Is this a good plan for city growth? Personally I think they should try to develop the areas around Meridian Avenue into a fairly upscale area, simply because of how this location stands to become a lot more prime. And Meridian Avenue should really become "uptown" for folks that will be living in the southwest part of town. That just strikes me as a would-be excellant planning element that OKC could have going for it.

And I'm disappointed that the areas around Lake Draper aren't to be touched. I mean, there's so much land that the city had might as well just raffle off...

It looks good to me... The only thing I would change is change the "rural" key color to "deannexation". There's no reason for the city to have those fingers stretching to the northeast and southeast.

Meridian on the south side would be the main street of their industrial corridor in this plan, right?

Yep, pretty much.

Well if you haven't driven into the southeast area, you are missing out. That part of the city has developed grealty in the last 10 years. Subdivisions are going up all over the place and most of those kids go to Carl Albert. It's a nice area, just woodsey, which is why the people live out there. They all have acerages but still have neighborhoods. You'd be surprised what all is out there is you drove around some time. Just tossing it would be like saying toss the area around Deer Creek because it's all fields. It may be now, but it will be tax dollars on new homes and businesses in the future.

Don't lose sight of the future and sell something off so we gripe about it later....remember those buildings downtown that they tore down? They did that not thinking about the future.

I'm actually a proponent of making Deer Creek an incorporated city, using bits of Edmond and Oklahoma City limits. You'll find that Oklahoma City limits in Deer Creek are nearly completely developed already, though.

These fingers of land that are extending randomly out into the countryside are not consistent with the city- it doesn't make sense for the city to have them at all. And with the new tax collections etc comes the responsibility of the city to extend new utilities, widen roads, install traffic lights... for miles and miles. With more income comes more expenses. Unless of course they plan on developing dense, urbanist communities in the northeast and southeast "legs" of Oklahoma City. Then perhaps some money could be made.

Here's what I propose. Of course I didn't mess with the actual development OF Oklahoma City, which I can do in a future map, but this took me about 30 seconds and it represents visually what the city limits should look, where suburbs are, and you can fill in the blanks as to what land should go to who.



The flower power marks my neck of the woods.

Well I know at least in the SE section, the development is happening, but the city services aren't expanding to the residents. It's mostly well water and septic tanks out there, so the only thing the city has to do it supply firemen to the existing stations and police that already don't patrol the area anyway. It's really just turning undeveloped fields into tax dollars at little expense to the city because all they basically have to do is maintain the road....and they don't do that worth a crap anyway.

Exactly... and then the residents are stressed out because the city isn't taking care of them. 600 sq miles is just too much- maybe if it were at least in a logical configuration (say a square, or something) it would be easier... but it's random annexation. It's hard for the city to maintain that. It would be much easier to hand it over to one of the existing suburbs or create new suburbs that can govern themselves and make sure the resident's needs are met.

Good luck getting residents together to form a new town, or convincing anyone to annex the land. OKC took it and now they are stuck with it.

Here's what they got going. And bear in mind that most new streets don't even show up on these google maps, my street doesn't even exist...

Anyway, what there needs to be is citizens that get involved and decide to make a change. They have to come up with the idea first, and they have to carry the idea throughout their part of town. There needs to be a movement first, and that movement could easily start small.

Does OKC have to let them leave the "union of sprawl" or does OKC have a firm hold on them whether they like it or not?

Well, the residents and developers in these areas would be glad to have their own community probably, especially if they are unhappy with the amount of utilities, maintenance dollars etc being spent by the city in their far-out areas.