Amazon

[Eroica]

Get a Lynda.com subscription and have them complete the courses.

FYI, Lynda.com access is available free via TCCL.

[ELG4America]

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 largely agree with you. Especially regarding our density problem. However, I don't think we should limit ourselves to considering only those cities which are well behind us or barely ahead as "peers." The genesis of this thread was a discussion of competing for Amazon HQ2. What has become clear is that no "B League" city ever had a shot. In fact I doubt that any city other that NYC and DC ever had a shot. However, when a midsize European aircraft parts manufacturer looks for a mid-size middle American city to locate 1,000 jobs or a rapidly growing Asian tech firm wants to establish a base in America but can't afford Silicon Valley, all these cities will compete for that opportunity. Just because New Orleans has things that we may never have does not mean we shouldn't attempt to compete. In fact we must compete to survive.

[TheArtist]

FYI, Lynda.com access is available free via TCCL.

Good to know!

[owenix]

I took the data provided by ELG4America and did the per capita. Tulsa does really well in this metric.

City Omaha Milwaukee Tulsa Baton Rouge New Orleans Louisville Grand Rapids OKC Birmingham Toledo Little Rock Akron Memphis Wichita Dayton Columbia Albuquerque Knoxville Greenville Colorado Springs

$ Per Capita 60,246 58,343 55,436 53,964 52,536 50,775 49,791 48,936 48,640 46,880 46,375 46,035 46,028 45,862 44,058 42,933 42,189 42,148 40,770 39,905

[heironymouspasparagus]

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.

Maybe that means there are just way too many 'social media' outlets.

[heironymouspasparagus]

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.

Milwaukee would have to be an A- city.  It has everything Chicago has to offer, without the really ugly parts.  Have spent way too much time in Chicago in the past, and nowhere near enough time in MKE in the past!  It is a great city to visit and live in right up until winter....and even then, when I have been there, it is easier to cope with than Tulsa most of the time just because the have the equipment to deal with it.  And a substantial amount of the people have an attitude that demands "better" - from food to infrastructure to city services to whatever standard of measure you want to use.  Would not take much to get rid of the "-".

[ELG4America]

Milwaukee would have to be an A- city.  It has everything Chicago has to offer, without the really ugly parts.  Have spent way too much time in Chicago in the past, and nowhere near enough time in MKE in the past!  It is a great city to visit and live in right up until winter....and even then, when I have been there, it is easier to cope with than Tulsa most of the time just because the have the equipment to deal with it.  And a substantial amount of the people have an attitude that demands "better" - from food to infrastructure to city services to whatever standard of measure you want to use.  Would not take much to get rid of the "-".

I wrote a whole post about why I reasoned Milwaukee was a B+ and (for example) Nashville was an A- but my session timed out. Suffice to say that no matter where you decide the cutoff is, you will be drawing a thin black line through a field of gray. I required that A cities have a population exceeding 2 million AND a GDP exceeding $100 billion. The line ends up with Indianapolis A- and San Jose B+ with San Jose 1547 people away from A- status. NYC and LA are the only cities that deserve to be called A+ since they are massive outliers while another 32 cities fill out the A and A- fields.

Note: NYC and LA combine for $2.8 Trillon, the top 15 cities output $8.3 Trillion, all 383 metros in the country account for $17.5 Trillion and the whole country $18.6 Trillion.

I feel confident putting Tulsa in the B category about midway while OKC ranks near the back of the B+ category. All these are comparisons of population and economic output, not comparisons of livability, walkability, vitality, natural resources, amenities, or aesthetics. Those are far more difficult to quantify though certainly important.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I wrote a whole post about why I reasoned Milwaukee was a B+ and (for example) Nashville was an A- but my session timed out. Suffice to say that no matter where you decide the cutoff is, you will be drawing a thin black line through a field of gray. I required that A cities have a population exceeding 2 million AND a GDP exceeding $100 billion. The line ends up with Indianapolis A- and San Jose B+ with San Jose 1547 people away from A- status. NYC and LA are the only cities that deserve to be called A+ since they are massive outliers while another 32 cities fill out the A and A- fields.

Note: NYC and LA combine for $2.8 Trillon, the top 15 cities output $8.3 Trillion, all 383 metros in the country account for $17.5 Trillion and the whole country $18.6 Trillion.

I feel confident putting Tulsa in the B category about midway while OKC ranks near the back of the B+ category. All these are comparisons of population and economic output, not comparisons of livability, walkability, vitality, natural resources, amenities, or aesthetics. Those are far more difficult to quantify though certainly important.

Those subjective items are what really make a city desirable, though.  And yeah, VERY hard to quantify!!   Tulsa has a better "quality of life" than OKC across all the intangibles.  And Milwaukee is very cool...would live there through the summer if I could.  Tulsa spring and fall.  Anywhere south/warmer in winter!  (Death Valley is very nice place in November most years!)   Then move out during winter!  I have walked around downtown MKE in Jan and Feb way more than I wanted too!  The wind blowing between all those buildings is vicious!   Brrrr....just chilled sitting here thinking and remembering!!

[patric]

Ahhh, this explains it:

https://youtu.be/rTb3GR6yrQI

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

I largely agree with you. Especially regarding our density problem. However, I don't think we should limit ourselves to considering only those cities which are well behind us or barely ahead as "peers." The genesis of this thread was a discussion of competing for Amazon HQ2. What has become clear is that no "B League" city ever had a shot. In fact I doubt that any city other that NYC and DC ever had a shot. However, when a midsize European aircraft parts manufacturer looks for a mid-size middle American city to locate 1,000 jobs or a rapidly growing Asian tech firm wants to establish a base in America but can't afford Silicon Valley, all these cities will compete for that opportunity. Just because New Orleans has things that we may never have does not mean we shouldn't attempt to compete. In fact we must compete to survive.

I agree with you on that. Tulsa is very competitive in many different ways with larger cities on things like manufacturing. Tulsa is basically a manufacturing/transportation hub with a sizable technology base (esp. in oil & aviation) and HQ of one of the largest banks in the region. Tulsa has affordable land and is a great place for those mid-sized manufacturing companies needing a place with competitive skilled labor.

I was talking mostly about comparing downtowns and that you can't apple-to-apples compare OKC's to Tulsa's. Tulsa's used to be far behind many peer cities. Now it's about right for this size city in this part of the country, even if OKC's is larger (as it should be for a metro so much larger). Tulsa has plenty of peers to look up to for inspiration but there's plenty of examples of terrible downtowns all around the midwest, great plains and south. Tulsa's was easily among the most boring, mostly empty after 6pm and winning the downtown parking crater award years ago (that has not improved at all since).

Back in 2007 before the BOK Center, when the Arts District was mostly nonexistent area full of empty warehouses and truck lots, Tulsa's downtown was basically the Central Business District and it was dead afterwards. Now the Central Business (Deco) District is one of the deader parts of downtown after 6pm. Now, Blue Dome and Arts District are more busy on a weekday evening than they used to be on the weekends. Deco District after 6pm is more lively than the Blue Dome was 12 years ago! There's way more planned, but Tulsa has found its footing downtown. Lots of room to improve still, but it's now one of the better downtowns for a city this size in the midwest/south/great plains.

It would take a tremendous amount of luck, investment and great planning to get anything close to what much larger metros have. Austin got "lucky" and had a 4-year university right by downtown and state capital to help, but also amazing branding at the right time to become like the Portland of the South.  Tulsa can hope to become sort of that with the Arts District, the Gathering Place and enclaves like Pearl, Cherry St, Route-66, Brookside, SOBO and Kendall Whittier. That seems like one big idea: Giving each area its own identity so that neighborhoods can rally behind it and people want to live in those areas and be a part of growing the city inside out.

[ELG4America]

I agree with you on that. Tulsa is very competitive in many different ways with larger cities on things like manufacturing. Tulsa is basically a manufacturing/transportation hub with a sizable technology base (esp. in oil & aviation) and HQ of one of the largest banks in the region. Tulsa has affordable land and is a great place for those mid-sized manufacturing companies needing a place with competitive skilled labor.

I was talking mostly about comparing downtowns and that you can't apple-to-apples compare OKC's to Tulsa's. Tulsa's used to be far behind many peer cities. Now it's about right for this size city in this part of the country, even if OKC's is larger (as it should be for a metro so much larger). Tulsa has plenty of peers to look up to for inspiration but there's plenty of examples of terrible downtowns all around the midwest, great plains and south. Tulsa's was easily among the most boring, mostly empty after 6pm and winning the downtown parking crater award years ago (that has not improved at all since).

Back in 2007 before the BOK Center, when the Arts District was mostly nonexistent area full of empty warehouses and truck lots, Tulsa's downtown was basically the Central Business District and it was dead afterwards. Now the Central Business (Deco) District is one of the deader parts of downtown after 6pm. Now, Blue Dome and Arts District are more busy on a weekday evening than they used to be on the weekends. Deco District after 6pm is more lively than the Blue Dome was 12 years ago! There's way more planned, but Tulsa has found its footing downtown. Lots of room to improve still, but it's now one of the better downtowns for a city this size in the midwest/south/great plains.

It would take a tremendous amount of luck, investment and great planning to get anything close to what much larger metros have. Austin got "lucky" and had a 4-year university right by downtown and state capital to help, but also amazing branding at the right time to become like the Portland of the South.  Tulsa can hope to become sort of that with the Arts District, the Gathering Place and enclaves like Pearl, Cherry St, Route-66, Brookside, SOBO and Kendall Whittier. That seems like one big idea: Giving each area its own identity so that neighborhoods can rally behind it and people want to live in those areas and be a part of growing the city inside out.

Yes! As has been noted by boosters on this forum for years, Tulsa has such great bones. Far better than OKC which is ostensibly "ahead" of us by most objective metrics. If nothing else OKC is an infuriating city to navigate.

What I believe we need to rally around is a 3 or 4 broad point plan for progressively improving upon our existing strengths while addressing one or two weaknesses. As I see it we need to continuously update our long-range comprehensive plans rather than spending millions and years developing plans then declaring victory and letting them sit on the shelf.

I think that needs to focus on:

1. Improving connections between the self-sufficient districts, namely Brady/Arts, Blue Dome, Cherry, and Brookside. Such actions will necessarily benefit the Deco, Cathedral, and Pearl districts and the Route 66 corridor. This can take the form of encouraging developments directly through incentives but should be primarily through improvements in placemaking (cheap and quick) and city infrastructure (expensive and slow.)

2. Coordinate State and city government, local business and non-profits in a 50 year plan to remake Tulsa Public Schools into the world's best. No shorter goal is worthy. The core misconception about education that most frustrates me is that the trajectory of the system can be changed on a short timescale. A student generally spends 12 to 14 years in primary education so a 50 year plan is ONLY 4 successive "student generations." Therefore, we must shortly establish the armature for success: inter-institutional coordination, research, and data gathering. Then have the boldness to incorporate the recommendations of such experts, the courage to see them through on an appropriate timeline, and the humility to admit mistakes and correct them.

3. Create and begin implementing a regional mass-transit plan. Our core city is at or near the density required to sustain a streetcar circulator. On the 5-15 year scale we should be looking to implement direct commuter rail connections to downtown: BA, Jenks, Bixby, and SS. Finally on the 10-30 year timescale a high-speed rail connection between OKC and Fayetteville through the downtowns and airports would help bring the region a significant competitive advantage and connect a region of almost 3 million people and a near $200 Billion GDP. I estimate all three would be a project in the range of $5-10 Billion with the Tulsa metro being on the hook for about half.

[Laramie]

Sources: Tulsa in discussions with Amazon to construct distribution center:  https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/sources-tulsa-in-discussions-with-amazon-to-construct-distribution-center/article_c0fab4af-a017-51b1-bdaa-d94418e62df6.amp.html

[swake]

Sources: Tulsa in discussions with Amazon to construct distribution center:  https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/sources-tulsa-in-discussions-with-amazon-to-construct-distribution-center/article_c0fab4af-a017-51b1-bdaa-d94418e62df6.amp.html

That's already under construction.

[Laramie]

That's already under construction.

What is this Swake, fulfillment, distribution, sortation or a combination?

Hoped Tulsa was getting more benefits from Amazon.

[swake]

What is this Swake, fulfillment, distribution, sortation or a combination?

Hoped Tulsa was getting more benefits from Amazon.

Let me see if I can find someone to quote to answer that question for us:

Sources: Tulsa in discussions with Amazon to construct distribution center: https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/sources-tulsa-in-discussions-with-amazon-to-construct-distribution-center/article_c0fab4af-a017-51b1-bdaa-d94418e62df6.amp.html