I just found out that Tulsa has a sales tax add on program, modeled after Oklahoma City's pathbreaking Metropolitan Area Projects program, which has funded a variety of placemaking, economic development, and infrastructure projects over the past 25 years ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape").
It took a couple of tries before the referendum was finally passed, which is not a surprise. Early iterations called for funding specific tax incentive projects, like to retain an American Airlines maintenance facility. But later phases included funding improvements to universities and schools, and parks.
But it's not nearly as visionary as MAPS. But the most recent vote in 2016 made the funding stream permanent. And it's possible that over time, the vision component can grow.
-- Tulsa Vision 2025
The current slate of projects are more focused on creating civic assets with long term value ("Invested in downtown': Tulsa Arts District improvements among $816M in new projects," Tulsa World) such as the Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture and the Greenwood Rising History Center, which recounts the sad history of the Tulsa white riot eradicating the Greenwood neighborhood in 1919.
In turn these investments are sparking private investment in housing, mixed use, and office projects, helped surely, by Tulsa's position in the fossil fuels economy.
Tulsa Remote Worker Recruitment Program. Something I haven't written about but have been meaning to for a couple years is Tulsa's worker recruitment program ("Do you work remotely? This program could pay you $10,000 to do so from Tulsa," CNN, "The Great Tulsa Mobile Worker Experiment," Bloomberg), which was started before the pandemic.
Not unlike the artist recruitment program in Paducah, Kentucky ("In Paducah, Artists Create Something From Nothing," NPR), the idea was to recruit workers who didn't have to work onsite, who might be attracted by Tulsa's lower cost of living, especially of housing. Since then more communities have created similar programs.
Called Tulsa Remote, and funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, a locally-focused foundation with funds derived from oil and banking, it provides a $10,000 "move in" bonus, and a variety of support programs aimed at easing the transition, promoting new business development, etc.
While The Atlantic writes that such programs aren't particularly successful ("Moving Incentives Are Overhyped"), I'd argue that it doesn't cost much and it's always good to recruit people with talent to your community. Of course, one challenge is then to be able to be open to their ideas and be willing to reshape the revitalization agenda accordingly ("Downtown Tulsa resident campaigns for food co-op," 2News Tulsa).
But it's true that not every place has the right conditions to support this. People look at what Paducah did and say "people can work from anywhere." But that's the wrong lesson. Paducah focused on attracting artists who sell the bulk of their work at summer art fairs. And Paducah is well located in the midwest, with great freeway connections within a day or two of many major fairs such as in Louisville, Ann Arbor, and Suburban Chicago.
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Best practice flooding mitigation. I have written about Tulsa's proactive response to its last major flood in 1984, resulting in 14 deaths--the city is centered upon the Arkansas River.
They created an active disaster mitigation and resilience program, including buying out housing and other buildings located on flood plains ("Some innovative disaster planning initiatives in Tulsa, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and Davenport Iowa").
Since then they haven't avoided flooding, after all the effects of climate change seem particularly pronounced compared to 1984, but the impact has been significantly reduced because of their previous active steps in disaster planning and management.
Certainly, no deaths (cf. "2 dead, 20 missing after severe flooding in North Carolina," USA Today).
Glad to see the tulsa and SLC posts.
ReplyDeleteoff topic:
https://www.ft.com/content/d86c0a8f-c4bc-44c8-ab79-9a5b5d4b76d9
"Power to the pedal: the galvanising effects of experiencing London by e-bike"
(I'm just not feeling it as much for writing. "While it may look effortless" it always takes a few hours to write a piece. And there is so much I want to write. Anyway...)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sending. For whatever reason my google news feed rarely sends me FT articles anymore.
Man, e-bikes. I'm 61 years old. I don't ride near as much as I did in DC. Here we have a car plus 4 people, not one or two. And the hills can be super intense. Plus, the elevation in general, heat and air quality.
So sometimes I just get wiped when I ride. (It really makes me think of the point you made years ago about shade as an element for biking. PLUS, misting stations.)
I went to Park City last week with my bike (there is a nice commuter bus between the two cities) and I rode from the Interstate junction drop off to the city, a bit more than 6 miles. It so wiped me out. I definitely was primed to take the bus from the city back to the junction (there is a transit center in both places, and Park City bus is free, but there are some inadequacies, related to the point about rider/user experience management and your point about "city break tourism" and transit--I am waiting on one piece of ephemera to arrive, then I will write that article.)
In short, I was hoping to make it to 65 before I switched to an e-bike. I might not make it.
But ever since I did the Baltimore County thing, I've advocated e-bikes as an element of bike planning for (1) older people; (2) topographically challenged places; and (3) to get people to switch to transportational cycling when the trip is longer than what they would normally do.
Nextdoor recently had a post on someone looking for advice wrt e-bikes, and one of the places mentioned has a weekly ride, to get people some experience.
Park City's bike share isn't the same as Salt Lake's (although the SLC system is being ported to Ogden, which is something I suggested years ago when I interviewed for a UDOT job). It's exclusively electric.
And now it makes total sense to me, given the distances, e.g., one of the bus stops at a park and ride is probably not quite 8 miles to Park City, the Kimball Junction area is 6+ miles, there are spokes off the main drag etc.
Oh, and there is a totally beautiful trail parallel to the main drag state road that goes to Park City from the Junction. Just amazing. Parts of it have a creek, and as you go to the city parts of it wind through apartments and such. It took me so long to ride the 6 miles not just 'cause of the hills and elevation but because I kept stopping to take photos.
PS Park City transit stations are really nice. The bus from the city to Kimball Junction was playing the local NPR station! They do have a dedicated bus lane between the Junction and the city, but the bus driver said when they can they don't use it, because they are supposed to drive around 15mph. Decent shelters. Interestingly, the free tourist map doesn't even list the bus stations and transit! And the Park City Visitor Center has way reduced the amount of printed brochures it has.
WRT this:
ReplyDeleteBut ever since I did the Baltimore County thing, I've advocated e-bikes as an element of bike planning for (1) older people; (2) topographically challenged places; and (3) to get people to switch to transportational cycling when the trip is longer than what they would normally do.
There is the e-bike business that started in DC called Riide. I disagreed with their "killer app" -- no sweat.
My point was that in the core, the distances weren't that great, that e-biking was overkill.
Although they have a great line about e-bikes "flattening the city".
Anyway, I don't "really" know London but I know it's pretty big. So distances are an issue, especially north to south.
And ... I didn't try to ride a bike when I was there (I didn't have near enough time, I could have spent months). But I did see some cyclists, not that many actually, including bike share (although lots of stations) and I felt that I would have been intimidated by the traffic there (and hoping to remember to ride "on the wrong side of the street").
It's reasonable to assume that with an e-bike, you're a bit more equal with motor vehicle traffic, at least in terms of speed, and that can be an equalizing force maybe.
Oh, the Eccles book. Worth reading, fell off at the end. Incredible cites--lots more to read.
ReplyDeleteThe chapter on housing is particularly superb. The general discussion on "compensatory economics." The chapter on the 1937 recession.
The end quickly discusses failed attempts at national health insurance and other initiatives (the author cites a book by Alan Brinkley called _The End of Reform_).