'T beating most those cities at those things!). Crime and education are horrendous in most areas of Tulsa. Until we fix those, people looking to live in a mid-sized city in this region will pick those other cities I listed.

No one in Dallas moves to Tulsa for a better urban environment or better education. Tulsa cannot compete with the density and development near downtown Dallas or school funding.

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

What we have downtown is a bunch of short-term residents and visitors with all of the hotels and apartments. The only couple of new condos built so far are so outlandishly expensive, there was basically no market for it (See Urban 8, Davenport Lofts). You need a sizable and stable amount of homeowners to make an urban area really work. Until we have a city that will allow the economics of large condos being built downtown, we won't get anywhere near those other larger cities. One major problem is the school district of downtown sucks so people with kids don't want to buy or even live there.

Central Park condos are dated, mostly ugly and not in the areas of high demand (I've tried there over the years... Also heard mostly bad things), and certainly not the quality of place which should have a sort of monopoly on that. Just about all of the other regional cities have tons of options for nice new condos to buy downtown with a wide spectrum of prices. Without that, Tulsa will be remain sort of a transitional downtown full of short-term and long-term visitors.

It's impressive how neat it has become without that though. That's a huge hindrance and still the Blue Dome and Arts Districts are great. So if that does get fixed, we could see yet another boom and wave of investment go in.

[ELG4America]

Great list.  Very well done.  Just curious... why isn't Des Moines on the list?

I went back to my dataset; it appears that Des Moines was omitted by mistake. I'll do an updated table with population and economic growth numbers when I finish (and when I figure out the forum's table tool.) Until then here are Des Moines numbers:

   Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA          Pop: 645,911             GDP: 49,031           Miles to Tulsa: 462


On further consideration of including KC in our list of peers I've decided that I think its too much of an outlier. It has become clear to me that KC, STL and DFW are all in a different league of city (lets call them the A league cities.) Comparisons between Tulsa and those cities just won't be very fruitful. Milwaukee is at the top of our list of peers (lets call them B league cities) and it would need to grow by about 1/3 to move up a league. I'm pretty early in my analysis but it appears fairly unusual for a city to move from one league to the next. Austin is a former B league city that has fairly recently moved into the A league a result of 23.28% population growth between '10 and '17, which is #1 among the 300 largest metros in the country. Finally, I noticed that NW Arkansas is a C League metro that should make it to the B League. NW Arkansas has experienced 16.03% growth.

This leads me to a suggestion of how to best encourage sustainable growth in Tulsa: Infrastructure connecting NW Arkansas to OKC via Tulsa.

[TheArtist]

We will never compare favorably to places like New Orleans, Louisville or Milwaukee in urban development. New Orleans is so far ahead of just about any city in the entire region when it comes to urban/walkable development in their small area-wise but extremely dense midtown/downtown. Milwaukee is much older, far higher population and far beyond what Tulsa could hope to accomplish in an urban area in any realistic time line. It has triple the density of Tulsa. It's good to dream, but you also have to be realistic. Tulsa is still a suburban-based city and the culture and politics of Oklahoma will keep it that way for as long as economics allow it. Every time density gets high enough in any area, some Tulsans will move further out. Dense development is expensive. We still don't even have decent condos you can purchase in the IDL (far behind OKC, Little Rock or Des Moines on that one!).

Those are "shoot for the stars" peers for OKC. Should we start comparing what Tulsa needs to compete with Washington DC or NYC? Basically need everything they have so trillions of new investment. How about a multi-billion dollar airport? We need that to compete!

The Arts District is really neat and the Gathering Place is amazing and better than any city park in the US. Will those lure many from larger cities? Maybe they'll help tip the scales to add to far less traffic, cheap real estate and lower cost of living. Those things can put us ahead of places like Shreveport, Birmingham, Wichita, ABQ, Amarillo, Baton Rouge, Springfield, NW-Ark or El Paso. Those are the places where people might look to Tulsa as a "step up" and those are places Tulsa has to beat in education, crime and economic development (SPOILER: Tulsa ISN'T beating most those cities at those things!). Crime and education are horrendous in most areas of Tulsa. Until we fix those, people looking to live in a mid-sized city in this region will pick those other cities I listed.

No one in Dallas moves to Tulsa for a better urban environment or better education. Tulsa cannot compete with the density and development near downtown Dallas or school funding.

I do agree that education and crime are things we desperately need to improve.  But, I disagree that Tulsa can't compete with Dallas per its built environment. 

Density alone doesn't = urban.   Dallas is the prime example of this.  Lots of density in some areas but most of those areas are basically high-rise suburbia "Fake urbanism" that is  still car oriented.

To me..... Urban = Pedestrian centric.  Suburban = auto centric.

We have the potential to be more Urban and offer a great, very attractive urban lifestyle.  And you don't have to be a bigger city to do that.  Heck I think Tulsa probably did better at that in the 1940s & 50s when it was smaller than it is today.

But with most of our city having Auto Centric zoning that favors the automobile and currently only having a few tiny "islands" that "allow" Urban development.... we run the risk of creating mostly "fake, auto centric, urbanism" as well. So no, we won't be able to compete with Dallas if we are nothing more than a smaller, slower growing version of the same crap development.

[TheArtist]

Get a Lynda.com subscription and have them complete the courses. Otherwise, you should hire people who have had graphic design training or a degree. We don't need Carol the receptionist having that kind of software. Stretching logos, using ugly fonts (and too many of them) and otherwise creating unattractive and ineffective graphics.

Thanks for the Lynda.com tip.

I am not asking for great art, or things like logo creation, would definitely hire an artist for that, just need people to do basic things.  I don't think of Adobe as being any different than Excel or Word, it should be a basic tool that anyone coming to work for me should be able to use.

Like doing this image. Simple post explaining our new hours. This is the kind of thing anyone can easily do in Photoshop.
https://www.facebook.com/decopolis/photos/a.560545027295567/2403701162979935/?type=3&theater

Pluck a nice pic from one of our stock image subscription sites (or take and use a photo), extend the bottom down for room to add hours. Plop on our logo (have a dozen variations already made up and ready to go).  Look at the employee manual for our list of approved fonts "usually art deco" (some work for the body and others are better for the title, its all in the manual) and our main colors (Red/orange the primary color, with gold and purple being the secondary color choices). And boom, dummy proof, easy breezy make a sign and post it.  Anyone should be able to do something like this for a sale sign, holiday posting, event post, etc.